May 25, 2015
Stat of the Week Competition: May 23 – 29 2015
Each week, we would like to invite readers of Stats Chat to submit nominations for our Stat of the Week competition and be in with the chance to win an iTunes voucher.
Here’s how it works:
- Anyone may add a comment on this post to nominate their Stat of the Week candidate before midday Friday May 29 2015.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of May 23 – 29 2015 inclusive.
- Quote the statistic, when and where it was published and tell us why it should be our Stat of the Week.
Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.
The fine print:
- Judging will be conducted by the blog moderator in liaison with staff at the Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland.
- The judges’ decision will be final.
- The judges can decide not to award a prize if they do not believe a suitable statistic has been posted in the preceeding week.
- Only the first nomination of any individual example of a statistic used in the NZ media will qualify for the competition.
- Individual posts on Stats Chat are just the opinions of their authors, who can criticise anyone who they feel deserves it, but the Stat of the Week award involves the Department of Statistics more officially. For that reason, we will not award Stat of the Week for a statistic coming from anyone at the University of Auckland outside the Statistics department. You can still nominate and discuss them, but the nomination won’t be eligible for the prize.
- Employees (other than student employees) of the Statistics department at the University of Auckland are not eligible to win.
- The person posting the winning entry will receive a $20 iTunes voucher.
- The blog moderator will contact the winner via their notified email address and advise the details of the $20 iTunes voucher to that same email address.
- The competition will commence Monday 8 August 2011 and continue until cancellation is notified on the blog.
Rachel Cunliffe is the co-director of CensusAtSchool and currently consults for the Department of Statistics. Her interests include statistical literacy, social media and blogging. See all posts by Rachel Cunliffe »
Statistic: “A Singapore Airlines flight with 194 people has suddenly lost power to both engines, plunging 13,000 feet (3962 metres) before the pilots got the engines restarted.”
Source: Fairfax NZ
Date: 28 May 2015
I’m not the only person to pick this up, but reading down the article, there is a figure from Flight Radar 24, and if you read the time axis, it’s clear that the “plunge” (and in a previous version “plummet”) occurred over around 20 minutes, that it wasn’t associated with a change in airspeed (if anything slightly faster). And finally, that the rate of descent was actually less than during the landing phase. Which makes it rather unsurprising that “No injuries were reported.”
9 years ago
Statistic: The “plunge”
Source: Statschat
Date: 28 May 2015
Glad you picked up this one James. I wondered about that too. I read the story in the paper where they didn’t include the Flight Radar data.
When a jet like that loses power it doesn’t “plunge” – it glides. They glide very well. Most of the time when jets are flying over Auckland coming in to land they are gliding. Definitely not plunging.
When gliding for landing they drop roughly 1000 ft per minute. So I calculated the plunge as last 13 minutes. So yes, the rate of descent appears to be less than the landing phase.
9 years ago
Statistic: The “plunge”
Source: Statschat
Date: 28 May 2015
I would also add that the 13,000 feet is assumed by writer to be measured to +/- 3 feet, given the metric figure.
I still find it mildly annoying that people take one statistic and do a scalar conversion without also considering implied – actually it’s not very implied here – uncertainty. Why not say 4000 metres!!!
9 years ago