June 8, 2015

Stat of the Week Competition: June 6 – 12 2015

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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 June 12 2015.
  • Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
  • The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of June 6 – 12 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.
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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 »

Nominations

  • avatar
    Tommy Honey

    Statistic: “The fundamental conceit of Textie – a prescient one, as it turns out – is that some portion of the 42 texts the average person sends and receives each day relates to topics more significant than dinner plans or morning-after party replays.”
    Source: NZ Herald
    Date: June 9 2015

    9 years ago

  • avatar
    Tommy Honey

    Statistic: “The fundamental conceit of Textie – a prescient one, as it turns out – is that some portion of the 42 texts the average person sends and receives each day relates to topics more significant than dinner plans or morning-after party replays.”
    Source: Washington Post via NZ Herald
    Date: 9 June 2015

    Astonishing! They have identified the average person and discovered that he/she sends and receives 42 texts each (and presumably, every) day!

    Or perhaps they meant that the average number of texts sent and received each day across all people (although how they determined this is anyone’s guess…) is 42.

    Which is, of course, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything…

    9 years ago

  • avatar
    Nick Iversen

    Statistic: Women face greater dementia risk – study
    Source: New Zealand Herald
    Date: 10 June 2015

    Women face greater dementia risk – is that true or not? I can’t tell from this badly written article.

    Yes it’s true that women experience more dementia but this article does not say whether this risk is higher because there are more women past 80 or because the risk per woman is higher (as the headline implies)

    Hopefully Thomas can elucidate this for us.

    The article says:
    “Women are disproportionately affected by dementia,” says the report. “As age is the greatest risk factor for dementia, and women have a greater life expectancy worldwide than men, a greater number of people with dementia will be women.

    But this tells us nothing about the risk for an individual woman ox age 80 – is it higher than for a man of 80? We can’t tell.

    Further, the article states: “Women with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology have a three-fold risk of being diagnosed with AD than men.” A three fold risk is a lot more than the “40 per cent higher prevalence than men” stated earlier in the article.

    The numbers don’t make any kind of consistent sense.

    9 years ago