Posts from July 2015 (36)

Both the Herald and Stuff are covering the AA Insurance list of most-stolen car brands. They have both made it clear what the ranking on the list actually means – -what the denominator is:

“It’s not that there are more Honda Torneos on the road than any other car,” said AA Insurance customer relations manager Amelia Macandrew. “It’s the probability of them being stolen that’s far greater than any other car we insure.” (Stuff)

and

To calculate theft incidence rates, AA Insurance measures the number of claims made for each model of car for which 20 or more claims have been made, as a percentage of the total number of policies it holds for that model. (Herald)

It wasn’t as clear in past years: credit to the reporters and to AA Insurance for the improvement.

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 July 10 2015.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of July 4 – 10 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.

(more…)

If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!

• Visualizing the Twitter networks of NZ MPs: on the Herald data blog, a post by Chris McDowall, and additional graphics by Jayne Ihaka.  
  Now we just need a way to tell which accounts are actually used by MPs and which ones are twitterwallahs.

• There was a big discrepancy among bookies on the odds for the Greek referendum. Paddy Power estimates an 80% chance of ‘yes’ and has paid out winnings early. Betfair is almost certain of “No”.  The wisdom of crowds has definite limitations, especially in situations where no-one really has a clue.

•  Kate Hannah, on the Te Punaha Matatini blog, writing about women and Royal Society of New Zealand prizes (which in their case they have not got)

• Sense about Science have a new guide to screening tests. I’ll repeat my testing soundbite: “Screening is the opposite of treatment: you go in healthy and come out with a disease”.

• Measuring happiness: a discussion at the New York Times and an independent (I think) skeptical post by John Quiggin arguing for measures of unhappiness.

Team Ratings for Round 17

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 118 matches played, 67 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 56.8%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 17

Here are the predictions for Round 17. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for the Final

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 124 matches played, 81 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 65.3%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Prediction for the Final

Here is the prediction for the final. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.