August 3, 2015
Stat of the Week Competition: August 1 – 7 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 August 7 2015.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of August 1 – 7 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: “Conservative estimates are that the average man will lose 12,547 umbrellas during his lifetime.”
Source: HZ Herald
Date: Friday 31 July
so if I live 100 years I would lose 125 umbrellas each year (including during infancy).
Maybe I would experience 125 rain days a year, but more than a little careless to lose an umbrella each day of rain.
(Article titled “Ring ring: it’s your brolly calling”)
[Edited to add the link: TL]
9 years ago
Statistic: “Queenstown Lakes has stacked more than $15 billion on to its value since the start of the new millennium in an unprecedented property gold rush.
It means the area is on its way to becoming the richest chunk of South Island real estate south of Christchurch – valued at present just $800 million shy of Dunedin…
subdivisions, such as Jacks Point, Lake Hayes Estate and Peninsula Bay in Wanaka, was a major factor in the boom.
New commercial buildings in downtown Queenstown, buy-to-let apartments and growth at Remarkables Park in Frankton had also contributed.”
Source: Otago Daily Times
Date: 6 August 2015
There are two claims here:
1) A “boom” in the value of Queenstown real estate that is likely to soon eclipse the value of Dunedin
2) That this is driven by new developments, subdivisions etc.
To the boom: These figures are for Rateable Values, which run on a 3 yearly cycle. Dunedin develops a new “lead” when it gets revalued (most notably 2005, 2008), and Queenstown “catches up” when it gets revalued a year later (2006, 2009).
The current gap narrowing (2015) is at least in part because Queenstown has just been revalued.
What this really shows is general property price inflation. Because the figures are only corrected every 3 years, it makes more sense to compare between valuation years: Dunedin (2002-2014) and Queenstown (2003-2015), which show very similar percentage rises (~250-260%).
To new developments: Between 2001 and 2013 censuses, there was an almost 50% increase in dwellings in Queenstown + countless commercial buildings. Dunedin was pretty flat in comparison. And yet the increase in rateable values was very similar. This would suggest most of the increase is attributable to land.*
*inasmuchas rateable value is a good measure of real estate value, though I think their model is normed to recent sale prices, so it should be OK.
The thing that originally drew my attention was the comment that Dunedin had “flatlined”, and I was looking at these thinking that they looked like pretty similar trends, but that Queenstown looked like it had a +1 lag, which made me realise about the revaluations…
9 years ago