Posts from August 2016 (44)

From the Herald (from the Daily Mail)

Patients should be warned about the dangers of chemotherapy after research showed that cancer drugs are killing up to 50 per cent of patients in some UK hospitals.

That’s almost completely untrue.

Firstly, the research looked at deaths from any cause within 30 days of starting treatment, and did not claim these were all due to chemotherapy. Secondly,  the 50% figure was in one hospital. Thirdly, it was for a subset of one particular type of cancer.  And, the conclusion from the news story cannot be found anywhere in the research paper.

The researchers do think that chemotherapy is probably being used suboptimally in some of the hospitals, including the one where about 5 out of 10 of the patients being treated ‘with curative intent’ for lung cancer died within 30 days. That hospital stood out, despite the tiny numbers, because the average death rate across all hospitals for similar patients was about 3%.

As the researchers say

The identification of hospitals with significantly higher 30-day mortality rates will promote review of clinical decision making in these hospitals.

It probably will, but that doesn’t tell us much about risks here on the other side of the world

Team Ratings for Round 26

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 184 matches played, 117 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 63.6%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 26

Here are the predictions for Round 26. 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 Round 3

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 14 matches played, 12 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 85.7%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 3

Here are the predictions for Round 3. 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 Round 5

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 15 matches played, 9 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 60.0%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 5

Here are the predictions for Round 5. 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.

From the Northern Advocate

An unprecedented run of success in selling winning Lotto second division winning tickets has a Whangarei store on tenterhooks expecting an even bigger win soon.

Now, in one sense this is rubbish: lotto is drawn randomly. Previous wins can’t function as an outward and visible sign of a inward propensity to sell lucky tickets, because there is no such thing.

On the other hand, statistically, you would expect a store that has sold a lot of winning tickets in the past to sell a lot of winning tickets in the future. That’s because a store that has sold a lot of winning tickets has probably just sold a lot of tickets.

A ‘lucky’ lotto vendor will usually be one that’s made a lot of profits for Lotto New Zealand. As to whether its customers are lucky, well, you don’t tend to see stories like this set in Herne Bay or Thorndon.

• 538 has a new Twitter bot, censusAmericans, which tweets little descriptions of individuals from what I think must be the American Community Survey, though they describe it as the census.

• “Relaxing Privacy Vow, WhatsApp Will Share Some Data With Facebook” (NY Times). “Relaxing” is such a nice way to put that, but as various people have pointed out, this is what happens when companies build up volumes of data.

• A nice app for exploring how differences in some measurement (‘biomarker’) between groups of people (fail to) translate into reliable tests

• Our introductory statistics online course is starting up again: October 3

• The Spinoff and Figure.NZ are launching a “Chart of the Week” feature

• I’ve mentioned this before, but since it was mesmerising visitors to our Courses and Careers Day this weekend, Nathan Yau’s animation of what people do all day is worth linking again

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 September 2 2016.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of August 27 – September 2 2016 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.

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

Team Ratings for Round 25

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 176 matches played, 111 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 63.1%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 25

Here are the predictions for Round 25. 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 Round 2

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 7 matches played, 5 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 71.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 2

Here are the predictions for Round 2. 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.