Posts from August 2016 (44)

Team Ratings for Round 24

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 168 matches played, 104 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 61.9%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 24

Here are the predictions for Round 24. 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 1

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.

Predictions for Round 1

Here are the predictions for Round 1. 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 7 matches played, 4 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 57%.
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.

On a medals-per-capita basis, New Zealand now ranks at the top of the table with two gold medals and six  silver at the Rio Olympics, Statistics NZ said today.

With eight medals overall at the half way stage at Rio, New Zealand is the highest performing country, with the equivalent of 1.77 medals for every one million people.

Slovenia is second on 1.45 medals for every one million people. Hungary and Denmark are third and fourth respectively, with Fiji coming in fifth based on its one gold for the men’s rugby sevens win.

However, on a per-capita basis for gold medals alone, Fiji tops the table, with its one gold for a population of just under 900,000. On that basis, New Zealand’s two gold medals leave it in sixth place, with a population of more than 4.5 million.

During the weekend, Mahe Drysdale’s single sculls gold medal was the high point for the New Zealand team.

On Saturday, New Zealand won two silver medals, for shot-putter Valerie Adams and at the rowing where Genevieve Behrent and Rebecca Scown also picked up a medal in the pair.

See the SNZ data here: http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/estimates_and_projections/olympics-2016.aspx#tables

From a real estate agent who will remain nameless

Another example of the rule ‘if you have to write out all the numbers, the graph isn’t doing its work.”

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 19 2016.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of August 13 – 19 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.

(more…)

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

Disease risk awareness is one of the ways the media can help public health, and infections caused by waterborne organisms are one of the world’s leading public health problems. That’s not why this story is at the top  of  Stuff’s front page:

If you click through, you find that she was in the US, that primary amoebic meningoencephalitis is extremely rare — with about three cases a year in the US — and that the last NZ case was during the Muldoon administration.

The children around the world who die every minute from more common water-borne infections mostly aren’t the right sort of children to make good clickbait in New Zealand.

There’s just been a review of the handling of statistics by the BBC, from a review panel chaired by a former UK National Statistician, {Dame,Dr} Jil Matheson. The report was generally favourable, but made a set of recommendations that any organisation communicating or reporting statistics should think about:

The BBC should do much more to contextualise statistics so that audiences understand their significance, particularly when it comes to ‘big numbers’.  

The BBC should be better and braver in interpreting statistics for the audience to help them make sense of them.  The review found that audiences were “frustrated” with a tendency to simply present different sets of statistics from either side of an argument. 

The BBC should do more to go beyond the headlines and investigate figures underlying sources.  The Panel warned of the dangers of reporting statistics “straight from a press release.” 

More should be done to ensure that all BBC presenters are able to confidently challenge misleading/inaccurate statistical claims made by interviewees. 

The BBC should take a more consistent approach to presenting risk, such as in reporting of health-related statistics, although the report considers that the BBC generally performs better than other broadcasters. 

The BBC must be clear about significance in reporting statistics – there is a tendency to focus on change, but it is important to explain when a change is not in fact significant, such as in unemployment, GDP or inflation statistics. 

More can be done to increase the BBC’s statistical capacity, including how to better identify, use and develop in-house expertise and to ensure non-specialist journalists have access to statistical expertise. 

The BBC needs to develop and standardise its guidance for staff on reporting statistics, to ensure that it is applying standards consistently.

(ht @SciComGuy)

Team Ratings for Round 23

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 160 matches played, 100 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 62.5%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 23

Here are the predictions for Round 23. 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.