October 17, 2016

Vote takahē for Bird of the Year

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It’s time again for the only bogus poll that StatsChat endorses: the New Zealand Bird of the Year.

Why is Bird of the Year ok?

  • No-one pretends the result means anything real about popularity
  • The point of the poll is just publicity for the issue of bird conservation
  • Even so, it’s more work to cheat than for most bogus polls

takahe

Why takahē?

  • Endangered
  • Beautiful (if dumb)
  • Very endangered
  • Unusual even by NZ bird standards: most of their relatives (the rail family) are shy little waterbirds.

sora

(A sora, a more-typical takahē relative, by/with ecologist Auriel ‘@RallidaeRule’ Fournier)

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

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