June 12, 2017

Stat of the Week Competition: June 10 – 16 2017

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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 June 16 2017.
  • Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
  • The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of June 10 – 16 2017 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.
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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 »

Nominations

  • avatar
    Werner Schmidt

    Statistic: Hi Rachel, I found this study interesting. No doubt going to be picked up by the media. In particular the sentence “we can conclude that e-cigarettes have as much potential to cause DNA damage as unfiltered regular cigarettes” . I hope this may fall in your guidelines. If not, that is OK by me too. Take care.
    Source: University of Connecticut
    Date: 21 April 2017

    Out of personal interest. The published paper uses the ‘smoking’ issue as a test for the chemistry behind the device to measure DNA damage. Are their conclusions correct in terms of the stats for smoking as opposed to the accuracy of the device? Nicotine is described as an addictive substance. Is it? Have seen no reference to that. Or is smoking and the inhalation of all the chemicals that is addictive and also causes the damage to the DNA? I hope this may fall inn your guidelines. If not, that is OK by me too. Take

    7 years ago