The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis (part of the US Federal Reserve), who run the excellent FRED economic data website, have now released a free iPhone/iPad app that lets you download depressing economic statistics and graphics wherever you are.
There probably aren’t many people in New Zealand who would want this, but I bet they are over-represented among our readers.
As we all know, mean people suck. But do they earn more?
A US study presented at a management conference today looked at measurements of agreeableness, and found that people (or, at least, men) who rated themselves as less agreeable, cooperative, and flexible earned more money. This isn’t precisely about `mean’ people, but headline writers around the world spontaneously went for the four-letter word (or just copied each other). (more…)
The West Island had their census last night, so the Australian Bureau of Statistics is in the process of collecting millions of little bits of paper from around the country. It’s a good occasion to think about what the census is actually good for, because this goes further than you might think. (more…)
Last week, many newspaper websites (though apparently not any Kiwi ones) reported a study purporting to that users of Internet Explorer had lower IQs than users of other browsers, with IE version 6 users scoring 20 points lower than Firefox users, and more than 40 points lower than users of Opera. The results were supposed to be based on a survey of 100,000 people recruited through ads on websites. This turns out not to be the case.
What makes the story interesting is how many reasons there were not to believe it. (more…)
From 3 NEWS, last week: Mr Thompson went on radio this morning to debate gender inequality – it was largely uncontroversial until he tried to explain why women are paid, on average, 12 percent less than men.”Look at who takes the most sick leave,” said Mr Thompson. “Because you know, once a month they have sick problem. Not all women, but some do. They have children and they have to take leave off.”
In New Zealand there does not seem to be any comprehensive information on sick leave differences for men and women, but other countries collect this information, including Sweden, the UK, and Australia, and NZ information is available for public employees.
Although the data are not as complete as we might like, there is a consistent picture across the world where data is available. On average, women do take more sick days than men, but it’s not a big deal. Two or three days a year seems to be a reasonable estimate of the difference, and there’s no way that explains any meaningful fraction of a 12% difference in pay. It’s also worth noting that the pay gap between men and women varies enormously around the world — it’s almost twice as large in the UK as in NZ — but the sick-leave differences are much the same.
CensusAtSchool – one of the The University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics’ educational projects in association with Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Education – has made news headlines today with its survey findings on students’ thoughts on who will win the Rugby World Cup.
Read the original press release and the article on NZ Herald.
See also:
“Shocking world of our student drunks” shouted the 10 June front page headline from the New Zealand Herald.
“Nearly a third of university drinkers have passed out while boozing in the past six months”, it continued. Moreover, “27 percent of men and 9 percent of women say throwing up will not stop their boozing.”
And where did all that come from?
The figures came from a survey of students at just three student dormitories at a single university, and could therefore be symptomatic of a very localised culture, but were presented as picture of student behaviour across an entire country.
The authors of the source paper in the New Zealand Medical Journal carefully reported that their research population was “three student residential facilities in 2006”. In addition to their place of residence these students were very unrepresentative of the student body as a whole in terms of age and sex.
Most percentages quoted were related only to drinkers but sound in the news report as if they were percentages of all students.
Also 40% of those contacted did not take part. Ignoring nonresponse biases the male figures have an unacknowledged margin of error of the order of 7%.
So what is our point?
An implied applicability of the results that goes far beyond what is justified from the research undertaken and oversensationalising to make an attention grabbing story.
Nielsen’s CMI parade rained on as ‘unprecedented’ fieldwork issues affect print readership data
From Stop Press:
The stock imagery on the release might show people laughing with magazines, but there probably aren’t too many smiles in the print industry after several unexpected fieldwork issues affected the quality of readership data for Nielsen’s newly pimped out Consumer and Media Insights readership survey.
Nielsen’s managing director Stuart Jamieson couldn’t be reached for comment, but the main issues impacting on the Q1 2011 survey, according to a letter sent to publishers and agencies, were the suspension of fieldwork in Christchurch and surrounding areas following the earthquake that resulted in a shortfall of interviews, best practice methods not being followed by all interviewers that led to an exclusion of some data and staff shortages in Auckland.
“Nielsen and the survey auditor, Professor Peter Danaher believe that the unprecedented effect of these fieldwork issues has had a negative impact on readership results for the quarter,” Jamieson said in the letter. “Not all issues with Q1 fieldwork can be resolved immediately. The survey auditor has requested that missing interviews in both Christchurch and other Regions must be replaced. We will be working with the Auditor with a managed programme to replace surveys over the remaining survey periods of 2011.”
After the Print Media Industry Research Review Group signed up Nielsen as its preferred research partner after a big pitch, the new survey was released with great fanfare a few months back and offered plenty of promise for the print sector. Fusing Statistics New Zealand’s Household Expenditure data to the survey meant publishers would be able to approach advertisers with, for example, specific data about how much readers or demographic groups spent in certain categories. It’s very valuable and helpful information, and while this data is thought to be robust and unaffected by the fieldwork issues, it’s disappointing for all concerned that its accuracy may be called into question.
Some might wonder why this data would even be released when doubts will inevitably surface about its accuracy. But, given the excitement over the new fusion, it needed to get that important piece of information out to the market and releasing the weighted data was seen as a slightly better option than not releasing any data at all; the lesser of two evils.
The usual flurry of press releases from the magazine publishers trumpeting their various gains hasn’t been forthcoming this year, due to a self-imposed moratorium on self-congratulation because of the fieldwork issues. But the biggest winners when comparing Q1 2010 with Q1 2011 are, once again, niche, special interest magazine titles, although some of the mainstream titles recorded what Nielsen refers to as ‘statistically significant readership gains’.