Stats Chat

This story is a month old now, but Stuff served it up to me again, and I didn’t write about it earlier. The headline is Workers are discovering the ‘Great Regret’ of quitting their jobs, and the key data-based line is

In the United States, a survey of more than 15,000 workers by job-search platform Joblist found 26 percent of workers who quit during the Great Resignation regret their decision.

I’ve edited that quote so that the link works, which it doesn’t on Stuff or newsroom. If you follow the link, you find that is basically what Joblist says in its writeup of the survey.  If you are naturally suspicious or nerdy enough to read the Methodology section at the bottom of the page, though, it looks a bit different

We surveyed 628 job seekers who quit their previous job about why they quit and whether they regret their decision.

So, the 26% is of 628 people, not more than 15,000.  More specifically, it’s 628 job-seekers. The target population doesn’t appear to include people who already had a new job or who weren’t looking for one — two groups that you’d expect to have fewer regrets.

The Methodology section doesn’t say how they chose the people to survey, though it does say This data has not been weighted, and it comes with some limitations. At best, that suggests a survey with no attempt to compensate for non-response. At worst, it could be a bogus self-selected straw poll.

• From Radio NZ’s series on the lotto: “When contacted by RNZ, Lotto said it would now no longer claim that there were lucky stores. “We recently carried out a piece of work looking at the use of the word ‘luck’ in relation to our products and as a result of this work have decided we will not in the future put ‘lucky stores’ or ‘lucky regions’ in press releases,” head of corporate communications Lucy Fullarton said.”.  As StatsChat readers will remember, we’ve been attacking this use of “lucky” for a while.
• On the other hand, Lotto doesn’t need to specifically make these claims any more, since they’re already  well known. For example, see today’s Herald, “Kiwis are rushing into lucky Lotto stores ahead of tonight’s $20 million jackpot draw”, naming the same Hastings pharmacy as the Radio NZ story did.
• Good article by Jamie Morton in the Herald on interesting clinical trials in New Zealand.
• The UK Office of National Statistics has a life expectancy calculator — if, to pick an example almost at random, you wanted to find out how long a 73-year old man would be expected to live
• There’s a claim out there that the median book only sells twelve copies.  As you’d expect, it’s more complicated than that

Team Ratings for Week 7

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 47 matches played, 34 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 72.3%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 7

Here are the predictions for Week 7. 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 Finals Week 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 196 matches played, 133 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 67.9%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Finals Week 2

Here are the predictions for Finals Week 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.

Team Ratings for Week 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 Week 1

Here are the predictions for Week 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 14 matches played, 10 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 71.4%.
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 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 6 matches played, 6 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 100%.
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.

Team Ratings for Wednesday Game for Round 6

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 46 matches played, 33 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 71.7%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Wednesday Game for Round 6

Here are the predictions for Wednesday Game for Round 6. 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.

Stuff has a headline Tory Whanau clear leader in straw poll for Wellington mayoralty.

This is bad. Election polling is valuable because it gives people some feeling for what the rest of the electorate thinks, solving the Pauline Kael problem

 “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.” — Pauline Kael, NYT film critic

Polling also gives newspapers something to write about that’s novel and at least a bit informative.

With good polling, people have an accurate idea of public opinion; with poor polling they have an inaccurate idea. With self-selected bogus polling they have no idea at all.  The Dominion Post even tweeted about this story

The poll, while unashamedly unscientific, points to Wellington’s next mayor being relative unknown Tory Whanau less than a week from voting papers going out.

The poll is incapable of pointing to anything, so it doesn’t point to Tory Whanau being the next mayor, however desirable that might be.

Back in the early days of StatsChat, when John Key debated David Cunliffe, we showed the results of three useless self-selected bogus polls about who had done better: Newstalk ZB was 63% in favour of Cunliffe; TVNZ was 61% in favour of Key; the Herald was a tie.

If a poll like this gets the right answer, it’s basically an accident. There’s no excuse for headlining the results as if they meant something.

Team Ratings for Week 6

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 39 matches played, 27 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 69.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 6

Here are the predictions for Week 6. 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.