Statistics

When we were kids, the geeks played their pathetic little fantasy games in the corner of the playground, while the sporty dudes ran around, dated hot girls and sneered at the geeks. And lo, all was good and right in the universe.

Today, the geeks earn three times what anyone else earns, while the cool people have become the spotty recluses who play so-called “fantasy” football games. Many people think these games are cool and interesting. They’re wrong.

For the uninitiated, fantasy sports games are a season-long undertaking where you pick your own “team” comprised of players sourced from numerous clubs. You then swap your players around weekly, aiming to reap more points from the ridiculously complicated scoring system than everyone else. Pass the Nodoz, I say.

Continue reading "If this is fantasy then put me out of my misery" »

Lies, damn lies and statistics. Without denigrating the excellent, proactive work by the Herald Sun in commissioning NATSEM research showing Australian households are $23 better off per day than five years ago, this figure is a load of horse manure.

Every Australian knows it, not least Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, whose only common ground is the belief that Australians are doing it tougher than ever. Which we mostly are.

There is of course a legitimate line that many Australians delight in casting themselves as perennial battlers, even as they purchase ever bigger, flatter TVs and ever larger homes. Rampant consumerism can never be discounted in any measure of our material wellbeing. But as NATSEM’s figures show, it’s the essentials that are rising in cost, not the expendibles.

Continue reading "Tell us we’re better off when houses are affordable" »

In this week’s ICB, The Punch calls bullshit on Shadow Immigration Minister and regular Punch contributor Scott Morrison, for citing a thing called the Social Cohesion Index at yesterday’s National Press Club address to show that Australia is going down the gurgler under Labor.

There are any number of indicators which Morrison might’ve chosen to bolster that increasingly popular thesis. Yet he chose an obscure, little known indicator, and if you ask us, there’s a sneaky reason why he did it.

Morrison, in short, was dog whistling. In a speech littered with references to asylum seekers, the Member for Cook thundered “it is a real concern that social cohesion in Australia has declined by 8.6% since the Labor government was elected. His inference was clear: All those illegal immigrants are tearing us apart.

Continue reading "ICB: The stats that show we’re ripping apart" »

Sleepless nights, heartbreak and endless analysis and yelling at the screen have been an intimate part of many of our lives during the World Cup. With all the commentary, the goals, and the bad sporting puns ad nauseam there’s one thing that no one has really talked about during this world cup - violence against women.

It’s a horrible thought, that an event we love could have such a dark underside. Sadly it’s something we do need to talk about. During the 2006 Fifa World Cup the home office of the UK found a 30% jump in domestic violence incidents on nights that England were playing.

The interesting thing is it didn’t seem to matter if England won or lost as the 30% increase remained relatively steady during England’s win over Paraguay and its loss to Portugal.

Continue reading "Home violence and the dark side of the World Cup" »

The scene is a Thursday evening in a suburban Australian home in 2018. Dad is on the biodegradable couch watching some vintage Mad Men, remastered in interactive 3D, on a fifth-generation iPad. His 10-year-old daughter throws a digital notebook in his lap. “Daddy, can you help?” she says. “I’ve done the statistical tables but I’m not sure how to justify the relationship between the variables.”

Forget emperor Nasi Goreng building the Great Wall to keep the rabbits out. The draft national curriculum released yesterday will test future parents almost as much as it does kids. Much of its maths and science content is currently the preserve of think-tanks and universities, stuff wholly alien to modern parents and even recent graduates of Australian schools.

For all the arguing about how the curriculum handles history this is primarily a document about the future. Is about building new skills Australia will need in its workforce over coming generations.

Continue reading "An insight to a future of nerdy number-crunchers" »

Congratulations hoons: you are officially the most annoying people in Australia, by a statistical mile. Almost half - yes, half - of all Australians believe dangerous or noisy driving is a problem in their neighbourhood, according to data published today.

At first it might seem staggering that 45.3 per cent of Australians say hooning is a problem in their neighbourhood but when you think about it, how surprising is it really? How often are phone conversations or the break-up line in Sex and The City drowned out by some tool gunning his Subaru down the street? And for every single person in the street who has settled in for the evening, the experience is exactly the same.

(While we’re at it can I add to that the guys noodling about on their Harleys, not just the bikies who have an excuse but the middle managers from accounting firms who take out the Chopper after a stressful day of Excel.)

Continue reading "Great country, shame about the hoons" »

There is an old mathematical puzzle about three mathematicians and a bell-hop which is a good lesson in how numbers can be used to deceive as well as inform.

Three mathematicians travelling to a conference out of town decide to save money by sharing a room (clearly these mathematicians are academics rather than mathematicians working on exotic products for investment banks).

At the front desk, they pay $300 for the night for their room.

Continue reading "The bell-hop’s tale: Avoiding getting tricked by numbers" »