Here are some all-too-common errors when it comes to interpreting statistics, and how to avoid them.
Articles on Statistics
Displaying 201 - 220 of 289 articles
For 30 years, sports fans have been told to forget about streaks because the ‘hot hand’ is a fallacy. But a reanalysis says not so fast: Statistics show players really are in the zone sometimes.
Things tend to revert back to their typical state over time, so we should be careful not to mistake that for some other trend.
The Centrelink debt recovery system reminds us that many data systems are prone to error, and that’s built in to how they work.
Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said he thought that Victorians have never felt more unsafe, and that burglaries, assaults and murders are rising year-on-year. Is he right?
Hans Rosling taught us more than just the facts the data presented
The world has lost a fantastic statistician at a time when the communication of facts is crucial.
The ABS’ labour force survey is more than 50 years old. We need a new way of measuring employment for a new modes of work.
The Australian Census has been taken since 1911. But is it still necessary in today’s world of mass digital data collection?
Is the news media using data journalism properly?
P hacking is manipulating data and research methods to achieve statistical signifiance. And it could be why so many research papers are false.
Turns out the English Premier League is a lot more unpredictable than Spain’s La Liga, which could be why it attracts so much funding.
If the response rate to the 2016 Census is lower than expected, it could compromise our ability to draw meaningful information from the data.
Even without a DDoS attack, the 2016 Census may have failed due to the ABS making a rudimentary statistical error.
Census data have a real impact on the lives of Australians, from determining political representation through the distribution of electorates, to the allocation of government funding.
The numerical basis used to study African economies suffers from major knowledge gaps. This needs to improve if numbers are to inform policies that will encourage growth and push back poverty.
Evidence shows that in economies like that of Ghana, small firms do fine, but it’s the large firms that seem to suffer constraints on their growth in numbers.
The number of members of the House of Representatives is variable. It is a result of a formula given in the Constitution.
Some of the most in-demand ecologists in Africa are specialists in statistics. But this is currently a scarce skill combination in Africa.
By linking censuses through time or by combining other information with the census, many more important policy questions can be answered than if we used one dataset alone.
Top contributors
-
Senior Lecturer in Statistics, University of Glasgow
-
Professor of the Practice of Data Science, Washington University in St. Louis
-
Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Adelaide University
-
Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology
-
Professor of Economics and Public Policy, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
-
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Statistics, Virginia Tech
-
Associate Professor, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo
-
Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
-
Professor of Business and Sports Analytics, University of Leeds
-
Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology
-
Professor of Bioinformatics, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
-
Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University
-
Professor, Future Fellow and Head of Statistics at UNSW, and a Deputy Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS), UNSW
-
Biostatistician, The University of Melbourne
-
Associate Professor, POLIS@ANU Centre for Social Policy Research, Australian National University