8 posts tagged “statistics”

I don’t think there’s a person in New Zealand who’s not affected by the tsunami in Samoa. Samoa is our island neighbour to the north and we have a close kinship with this country.
   So far, 140 have been confirmed dead. This number might sound small but when one considers that the total population of Samoa and American Samoa is around a quarter of a million, this is 0·06 per cent of the population. And the figure is still to rise.
   To compare this with the United States, those who died in the World Trade Center comprised 0·001 per cent of the population.
   These are both tragedies but for someone in the US to understand the scale of the destruction, we need to think of 60 WTCs, or c. 175,000 people. That’s more than 15 Galveston [hurricanes] for those of you keen on US history. The even sadder thing is that this death toll is still rising.
   I do not suggest for a moment that these people are merely numbers, but these figures are useful to bear in mind just how affected the two countries are.

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Photo of Katie Taylor by Paul Whiteford, featured at Lucire

I know some people reckon beauty pageants are dead (or want them to be), but here are the most-searched keywords or phrases at the Lucire ‘Insider’ blog, beating Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new Chanel ad.
   Lyndon at Scoop tells me he’s seen the same pattern there, and the Miss New Zealand item has had to compete with political and swine-’flu news.
   As Kiwis make up a small portion of Lucire’s total audience, this is a huge but very pleasant surprise.

Today (so far)
miss universe new zealand 2009
miss universe new zealand
miss new zealand 2009
miss universe nz 2009
katie taylor miss universe
katie taylor miss nz
miss universe new zealand katie taylor
miss world 2000
jean-pierre jeunet chanel
aucklander katie taylor

Yesterday
miss universe new zealand 2009
miss universe new zealand
katie taylor nz
katie taylor miss new zealand
miss universe nz 2009
katie taylor miss nz
katie taylor miss universe
aucklander katie taylor, 22
miss new zealand 2009
katie taylor miss universe nz
katie taylor new zealand

[Cross-posted] I was shouted this on Digg today, and it’s a fascinating look at how the world has changed since 1809 in terms of life expectancy and wealth. Presented by Hans Rosling, the original is at Gapminder.

Every once in a while, I pop into Autocade to see what the most popular pages are. This is what the site reports back.

   The numbers are still very low but bear in mind we haven’t publicly announced this site yet and there’s still a ‘beta’ tag on the front page.

1. Main Page ‎(22,492 views)
2. Toyota Corolla (E100) ‎(2,193 views)
3. Toyota Corolla (E70) ‎(1,706 views)
4. Austin Allegro 2 ‎(1,683 views)
5. Nissan Bluebird (910) ‎(1,621 views)
6. Chevrolet Caprice (1977–90) ‎(1,607 views)
7. Toyota Corolla (E120) ‎(1,546 views)
8. Toyota Corolla (E110) ‎(1,443 views)
9. Current events ‎(1,443 views)
10. Ford Cortina Mk III ‎(1,424 views)

   The first bunch doesn’t have many surprises. The Toyota Corolla has been the world’s top-selling car for many years, and there would be a lot of people searching for more information on the model. The E100 was made from 1991 to 1999, and hobbyists and owners might not find as much information on the web for a 10- to 20-year-old car compared with more recent ones. The E70’s situation is even more acute: that was made from 1979 to 1987.
   Interestingly, the E70 page has risen a lot. Formerly, the E110 page held third place.
   What is interesting here is that the fourth place is taken by a car considered a massive flop and one of the reasons the British car industry was severely weakened in the 1970s. The Austin Allegro 2 was a revised version of the original Allegro, considered by some to be one of the country’s worst vehicles.
   I discovered that the Autocade Nissan Bluebird (910) page was linked at Wikipedia, which probably accounts for the 1,621 views there.
   The Chevrolet Caprice was built for a long time with a similar body shape, and this is sixth place. It was also a very early page on Autocade and may have been “grandfathered” by the search engines a bit. Interestingly, it is the top American car on the service, ahead of all the classic Ford Mustangs already on the site—possibly because there are already many Mustang pages online and Autocade won’t have ranked that highly in Google by comparison.
   Corollas take seventh and eighth, just through basic searching or links from the E100 page, I imagine.
   And it took till 10th place before a European car emerged: the English Ford Cortina Mk III. While essentially a British car, there was joint development with Ford in Köln, Germany.
   I can’t draw conclusions as firm with 11th through 20th:

1. Toyota Corolla (E150) ‎(1,386 views)
2. Toyota Corolla (E90) ‎(1,374 views)
3. Rover 200 (R8) ‎(1,112 views)
4. Nissan Sunny (B14) ‎(1,062 views)
5. Ford Taunus 80 ‎(1,033 views)
6. Toyota Corolla (E80) ‎(984 views)
7. Volkswagen Passat (B1) ‎(975 views)
8. Toyota Corolla (E20) ‎(938 views)
9. Nissan Sunny (B11) ‎(893 views)
10. Nissan Primera (P10) ‎(864 views)

   Vox reports these with the wrong numbers in its list, so you’ll have to add 10 to each of the above. Toyota Corollas take 11th, 12th, 16th and 18th, probably through regular searching and linking. Another British car—more highly regarded this time than the Allegro—is 13th: the Honda-based Rover 200. The Corolla’s arch-rival for many years, the Nissan Sunny, only manages 14th (and 19th): the B14 was a contemporary of the E100 Corolla, and is probably searched for on Autocade for much the same reasons. (Nissan Sunnys should rank lower as it was sold under many different names around the world, such as Datsun 120Y, Datsun 310 and Nissan Sentra.)
   Another European Ford—this time more Köln than Dagenham—comes in at 15th, but the first proper, all-European car without much concession to the British market comes in at 17th: the Volkswagen Passat, a.k.a. the Dasher to our American friends. Finally, another Nissan rounds off the top 20—this model was called the Infiniti G20 in the US.
  

Voter turnout on Saturday was 78·69 per cent, according to the Chief Electoral Officer. Unlike Australia, voting is not compulsory, and the figure is roughly what we have had in the past.
   Apparently, there are still 240,000 special votes to be counted this week, but as I noted in an earlier post, this should not make any real difference.
   It appears both Helen Clark and Dr Michael Cullen have stepped down from their leadership positions in Labour, not just Helen Clark as I learned earlier. Both will remain in Parliament.
   John Campbell’s TV interview with John Key tonight was an easy walk in the park, with some specifics, including Mr Key’s assertion (for the time being) that he will not move to the far right despite traditionally teaming up with ACT. That could mean, if I understand correctly, no deals with the Architect of Doom, Sir Roger Douglas.
   But National has a tendency to have hidden agenda as the lead-up to the campaign has shown.
   Polls did show that five per cent more New Zealanders trusted Helen Clark (48·4 per cent) to John Key (43·6), just as more trusted John Major than Tony Blair in the UK in 1997.
   But elections, it seems, are not based on trustworthiness, and that is always a shame.

For those interested, here were our election results from last night. I don’t think all special votes have been counted (it says 208,001 have) but I doubt they will change the picture much. We didn’t do that well but considering the mainstream media totally ignored us, I am not surprised. Still, it was a great opportunity to do more than just vote, but actually put my name to something I believe in.

General Election 2008 results

It looks like it’s now anyone’s race in the US presidential elections according to some polls, though I do know that the candidates have small surges at the time of their respective national conventions. The Democratic one is coming up so from a media-exposure point of view, Sen. Barack Obama might simply be saving some big guns till then. Others are saying that Sen. John McCain’s negative campaigns against his rival might be working, allowing him to narrow the gap. I say there is a temporary (till the convention) lull for Obama because of overexposure.

• Zogby poll, released with Reuter (percentages): McCain 46, Obama 41 (sample 1,089)
• Los Angeles Times–Bloomberg: Obama 45, McCain 43, when not including minor-party candidates; Obama 42, McCain 41 otherwise (1,248)
• Gallup: Obama 45, McCain 44 (2,648)

   Different states show different results. More at USNews.com.

This news item has been rather popular: ‘More than 1 in 100 American adults is in prison, report finds’. A Pew Center study shows that 1 in 99·1 adults in the US is incarcerated.
   My father pointed out that for every 100 (well, 99·1) adult people we might see Stateside, one is a crim, on the basis that there would be some released into society while others are going in. The statistic, I know, doesn’t quite hold up because we do not know the rate, at least not for the conversational topic. But for every 98·1 it would be fair to know that there is one person in jail.
   We then extrapolated this a little. For every one conviction, there might be a crim who walked free, right? The fuzz didn’t nab him or her? So, we get the possibility that of the 100, there actually might be someone who should be a crim but got away.
   Statistics like this sure make the US sound like an unsafe place.
   I then thought about our own stats. I don’t think we can be smug given that I said one is eight times more likely to be murdered in New Zealand compared with 50 years ago—and that’s accounting for the increase in population.
   A Parliamentary debate reveals that we had 8,457 in September. SPARC reckons that from the 2001 Census, there were 2,728,896 adults in New Zealand. (I couldn’t find more recent figures.) It may be safe to round that up slightly for 2008 and say there are an even 2·8 million.
   That works out to be 0·302 per cent, or 3 in 1,000 adults in New Zealand is incarcerated.
   It is argued in Parliament that 3 in 1,000 is high by our standards, as 8,457 is a figure that we apparently did not expect to reach till 2011.
   I know we cannot compare apples to apples: what is an ‘adult’? What programmes does one country have in place which sees to a lower or higher number? What is classified as ‘incarceration’? There are plenty of holes in this very quick analysis that even an amateur statistician can shoot down.
   In any case, I will be a little more careful when I visit the US later this year as this basic math indicates I am three times more likely to meet a crim on their streets than I am here.