🚀 go-pugleaf

Our city's rag doesn't seem to be having a good time with graphs and 
statistics just recently. 

Today's effort, on the front page, really takes the cake. Did you know 
that nearly one third (that's right ONE THIRD!) of young males commit 
suicide? I didn't until I saw today's paper. And it's not just amongst 
young males - even for the general population, it's over 10%! 

If you don't believe me, have a look at the graph on the front page on 
helath statistics.  The graph features info on smoking rates and obesity. 
The figures presented there seem OK - smoking is around 25-30% and 
obesity 30-40% (or thereabouts) of the population.  

Looking at the columns to the right (apparently sharing the same Y-axis) 
we come to the figures on suicide. Of course the rate of suicide is a few 
orders of magnitude below that of smoking (though some people might say 
that they amount to a similar end - only smoking's slower), so the 
suicide data should be on a separate graph or at least given a separate 
(RHS) scale. Of course some correct information is given in the article's 
text over the page - the figure is something per 100 000 - not per 100.

This comes only a few days after the wrong data on the enrolment of ACT 
colleges (all given the same number), which made a mockery of the 
published table. To their credit they apologised and gave the true 
figures in today's paper. 

Not as good though was their use of the same article to get some cheap 
points off the hapless Amanda Vanstone. The article gives actual numbers 
of students from various colleges getting into university. Narrabundah 
College came up on top.  Fair enough.  

But if you wanted to test Vanstone's assertions about private and state 
schools, you would look at the proportion of students from each of the 
colleges who gain university entry, and not actual raw numbers.  Of 
course this would mean the use of percentages, and as we've noted before, 
the CT is not good at this. 

If the CT wants to score points (and there are plenty that could be 
scored off Vanstone's comments), let's at least use the right figures!

Another stirring from...

-- __________________________________________________________
Peter Parker                           

E-mail: parkerp@pcug.org.au

Home Page: http://www.pcug.org.au/~parkerp/  
The home of Novice Notes Online and the VK QRP Web Page.
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