People talk about stats

Transcript: People talk about stats

Q. What are Statistics?

Well they are those things that tell us what there are most of, what there are few of and so on.

Figures which are actually predictable of the future trends as well as what has happened in the past that can be very useful for logistics.

I have no idea how to explain it.

Statistics are an accumulation of numbers, gather information on certain questions.

A way of showing a range of certain data I suppose.

A way to see what the people say.

I would say metrics.

Numbers I guess.

I heard that word before.

Statistics, yeah they are all that.

Q. Who produces statistics?

All sorts of people produce statistics but I suppose they are collated by Statistics New Zealand. How do you say that? Statistics New Zealand.

People, government departments do their own statistics.

I dont know.

Bodies and organisations who are trying to sample or trying to test something.

People who do statistics research.

The Department of Census.

Statistics New Zealand.

Q. Where would you go to find statistics?

Statstics websites.

Internet.

Library.

Not a library as such but probably to wherever the area was that I was interested in gathering that information from.

Statistics New Zealand.

Statistics New Zealand.

The library. Everywhere.

Statistics New Zealand.

Government departments.

survey.com.nz

You could ring up the city council and they could put you onto someone or you could ring Statistics NZ and the lovely receptionist there will put you through to somebody who can help you.

I would normally browse through books or internet or journals or gazettes.

It depends what I wanted statistics about. Statistics about public opinion, I would probably use the net, and I would probably try somewhere like Colmar Brunton and I dont know if that would be any good but that is where I would start looking. If I wanted biological statistics I would find a textbook.

On the internet.

Probably public records of some sort. I'm just going by what you might do in the United States, go to the library, I might go to the internet to see the New Zealand Department of whatever...Labour?

State government buildings.

Q. Do you use statistics?

No, they are so biased you can prove anything with statistics. 75% of all statistics are made up. Thats the thing. You can question a certain amount of people and you can prove anything with them.

Not at the moment no.

I'm an analyst so I quite like using statistics in my work to tell the story we are wanting to get across.

On a very specific level I suppose. I work in early childhood education so within that I suppose we use statistics to say how many boys or girls we have got within our own little area.

I do statistics for paper in university. That is all. I don't really use it in my life.

Sometimes yeah, especially in real estate.

No not really.

No, not myself, I'm an illustrator.

They come in handy I guess.

No not personally. I find them very interesting and sometimes I look at statistics and I think I heard somewhere that you can actually manipulate those statistics to basically say whatever you want to say or whatever you want to prove and so I always think when I hear statistics I always reinterpret that.

Do you find statistics interesting?

I think they can be. I think they are one of those things that you wouldn't think was interesting until you got into it and then it becomes just a habit.

More Id say interesting than useful.

No, not really.

Statistics are very interesting.

No.

No.

Yeah I suppose.

Some cases. Depends what the statistics are about.

No absolutely not.

If they can help me to do something.

Yep.

To say what kind of product they have. It's interesting to know that kind of stuff.

Its interesting to see how you can prove something, you know, like its good if you want to prove a point and you can find it to work for you. Also if you do a web search you can find several different statistics proving different things on the same subject so its quite good that you can pick or choose.