Statistical construction error

August 20, 2011

Yes, the title is meant to have two readings.

The effect

The Numbers Guy, among other examples, talks about the UK Office for National Statistics needing to revise its estimate for the construction sector output because of an error.

Original: 2.3% growth

Corrected: 0.5% growth

Here is the Telegraph article cited by The Numbers Guy.

The cause

The spreadsheet that is used to calculate the statistic was not updated properly.

Questions

Have they not read “Spreadsheet Addiction”?

Why are they not using R?

Does this scare anybody else?

Epilogue

Who would take the repercussions when the bottle is to blame?

from “Down the Mountain” by Robin E. Contreras

Subscribe to the Portfolio Probe blog by Email

Latest posts

Leave a Reply

Related posts

  • Realized beta and beta equal 1

    August 30, 2011

    What does beta look like in the out-of-sample period for the portfolios generated to have beta equal to 1? In the comments Ian Priest wonders if the results in [...]

  • The effect of beta equal 1

    August 29, 2011

    Investment Performance Guy had a post about beta equal 1.  It made me wonder about the properties of portfolios with beta equal 1.  When I looked, I got a [...]

  • Things I learned at useR!2011

    August 25, 2011

    The title says "things" but conferences are mainly about people. Some of it can be serendipitous.  For example, one day I sat next to Jonathan Rougier at lunch because [...]