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

  • Review of “R Graphs Cookbook” by Hrishi Mittal

    January 24, 2011

    Executive summary: Extremely useful for new users, informative to even quite seasoned users. Refereeing Once upon a time a publisher asked if I would referee a book (unspecified) about [...]

  • Paying interest and the number e

    January 24, 2011

    Suppose I borrow a dollar from you and I'll pay you 100% interest at the end of the year.  How much money will you have then? $1 * (1 [...]

  • Normal market accidents

    January 17, 2011

    We think of accidents as abnormal events, but there is "normal accident" theory.  We don't think of accidents happening in markets, but they do.  That's why it's called a [...]