Stupid reporters and equally stupid Equality and Diversity

Two major complaints about idiots today.

First up, really stupid media beat-ups concerning pregnancy resulting from 'failures' of an inserted contraceptive device.

All of the news outlets that I flicked through carried this story, with equally ridiculously stupid comments. I haven't read the Daily Mail's one, but dare say the Pope is behind this failure. Anyway here's the Guardian's one.

Let's look at the data:
584 failures, leading to pregnancy last year
99% safe, according to the manufacturer
82000 fitted last year
1,000,000 sold in the UK.

Now I'm not a professional statistician but if we look at 584 / 82000 * 100 = 0.7%

The worst possible number to use (82000) is massive underestimate as it only counts newly inserted devices, not any of those already working their sperm-busting magic, has a failure rate LESS than that suggested by the manufacturer.

To rephrase, in case dumb-ass reporters are reading: there are less pregnancies than you'd expect.
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And from an equality and diversity monitoring form I saw today:

Apparently I do have a religion.

FFS. How f'ing stupid do you have to be to list Atheism as a religion?!

Rant, B

Statistics and why news paper reports are a load of shite

A pet peeve, and believe me, there are plenty, is the use of statistics in newspaper journalism. Basically if you see the word 'increase' or 'percentage' written anywhere, it's generally safe to assume the paper has it wrong. You'd expect this in the tabloid papers, but this report comes from the Guardian.
So yes, I'm ranting against the Guardian.

Titled, on the website, Sharp Rise in Number of Women Killed by Violent Partners (paper version: Murders of partners by men rise sharply), the article claims that there has been a dramatic rise in deaths by partners. Reading the article provides the following:
2009 - 101 deaths
2008 - 72 deaths
As a raw percentage increase, this is, on the face of it, shocking: a 40% increase over one year. Which is obviously how the refuge charity 'Refuge' was trying to sell this.

However, let's put this in context, looking at the UK population figures (reference here):
2009 - 61,792,000
2008 - 61,398,000
Putting the death figures as a percentage of the total population:
2009 - 0.000163452 %
2008 - 0.000117268 %
I realise I shouldn't be using percentages here, but without the raw data to work from, it should do to make my point.
There is very little difference between these two figures, In fact, if I round to 3 decimal places, they are identical. This is due to the total UK population being so large that a number of 101 becomes insignificant from 72.

Indeed, run any statistical analysis of those numbers and you'll find there is no statistical difference between the two years.
there has been no dramatic rise in murders by partners when put into context of both population. What has happened is that there has been an increase in absolute numbers.
What might be more interesting would be to analyse the increase over a longer time period, as the data, as presented, can be interpreted as ' a 0.6% population increase appears to lead (but not cause?) to a greater increase in partner murders', or you could interpret the data as 'a 0.6% population increase leads to a 0.00004 (rounded)% increase in partner murders'. What you cannot say is that there has been a dramatic rise in murders.

B