On espying this headline I thought someone was going to blow the whistle on the superstitious nonsense some (I stress 'some') Maori believe and propagate.
"General curse" claimed Nia's life
But no. It's actually some egghead's misrepresentation of a family violence expert's description of Nia's death being the result of a "generational curse". We already knew that.
Perhaps copy writers suffer from a 'curse'. Here's another recent example I came across yesterday. From the NZ Herald;
Europeans (50 per cent) were twice as likely as Maori (23 per cent) to drown and the most at-risk age groups were people aged 15 to 24 or 65 and above.
This displays a complete misunderstanding of statistics. Of all the drownings in 2007 50 percent were European and 23 percent were Maori. In order to express that in terms of likelihood one would need to work out the drowning rate per capita of each ethnic group. It would work out about 0.16 drownings per 10,000 European and 0.44 per 10,000 Maori.
In fact Maori are almost three times more likely to drown than Europeans.
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5 comments:
The statistics example is well spotted Lindsay: the NZ Herald does have some egregious errors and I wonder if their subbies sleep with their eyes open.
http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/the-nz-herald-delivers-state-propaganda/
Well, not to put too fine a point on it Lindsay, but this is the kind of journalism the free market delivers to us, particularly in a country too small to have enough major daily papers that people would have a real choice.
If you outsource all your fact and spell checking to a less qualified but cheaper service then thats the standard you will get.
It was only last week I was castigated by a "well educated" friend of mine when i used the term "superstition" to explain a cultural happening. Rounded on,I was informed of my mistake and told the correct usage was "mythology." I stand corrected???????????
Dirk.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Don't blame the journalists they are merely the product of the NZ education system and know not what end of a pencil to hold.
captcha = pallin--what gives here are we anti Alaska, expensive wardrobes or what??
My approach is: if you want to live your life drinking alcohol to the limit or excess, so be it. It's entirely up to the individual to make or destroy his/her existence.
I'm no wowser, quite the contrary.
But sooner or later life will catch up with you and you'll have to pay the consequences of it.
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