{"id":427,"date":"2020-04-23T12:32:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T10:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/?p=427"},"modified":"2020-04-23T17:08:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T15:08:25","slug":"covid-19-statistics-lies-damned-lies-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/2020\/04\/23\/covid-19-statistics-lies-damned-lies-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 Statistics &#8211; lies, damned lies etc."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Statistics can\nbe a way to illustrate some the size of some thing or things &#8211; in numbers &#8211; and\nvariations in this, depending on something else, like time, days, months or\nhours. But it doesn\u2019t have to. It can also be used to give the reader a false impression\nof the sizes and variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reporting on the number of deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic could be expected to stand above such petty manipulations. But it does not. The diagram below shows the most recent figures from the Swedish <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arcgis.com\/sharing\/rest\/content\/items\/b5e7488e117749c19881cce45db13f7e\/data\">Folh\u00e4lsomyndigheten<\/a> (blue pillars)  and the page <a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldometers.info\/coronavirus\/country\/sweden\/\">Sweden: Coronavirus Cases in Worldometer <\/a>(in red)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"605\" height=\"395\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image.png 605w, https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image-300x196.png 300w, https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image-299x195.png 299w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\nbeautiful part is that the total number of deaths is the same (ok, the\nFolkh\u00e4lsomyndigheten has 18 deaths that are reported to have happened at an\nunknown date, which are not in the diagram).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\nseemingly opposite trends is created by the use of date. Worldometer uses the\nday the deaths are reported by the Folkh\u00e4lsomyndigheten, while the\nFolkh\u00e4lsomyndigheten uses the day the patient is reported to have died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Also used\nis a simple trick of reporting different volumes of deaths in workdays and\nweekends which makes the difference between the trends greater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It becomes even more evident when I use the trend-line function for 7-day rolling average<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"605\" height=\"395\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-430\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image-2.png 605w, https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image-2-300x196.png 300w, https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/image-2-299x195.png 299w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Depending on how the dates are used, the crisis peaked in the middle of April (Folkh\u00e4lsomyndigheten) or is still growing worse (Worldometer).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This only\ntells that the Swedish state and its servants probably will not let the statistics\nbe known until afterwards. Unknown date for 18 deaths from Covid-19 also tell\nus what level of manipulation &#8211; by for example claiming lack of knowledge &#8211; is\naccepted by the Swedish media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Statistics can be a way to illustrate some the size of some thing or things &#8211; in numbers &#8211; and variations in this, depending on something else, like time, days, months or hours. But it doesn\u2019t have to. It can also be used to give the reader a false impression of the sizes and variations. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-okategoriserade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredtorssander.se\/fredpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}