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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: OT: Excess deaths stats - sanity check
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2024 15:17:21 +1100
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On 9/03/2024 7:07 am, Jasen Betts wrote:
> On 2024-02-20, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
>> On 14-Feb-24 4:57 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:
>>> <https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release>
>>>
>>> I just need a sanity check before I raise this with the relevant agency.
>>> If you scroll down to "Age specific rates, 2023, 2022, Baseline", and
>>> look at the three right hand columns.
>>>
>>> How can the 2023 figures for each age group be less than the
>>> corresponding baseline average, but the all-ages number be greater than
>>> the baseline average?
>>>
>>> If any 2023 age group were above the baseline average, then all-ages
>>> number could go either way, because of different total populations in
>>> each age group, but with all age groups being below the baseline
>>> average, I just don't see it.
>>>
>>> This seems to happen not just for both sexes, but for each sex
>>> individually.
>>>
>>> Sylvia.
>>
>> I should just add that I thought I'd try to prove this impossible using
>> algebra, and failed totally.
>>
>> So then I used Excel, and was able to construct a counter example. So my
>> intuition about this was wrong. Of particular significance appears to be
>> that the population numbers for the base line age groups will not
>> generally be the same as the population numbers for the current data age
>> groups.
>>
>> Oh well. Thanks to those who looked at this.
>>
>> Sylvia.
> 
> It should be possible to get the numbers that went into this report
> under "freedom of information".

Perhaps. But Australian civil servants can be remarkably obstructive. 
They don't like informed criticism, and work hard to frustrate it.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney