Re: OT: Excess deaths stats - sanity check

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