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Before you say it, yes, we know this is a trigonomic equation
Before you say it, yes, we know this is a trigonomic equation

AucklandJune 20, 2018

Maths is hard: Mike Hosking’s brave battle with statistics

Before you say it, yes, we know this is a trigonomic equation
Before you say it, yes, we know this is a trigonomic equation

After the release of an Auckland Transport survey claiming two thirds of Aucklanders support more cycleways, Mike Hosking stepped into the ring to fight Statistics. Madeleine Chapman reports.

David v Goliath. Roe v Wade. And now, Mike Hosking v Statistics. These will be the battles oft referenced in classrooms, bars, living rooms, and courtrooms for years to come. David defeated Goliath, Roe overcame Wade (for now), but who triumphed in the great 2018 head to head of Hosking and Statistics?

Well, it was close. Join us on this journey.

Monday 18 June 2018

0500 – The NZ Herald publishes a story from senior reporter Simon Wilson, detailing the results of an Auckland Transport survey on cycling. “Support for cycling overall is at 57 per cent, with 34 per cent saying they are ‘very supportive’. Those not supportive of cycling are at 11 per cent, with 8 per cent ‘very unsupportive’,” reported Wilson.

It is reported that “The survey was conducted online among 1459 respondents during April. Responses were weighted to ensure a representative spread of age, gender and location.”

These are numbers. Statistics has come out swinging.

0555 – A pair of distressed jeans enters the ring by way of the Newstalk ZB studios. Mike Hosking joins his wife Kate Hawkesby as she ends her shift and he begins his. They’ve both seen the numbers that Statistics punched into their lives and are ready to counter, like Team Rocket in Pokemon. And much like Team Rocket, they love to speak over one another.

Mike: That cycle thing… That is a rort. It is false.

Kate: Guess how many people were involved in that survey. 1500 people.

Mike: What kind of survey was it?

Kate: You can’t say two thirds of Aucklanders –

Mike: An opt-in survey, bored deadbeats with nothing to do.

Kate: Keyboard warriors ringing their aunties and uncles and cousins going ‘hey can you vote’…I refuse to believe anyone in Auckland wants more cycle lanes.

Mike: The Herald, who should know better, pass this crap off as news nowadays. And it’s wrong. It’s fraudulent.

Kate: It can’t be two thirds of Auckland.

Every good counter attack involves a bit of beneficiary roasting so Hawkesby and Hosking have done well. Hawkesby is merely a bit player in this battle but she stamps her mark with “I refuse to believe anyone in Auckland wants more cycle lanes.” Go in, sis.

Cool of the Herald to print out their website

0637 – Despite already knocking Statistics down by suggesting only bored deadbeats would participate in a survey, Hosking continues his assault.

“The claim is that two thirds of Aucklanders believe cycle lanes are good for the city and would welcome them into their communities. And it’s crap. It’s an opt-in survey done over a month and the response rate was, out of a population of a million and a half, it was 1459 people. And they further claim it’s weighted to ensure representation. 1459 responses between your seven regions you’re left with about 208 people per region. It’s farcical.”

0638 – Statistics are non-violent. They don’t even want to be in this fight, but they’re being pummelled by Hosking so they send in TRA, the market research company that conducted the survey.

TRA attempts to bore Hosking to death with facts such as “Respondents invited to take part in the survey were proportional to the Auckland population as per 2013 census, reflecting Age, Gender and Auckland Regions (Rodney, North, Central, West, East, South, Franklin).” and “Respondents didn’t know what the survey was on or for before completing the survey, removing any participation bias.”

The attack, though factual, is ineffective.

0639 – “They’ve got an agenda for cycle lanes and they want to pump the agenda for cycle lanes so they rig a survey, they call an opt-in survey a legitimate survey – which it’s nothing of the sort – and then they get some patsy to publish it.”

0640 – Statistics catches the ‘opt-in’ survey grenade and lobs it right back by reiterating the survey was in fact not an ‘opt-in’ survey, but a survey where people were invited to participate, ignorant of the topics that would be covered.

0641 – Patsy Simon Wilson wakes up.

0700 – Hosking swallows the opt-in survey grenade and announces his own actual, real, this-time-it-really-is-an opt-in survey.

“We’ve opened up our survey this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast Facebook page. Go and answer the simple question. Are cycle lanes good for the country? And we’ll see how many responses we get. They did it over a month to get 1400 responses, I suspect we’ll probably get that by about 8:30.”

If this was a fight to see who could get the most survey responses, Hosking would win. Thankfully, sampling exists for a reason.

0710 – Statistics merely shakes its head. They’ve tried to make it so easy, so that fights like this don’t happen. Yet here they are.

Statistics holds up a giant online sample size calculator revealing that a balanced sample size of 1419 people would give a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 2.6%.

Statistics then mentions how much Hosking loved surveys conducted with the same sampling methodology in the last election. “Another survey, two surveys like it and it’s real trouble,” Hosking said of the Very Accurate and Definitely Different From This election polls.

0745 – Hosking proudly reports that the Statistics were wrong in the AT survey because his own opt-in survey made up of ZB listeners and ZB fans on Facebook had voted heavily against cycleways.

0750 – Statistics sighs. What more is there to do but continue yelling the truth at a man with fluffy earmuffs on?

0810 – Simon Wilson eats a croissant at his desk. It’s a bit dry.

0830 – Hosking announces that his own poll has received the same number of votes as the AT survey and the result is a small 36% in favour of cycleways.

“Under their rules, our results are as legitimate as theirs.”

This is his knockout punch, showing that he alone can conquer Statistics. Statistics does nothing, just waits. The numbers always come out on top.

1400 – Hosking’s poll is now at 50/50 with just over 4000 votes cast.

1800 – With over 7000 votes cast, the support for cycleways is now equal to that shown in the AT survey, with two thirds of participants voting in favour.

Tuesday 19 June 2018

0500 – Hosking finds an unlikely ally in his losing battle: the NZ Herald. In the morning editorial, the Herald looks back on the AT survey and finds it wanting. “AT needs to be recording their use, and asking hard questions about their value, not surveying self-selecting samples online for the answers it wants.”

Herald editorial featuring man who believed his posture was much better than this

0501 – Statistics reiterates the survey was neither opt-in nor self-selecting.

0749 – Hosking comes out for round two with fire in his pants. He’s upset that the Herald did not report on his survey when they reported on the AT one. His producer sidekick tags in to mention the poll is now showing majority support for cycleways, but only because it was “hijacked by cycle lobby groups”. They’re both down for the count but are still kicking. Hosking goes for one last heave as the ref reaches a ten count.

“That means the opt-in survey is open to corruption thus making it not news in the first place.”

0750 – Statistics stands in the corner and calmly reminds everyone yet again that the AT survey was not an opt-in survey.

2200 – Support for cycleways in the online poll reaches 79 per cent with over 15000 votes cast. Mike Hosking still holds the strong belief that he has proven multiple points at once by owning himself with a Facebook poll. Statistics sips a cup of tea and smiles. Simon Wilson is writing about buses.

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The Resettlement Portraits concludes at the Auckland Central Library on June 20 at 8pm. © Nando Azevedo
The Resettlement Portraits concludes at the Auckland Central Library on June 20 at 8pm. © Nando Azevedo

AucklandJune 20, 2018

Why these resettlement portraits meant so much to me, a blind immigrant

The Resettlement Portraits concludes at the Auckland Central Library on June 20 at 8pm. © Nando Azevedo
The Resettlement Portraits concludes at the Auckland Central Library on June 20 at 8pm. © Nando Azevedo

This World Refugee Day, and always, I hope the portraits and voices of our resettled community in Aotearoa can guide us in our efforts to ensure they feel valued, writes Áine Kelly-Costello.

What is cultural pride? It is not pretending that any culture is perfect, or making comparisons between cultures to argue that one is above another. It is about being able to claim and celebrate the cultural part of your identity – a part that probably feels suppressed when you have had to recreate your life in a new country halfway around the world.

I was reflecting on all this while perched on the edge of the sofa in Auckland City Library one afternoon this week, having been moved by an exhibition I’ll tell you about in a moment. A handful of children scampered happily and freely around the child-sized treehouse to my left.

I hadn’t given it much thought before, but now I realised the cultural pride concept resonated with me. It wasn’t because I lived in Ireland and Canada before my family settled in New Zealand. Rather, it struck a chord because I connected with another kind of pride: the disability pride movement. I’m blind. And I wouldn’t say that I’m proud of the fact of my being blind; it just “is”. Or rather, what being blind “is” boils down to an inextricably ingrained part of my identity that I find it healthy to embrace.

But it’s difficult to lay claim to any sort of disability-related identity when disabled and deaf people are expected to interpret assurances that we “don’t seem disabled” as a compliment. In a related vein, if you are a former refugee or asylum seeker, it is surely very trying indeed to hang onto those identity-shaping aspects of your home culture that find limited means of expression here in New Zealand.

But finding such an outlet for expressing that cultural identity is precisely what photographer Nando Azevedo from the Auckland Resettled Community Coalition (ARCC) is interested in. Around the walls of a carpeted room on the second floor of Auckland City Library hang the 27 photographs comprising the Resettlement Portraits exhibition, which Nando has photographed and curated, taken with this specific aim in mind.

“We wanted the portraits to be a celebration of culture and also of family. The families I photographed each received a copy of their family portrait because it was about helping them to regain that pride,” he explains.

I’ve just arrived at the library and we are standing inside the doorway of the exhibit room as Nando speaks. We ease our way gradually left till we are facing someone. “Yohanna is one of two sisters from Eritrea. She is wearing a white, strapless dress with red and gold detail. And also a golden pendant and golden earrings.”

“So her dress and jewellery are Eritrean?”

“Yes. We asked everyone to bring or wear something that gave them pride in their culture.”

They did. A Burmese man holds a gun he made himself. His is a hunting culture. Nuang, from the Zomi minority also in Burma, sports an animal-skin drum. “It’s used for communication between the villages and in celebrations,” Nando tells me.

Issa, a Palestinian grandfather, proudly displays his country’s flag. Abann from the Shilluk culture of South Sudan holds a wooden cane; Abann is well-respected here in Auckland too, as manager of the ARCC.

“Resettled communities,” Nando explains, “include former refugees, asylum seekers and arrivals from family reunification. ARCC is an umbrella organisation for the different ethnic groups within the community.”

I had originally come across the exhibition event on ARCC’s Facebook page. I asked whether there were any audio/guided tours through the exhibition. There were not, but there was a booklet with some information about the portraits.

When Nando saw my query and offered to show me around, I was grateful, but not solely because I would get to learn about the exhibition in the most meaningful way possible – from the photographer himself. I was also grateful that he didn’t ignore my query on the presumption that it was not worth attempting to make photography accessible to a blind person. To tease out where this thinking might come from, if you can’t see, you can forget about having a spontaneous reaction to a photo. Further, if you’ve never been able to see, some of the elements that make a photo interesting are more intellectual than visual, given that they are hard to actually picture – colours, for example.

But the more we explored the portraits together through words, the more I understood why these apparently limiting factors are largely superficial. It’s not just the immediacy of the images that grabs people, but the reasons behind that immediacy. And Nando could articulate plenty of those reasons, and even some titbits of the former refugees’ stories, to expand my mental map.

“Zhiyan is Kurdish. She came to New Zealand when she was 9 or 10, and now she has a PhD in psychology. She’s wearing a shiny red dress with ruby-like stones, and a small, fancy hat towards the back of her head. She’s the only one who didn’t look into the camera for the shot. Everyone else is doing that, and it gives you the sense that they are looking at you, and that their eyes are following you as you walk around the room. But Zhyan’s is different. She is looking into the distance, very proud … very powerful.”

As we wend our way around the room, I am struck by the breadth of emotion captured in everyone’s faces. Between them, they look, in Nando’s estimation, serene, sorrowful, fierce, curious, slightly smiling, cheeky, sad, serious, proud, neutral, and sceptical. Most of them a combination of two or three.

We shuffle a couple more steps to the right. By now, I’ve been given a small but illuminating window into the cultural identities of about 20 of the people photographed. Nando has done well at capturing a range of ages and a gender balance. Now we are facing the portrait of Nour, the five-year-old granddaughter of Issa, the Palestinian grandfather proudly holding his country’s flag. “She has a flower in her hair.” Nando pauses. “She looks serious – way too serious for a kid.”

Afterwards I sat on the sofa by the treehouse waiting for a lift home. I was surrounded by the pure delight of children at play, and I wondered whether Nour would feel unburdened and safe enough to do the same. This World Refugee Day, and always, I hope the portraits and voices of our resettled community in Aotearoa can guide us in our efforts to ensure that they do, in fact, feel resettled and valued here.

The Resettlement Portraits exhibition wraps up on World Refugee Day (June 20th) with resettled community members coming together at the library and performing cultural presentations. After that it is still uncertain what will happen to the images as the ARCC is making efforts to find them a new home in Auckland and beyond. For more information or to get in touch, visit the organisation’s website at www.arcc.org.nz

Áine Kelly-Costello is a campaigner, musician, language lover and blogger.