Tuesday 12 October 2010

Wednesday Quiz in Exile VII: Information is Beautiful

It should come as no suprise to you that this week's Wednesday quiz is about Australia. This week we're looking at a range of different Aussie information through a medium very dear to my dorky little heart. Graphs. All you have to do is identify what the graphs represent to score points for your team and the admiration of the nation. Whoa! Whoa! (sorry, Football joke) If you could refrain from skewing the data collected by introducing factors outside of my control such as google, friends and family or other people's answers that would be better for all involved and for the scientific method in general.

Indentify the graph.

1. What's this map stolen from our friends at wikipedia show?
2. What does this graph represent?
3. What does this graph represent?
4. What does this graph represent?
5. What does this graph represent?
6. If Australia is the blue one, what does this graph represent?
7. If Australia is the blue one, what does this graph represent?
8. What does this graph represent? (And for bonus points, what specifically does the blue bar represent?)
9. What does this graph represent? (And for bonus points, where does Adelaide fit on this graphic?)
10.What does this graph represent?


Leave your answers in the comments. Remember to label appropriately and include margins of error.

11 comments:

Joanna said...

1. Where overseas students to Australian Universities come from
2. Average age Australians live to given whether they were ever married
3. Population distribution by state
4. Percentage each state takes up (land size) of all of australia
5. Where players in the AFL come from
6. Sheep population
7. People who have at least one child.
8. Age at which people die in motorcycle accidents.
9. Number of mines?
10. Most common answer to "favourite colour"

Michael5000 said...

1. Tourists in Australia? No, Australia wouldn't be black and Japan wouldn't be beige. Hmmmm.... birthplaces of the current population? (Italy? Well, whatever.)

2. I'm gonna say a disparity of life expectancy between urban and rural.... no. Between Aboriginal Australians and Alltheother Australians.

3. Population by State/Territory

4. Land Area by State/Territory

5. OH COME ON. Cricketeers per capita.
UPDATE: is it agricultural production? I don't think so, because S.A. would be higher, yes? But maybe some specific crop? Cows?

6. Let's say.... 1000s of native speakers of English. USA!! USA!!!

7. Proportion of foreign-born population.

8. That's the percentage of Australians voting for somebody or other in a recent election, and the blue bar represents a notoriously liberal, or perhaps conservative, constituency.

9. Hmm, Rainfall I think. And right down there by Sydney.

10. Service in the New Guinea theater of World War II.
Just kidding of course! It represents the parliamentary "governments" of Australia down through the century, with the colors representing the various political parties (such as "Labour," "Conservative," "Bruce," and so on).

I THINK I'M DOING PRETTY WELL FOR A STUPID BLOODY YANK, FRANKLY!!!

This quiz is awesome. Where did you get the idea?

UnwiseOwl said...

Ah, the Bruce party and its fine tradition in Australian politics... I spend most of my days looking at, creating and generally thinking about graphs. It's just kind of unavoidable that we'd end up with a quiz like this eventually...

Joanna said...

Your answers are more plausible than mine Michael5000.

*hides in the corner in shame*

Aviatrix said...

Ooh, a guessing game for non-Australians! This is awesome.

1. Source country of immigrants living in Australia
2. Life expectancy at birth, aboriginal and non, but you're doing better than Canada if that is all the difference there is.
3. Population
4. Land area
5. What the heck does Victoria have that the others don't? PhDs?
6. Enough data points here to be pretty much all the countries of the world. One country has more than double the runner-up. Australia is 10th. 70% of the world has virtually nothing. Uh ... health care spending?
7. Too low for high-school graduation or voter turnout. Australia leads, so I postulate that this is an economic development-linked measure among Oceanic countries. The matching one is New Zealand. Low for automobile ownership. Incidence of lower back tattoos.
8. Average proportion of maximum tax sheltered retirement planning contribution made in the name of Australians, by age. The blue bar represents contributions by people whose exemption to the maximum age for contributions was grandfathered in 1972.
9. Too high for murders, too anticorrelated with population to be schools or places of worship. I'll say roadkilled kangaroos within city limits, and put Adelaide between Hobert and Brisbane.
10. Political party in power: Tory blue, Labour red

Alethea said...

Oh my goodness I uh concede defeat and will put in some joke answers some time later.

DrSchnell said...

1. Immigrants to OZ?
2. life expectancy today and, um, some time in the past.
3. population
4. rabbits
5. Production of Vegemite mines. that is where it comes from, right?
6. GDP per capita?
7. geez....
8. No idea, but I bet the blue bar represents Australia!
9. no idea
10. party control of government?

UnwiseOwl said...


Turns out those bloody yanks (and canucks) aren't as silly as they look. The home team didn't paly fair and refused to put in any answers, but for the first week we can safely say the visitors had them on the ropes...
1. Country of Birth of Australian Residents. the big post-war boom of Greek and Italian immigrants is notable.
2. The difference is life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. What are the figures in Canada and the US, out of interest?
3. Population by State/Territory.
4. Land-area by State/Territory.
5. Australian Rules Football premierships by state. I really wish it had been cows.
6. Olympic medal counts. I really thought Aviatrix's logic was going to get her there.
7. Percentage of obesity. The other, interestingly, is Finland. I'm not sure I trust the stats, but I did get them from two different reliable sources.
8. Cricketing batting averages. A bit mean for our pan-pacific contingent, but most cricket fans would recognise it instantly due to the incredible outlier of Sir. Donald Bradman.
9. (Road) distance to the national capital, Canberra. I hoped the absence of only two capitals would be a hint, but it was a bit obscure. Adelaide is between Brisbane and Melbourne.
10. Political party in federal office.

So, I'm glad a few non-regulars could join me for what was the most fun of the Wednesday quizzes in exile so far. For me, anyway. Tune in next week for more, I had more fun writing it, but it's probably less fun to do. Sorry.

Michael5000 said...

Road distance from Canberra to Hobart? MAN you lot are intrepid!

UnwiseOwl said...

Good pick. There's a ferry.
But you, know, we'd probably drive even if there weren't.

John said...

arg hope I can still qualify with this one. I haven't read the answers, I swear!

1. I'm going to guess population density (assuming the black for Australia is in an extra-low category).

2. Life expectancy, clearly. I'll guess that the blue is indigenous Australians and red is either non-indigenous Australians or Australians in general.

3. No idea. :/

4. Total land area of each state.

5. ...total number of Victorians living in the state? <_< Nah, I'm going to go with number of deaths in bushfires.

6. I'll say that this is another population density one.

7. In this case, I'll say that the graph represents the proportion of people living in large cities.

8. I have no idea! Isn't it exciting!

9. Ha, this one would be distance from Canberra. Adelaide ought to be between Brisbane and Melbourne.

10. An easy one to finish - this is a graph representing the party of government in Australia's federal parliament.

:/