Hazel Poa exposes the truth in Mah's data

[SNAblog]

http://hazelpoa.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Housing Prices Vs Household Income – Alternative ways of viewing the statistics

With reference to today’s Straits Times article where Mr Mah Bow Tan said it is not true that HDB resale prices have outstripped income growth. He supported his statement with the following statistics:

I would like to point out that the choice of the base year can be very significant.

Let’s see what happens when we change the base year to 2000 and 2001:

And if we look at it since the last General Election:

Resale prices up by 45.6%, while median household income is up 21.3%.

Choosing a suitable base year to support your conclusions is quite a useful trick that we should all learn.

 

[SNAblog]

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2010/04/mah-bow-tan-we-dont-fudge-numbers.html

Thursday, April 08, 2010
Mah Bow Tan : We don't fudge the numbers....

Yeah? But they are pretty good producing nice graphs.

In yesterday's Straits Times article about HDB flats being affordable, there was this chart:

It shows household income rising in tandem with HDB prices.

Credit goes to Hazel Poa[Link] for unveiling the trick here. Move the base year around and you get some other interesting graphs, here's one of the graphs generated by Hazel Poa:

Yes, not so "in tandem" if the base year was 2001. In fact only when you choose 1999 to be the base year instead of any other year in the last 10 years, you can show this "in tandem" movement.

Someone dropped a comment to the previous post on the topic to say that using household income is really inappropriate.

Definitions of household income[Wikipedia]

1. The residents of the household do not have to be related to the head of the household for their earnings to be considered part of the household's income

2.That the size of a household is not commonly taken into account in such measures may distort any analysis of fluctuations within or among the household income categories, and may render direct comparisons between quintiles difficult or even impossible.[3]
​

Using resident (which includes PRs) household income instead of Singaporeans household income takes us even further from the real situation for Singaporeans. The fact is HDB flats are expensive and put Singaporeans in debt for 30 years and that takes away their financial ability to retire properly.

 

[UseYourBrain]

 

[makapaaa]

 

[Watchman]

Doesn't matter what statistics say . Follow your heart .

Statistics is for people who has excess money to pay for education .

 

[silverspoon]

i wonder if we send hazel analysis to the paper , will they dare to publish it?

 

[streetsmart73]

Doesn't matter what statistics say . Follow your heart .

Statistics is for people who has excess money to pay for education .

hi there

1. bro, bingo!
2. five thumbs up to you.

 

[Papsmearer]

Hazel is a smart cookie, and I findmyself strangely aroused. Is she available tolimp kopi?

 

[Rogue Trader]

Doesn't matter what statistics say . Follow your heart .

Statistics is for people who has excess money to pay for education .

Ok that explains why you ended up like this.

 

[Rogue Trader]

hi there

1. bro, bingo!
2. five thumbs up to you.

hahahaha this is damn classic

 

[Watchman]

Ok that explains why you ended up like this.

Can't help it if I am kind of bitter. I never had it easy .

 

[red amoeba]

even without the fancy mumbo jumbo, the whole population knows resale flat prices outstrip increase in income.

just by looking at costs of things nowadays can tell.

its as clear as who is the fucker who knocked down three guys and then claim his car is stolen from day 1 when our police takes months to establish that.