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Old Posted Mar 13, 2016, 6:42 PM
fenwick16 fenwick16 is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Toronto area (ex-Nova Scotian)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by portapetey View Post
You can see the sampling error if you "Add/Remove Data" here:

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lan...Val=1&p1=1&p2=37&tabMode=dataTable&csid=

The monthly point values from Feb 2015 to Feb 2016 are

6.3 6.5 6.8 7.0 6.6 6.2 5.8 5.9 5.9 6.1 6.2 6.5 6.8

The standard error for the Feb 2016 sample is 0.6 (it's 0.5 to 0.6 most months), so the confidence interval is 6.2 - 7.4.

The standard error for month-to-month changes is consistently 0.3, so the change of 0.3 from January - 6.5 (confidence interval 5.9 to 7.1) to February - 6.8 is entirely within the standard error, so not statistically significant.

The standard error for year-over-year changes is even greater at 0.7 to 0.8.

Thus the difference between February 2016 - 6.8 (or 6.2 - 7.4) and February 2015 - 6.3 (or 5.8 to 6.8) is 0.5, less than the error of 0.7 and therefore again not statistically significant.

In essence, we really don't know if the rate has gone up at all, though it appears to be trending upward since last August.

Thanks for the statistical perspective. I agree with your comment since the Statistics Canada stats have shown some large variations in the past.
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