Pete Brown has run a series of posts this week and last that delve into stats being issued by various government agencies and health lobby groups in the UK. It is important work that Pete is doing as there is no stat worse than the unexamined stat. Today’s post was called “More Hilarity with Statistics” which examined claims about the level of drinking in Scotland. I made a comment over there but did some more rooting around to make sure I agreed with what I was seeing and, to avoid looking like a totally rude idiot being all finger pointy in the comments, thought I would set it out here instead. I also got thinking because even if a stat can be discredited it does not mean that the underlying facts necessarily do not exists, only that they are not well described. But, as I said in the comments, I am really bad at math so I am happy to be corrected.
The BBC story Pete began with was titled “Scots ‘Drink 46 Bottles of Vodka‘” by which they mean per person per year on average. Pete suggested that this was not particularly well researched as tourism trade taking the booze away was not figured in – but then when I ran the numbers I saw this pattern:
- Scotland has about 8% of the UK population
- total UK booze sales in 2007 were worth over 41 billion pounds
- and therefore, Scotland’s booze sales can be approximated at around 4 billion pounds.
I took the numbers from this soul suckingly slow .pdf source. I read them to meaning that if every penny of the 25 million pounds spent at distillery shops was non-Scots resident alcohol sales, removing it entirely from Scottish consumption, it only represents well under 1% of total Scottish sales? If that is the case, the variation is under a bottle of vodka a year. I said that even if I was off by a whole decimal point and the distillery sales represent 10% of sales isn’t it still a little bit alarming that every Scots adult averages 41 or 42 bottles of vodka a year? By which I mean I had a gut feeling it was in fact pretty high. But is it?
A little more looking around further, found information stating that 30% of Scots adults say they do not drink – which means the drinking Scot averages 58 or so bottle a year working off the conservative 41 bottles a week stat. It is more like 65 a year if you go by the BBC’s number of 46. I got the “did not drink” percentage from this pdf. So you have 30% of Scots not drinking, 35% drinking up to the average and 35% drinking over the average.
What does that mean? 58 bottles a year on average means 1.12 x 700 ml bottles a week at 40% that means 313 ml of pure alcohol a week. By comparison, a standard Canadian 12 oz 5% beer has 341 ml. Which means that average Scots drinker’s booze consumption is the equivalent of 19 standard 5% Canadian beers a week. Sounds like a bit more than you might think is a good idea, week after week day after day. But not fatal. It’s maybe what we expect the average healthy working Joe would drink in a week. Similarly, a US 22 oz bomber has 650 ml. At 8% that is 65 ml of pure alcohol. Which means that the Scot’s drinker’s booze consumption is the equivalent of 4.8 bombers of 8% US craft beer a week. Is that going to scare off a craft beer fan? Hardly.
But it is an average and that is what I think is the real concern. It means 35% of Scots drinkers adults drink more… because 65% drinkers there drink less including the 30% who abstain. I think those numbers are troubling. They may well be wrong so please do your own a arithmetic. But if they are not wrong – is there not a valid public health concern where 35% of your population is doing that level of drinking. I don’t really care if you think there is no such thing as a public health concern from a libertarian point of view as that is not the point here. Nor does someone called “Alan Campbell McLeod” care if you think this is only a Scottish problem. I think we can all agree that there is a point beyond which alcohol is unhealthy. Is that point been identified by the BBC report?
[Original comments…]
Seamus Campbell – January 17, 2010 3:45 PM
http://dailywort.wordpress.com
You’re mixing two kinds of averages here, which is a bit dangerous: mean (total amount divided by number of data points) and median (the “middle point”). Just because the 70% of Scots drinkers consume X bottles of liquor annually does not mean that 35% consume more and 35% consume less.
Now, I have no idea what the actual distribution is behind that average; whether it’s a small number of truly serious alcoholics driving up the average, or a large number of more moderately-heavy drinkers, and it’s fair to express concern either way. I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are some drinkers in a bad way in Scotland.
Alan – January 17, 2010 8:53 PM
“Dangerous” like drinking way too much beer and hurting yourself or dangerous like a wrong statistical analysis? But I take you point. I am not even sure if the non-drinkers are in or not in as the words adults and drinkers appear to be used interchangeably by the BBC.
But statistics also have to speak to reality. So it is possible (as you say but taken to the absurd to illustrate your point) that there could be one man in Glasgow who drank 3.9 billion worth and everyone else is having one small glass of dry sherry on New Year’s Day. I’d say, however, that it is unlikely that the average skews towards too small a pool of heavy heavy drinkers. There is a limit to human capacity and there is no discussion that the problem is not pervasive. If there was too small a problem group they would stand out. I’d say those things make for not that much difference between the mean and the median. Is that fair?
Adam – January 18, 2010 11:38 AM
Another way of putting that last U.S. number is two 12 oz. bottles of a slightly more than 5% ABV Pale Ale, IPA, etc… per day.
I have no idea whether that is unhealthy or not but I can think of at least one person who calls beer “health food” and would have no problem with it: http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/texas-beer-columnist-throws-beer-under-the-bus/
Alan – January 18, 2010 12:08 PM
Well, celery is health food, too, but there only so much that one can take as part of a healthy diet.
Andrew the Beer Chemist – January 25, 2011 10:03 PM
There was a study released in the early 1980s that was conducted by a medical researcher that suggested that the average male could consume 6 beer a day and 4 for the average female. For the most part, many people cannot comprehend consuming these quantities and govenrment policy makers and the medical profession have erred on the side of caution by recommending much lower quantities with no scientific evidence to back the recommended consumption. Also, see my post on the Beer: not fattening? page of this blog. Please enjoy!
Alan – January 25, 2011 11:39 PM
6 x 7 = 42 x 150 calories = 6300 calories or just under enough calories to create just under 2 pounds of fat if not off set by reductions in diet otherwise or increase in exercise. Considering the health advice from an anonymous “chemist” in the brewing trade would not be my recommendation.
Andrew the beer chemist – January 27, 2011 11:01 AM
The calories calculated for a weekly consumption is indeed 6300. However, it is not true that those calories will create “2 pounds of fat”. Can you provide a literature reference that supports a total conversion of 6300 beer calories to fat? Please see my post on the other blog topic about calories in beer. As far as an “anonynous chemist in the brewing trade” comment goes would Alan who wrote this be willing to state their credentials. I have a BSc in Chemistry from the University of New Brunswick located in Fredericton, NB, Canada. Also, I am no longer employed by a brewer, I run a small Water and Wastewater Testing and Consulting company in Rothesay, NB, Canada called Potable Solutions Inc. Cheers!
Alan – January 27, 2011 11:27 AM
No. You have been a hand puppet. You have made no sense and contradicted both common understanding and medical science. You provided no identity let alone basis for your position.
Your comments are welcome if they advance understanding. They are not “posts” and they so far are not very compelling.