# Statistics always lie



## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

There's an interesting project going on on this site for some time. The Classical Music Project. It lists some 2.400 recommended classical works and is very informative when you want to discover new stuff highly regarded by others. The complete list is to be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/talkclassical/post-1950-works/ranked-list

I'm not sure if this is the original list or if it's updated regularly. I don't know the ins and outs of it. As you can see it also has a "Statistics"-directory. Now this is what I want to make fun of a little, because as you know "statistics" hardly ever tell the (whole) truth.

What interests me is the 'scoreboard by nationality' (scroll down to the bottom of the page). Here you can see what nations deliver the greatest amount of high ranking pieces and composers. At first glance you might get the impression that nations like Germany, France, Britain, USA and Russia mainly deliver our cultural heritage. Of course in absolute numbers that might be so but presenting it this way subtly implies that these are also countries with a good cultural climate where classical genius has been bred for centuries giving us these fine results. It reminds me of the way Olympic medals are ranked by nation. This is done in a way that is giving us merely a good image of country size and population. Although the Bahamas, Jamaica and Bermuda tend to get in the way. :lol:

As these are just summarized absolute numbers presented by nation state the first thing that comes to mind is to take a look at the population size of the respective nations. This has been done for Olympic medals before. See http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-per-capita:all-time

I've done somewhat the same for this list of recommended classical works (in a rough manner using Wikipedia's account of population size). Now who can guess the following correctly:
1. what is the top 3 of nation states that have the most recommended pieces relative to their population size?
2. what is the top 3 of nation states that have the highest amount of composers in this list relative to their population size?

For the winner(s) there's nothing but perpetual glory. As in real life there's no guarantee this competition is fair or even that the jury is competent!

If nobody replies the jury wins the competition. When many people take a guess the jury will postpone and delay choosing a winner for as long as possible hoping that their favorite candidates or affiliates will post the right answer or untill they collapse under the sheer number of complaints filed at vague international boards with unclear jurisdiction.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

off the top of my head (and in no particular order):
1. Estonia
2. Denmark
3. Finland


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

A quick perusal and a wild guess (It's too early here to be screwing around with a calculator).

Hungary
Czech Republic
Finland

The first two would be complicated by shifting borders and populations.

Statistics don't lie, they're misunderstood and used out of context, but they don't lie.

Regards


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Metairie Road said:


> A quick perusal and a wild guess (It's too early here to be screwing around with a calculator).
> 
> Hungary
> Czech Republic
> ...


The statistician needs good data, and competence. After that he can fudge if he wants to.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

The obvious question is, which population are you talking about? Today's? 

The US didn't even exist during Bach's day. Of course, neither did Germany as a nation state. Or Italy. 

I don't think those tallies by country are meant to imply anything.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Austria must be in the top three.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

If the current borders of Austria apply, it's hard not to imagine Mozart, Schubert & Bruckner lifting a small population to the top.
And all those Sibelius work will heft Finland's tiny population up the latter.
GG


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

GraemeG said:


> If the current borders of Austria apply, it's hard not to imagine Mozart, Schubert & Bruckner lifting a small population to the top.
> And all those Sibelius work will heft Finland's tiny population up the latter.
> GG


Yes but they were living in what was a huge empire.
Don´t forget Haydn and Liszt who came from what today is a part of Austria.
Other composers that were Austrian citizens were Donizetti and all Czech composers.
Strange that Mahler is called an Austrian composer when he came from Bohemia in what today is a part of Czech republic.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Statistics don't _always_ lie. They lie 73.6% of the time.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Sloe said:


> Strange that Mahler is called an Austrian composer when he came from Bohemia in what today is a part of Czech republic.


But Mahler himself came from the German-speaking population, and Bohemia was part of the Austrian Empire. I'm not sure categorizing purely by geography makes sense.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

GreenMamba said:


> But Mahler himself came from the German-speaking population, and Bohemia was part of the Austrian Empire. I'm not sure categorizing purely by geography makes sense.


Mahler and Janacek were not born that far apart from each other. The difference is that Mahler identified himself as Austrian and his cultural education was centered squarely on the Germanic/Austrian musical heritage, while Janacek became a nationalist who sought to capture the flavor of the Czech language and culture in his music.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Mahler and Janacek were not born that far apart from each other. The difference is that Mahler identified himself as Austrian and his cultural education was centered squarely on the Germanic/Austrian musical heritage, while Janacek became a nationalist who sought to capture the flavor of the Czech language and culture in his music.


So 50% of composers are Nationalists!


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

*Final results*

So sorry to have kept you all waiting but here are the rankings.

Nation states that have the most recommended pieces relative to their population size
1. Austria: 30,6 pieces per million - current - inhabitants
2. Estonia: 18,0 pieces
3. Hungary: 9,7 pieces (closely followed by Finland with 9,0 pieces)

Nation states that have the highest amount of composers that composed recommended pieces, again relative to population size:
1. Iceland: 3,3 composers per million inhabitants. Quite an erratic result as they don't even have a million inhabitants, just over 300.000. In fact, there's only one Icelandic composer that made it to the top 2400 of recommended works. Who might that be?
2. Estonia: 3,0 composers
3. Austria: 2,9 composers 
Other nation states don't come even close. Norway is in 4th place with 1,6.

As I like to see Hungary win a competition (I'm not from there btw) I also present the ranking for nation states with the highest amount of recommended pieces per composer of that nationality:
1. Hungary: 12,1 pieces per composer
2. Austria: 10,6 pieces
3. Germany: 8,2 pieces

So I would like to conclude that Austrian composers work three times harder than Hungarian composers but they on their turn produce more quality stuff than Austrians and Germans. On average they are even 1,5 times better than German composers 

Suppose you all agree!


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