Talk:Varroville, New South Wales

Page move
This page was moved from "Varroville" to "Varroville, New South Wales" as per the naming convention set out at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) -- Ianblair23 04:22, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

PhDs
I removed the claim about the most PhDs which was based on this Sydney Morning Herald article. I initially thought the claim was bogus because Varroville has such a small population (about 150), even 1 PhD would skew it. Or, to put it another way, it might be mathematically correct but to infer it is one of the "brainest burbs" as the SMH article says is just a misuse of statistics. I also wondered where they got the number of PhDs from as I was not sure what data source holds that information. According to the SMH, they used the 2006 Census data. So I went and had a look at the Community Profile for Varroville in the 2006 census, which is available here (download it, unzip it, open it in Excel and then look at table B39 NON-SCHOOL QUALIFICATION: LEVEL OF EDUCATION). Now the problem I have is that this table doesn't count PhDs at all. It seems the census counts "Postgraduate Degrees" which covers a lot more than PhDs, it includes Masters, Postgraduate Diplomas, Postgraduate Certificates, etc. So I don't see how anything can be inferred about PhDs from this. But even if we say "well, any postgraduate qualification makes you brainy", when you look at the 2006 data in the table, there were 0 postgraduate qualifications in Varroville, there was nothing above a bachelors degree. So I cannot fathom how the SMH makes the claim they did based on the 2006 census. Maybe it's in some other table than B39 but nothing in B39 supports the claim that I can see. Happy for someone to find some supporting evidence and reinstate the claim (although I think making any claim in such a small population suburb is a bit bogus). Kerry (talk) 06:26, 9 August 2019 (UTC)