QUT’s Darragh Murray has crunched the numbers on China demand for Australian education to find the market is still expanding, how fast depends on what numbers you look at.  Visas granted were up 7.9 per cent for the last calendar year, compared to a 12.2 per cent increase in 2016, then again growth in ’15 was 5.1 per cent.

The point is that with different data sets and collection periods what looks alarming in one quarter is less so as part of longer-term trends from the same data. Stats analysed half way through a financial year can also look way different to those for Jan-Dec. And then there is the role of the feds, visa numbers in July-August were down with a new system imminent, but they rocketed up in September after ministers encouraged officials to pick up the pace (CMM September 5 2016)

“Concurrent stories may exist in the data depending on how you twist and turn the data sets. My lesson here is that the structure of the data is as important as the data itself,” Mr Murray suggests.