Lies, damn lies and statistics

Stuff reports that Maori have a 40% higher death rate than Europeans. This is rather amusing as I am prepared to wager than Europeans and Maori have the exact same death rate that is 100% unless someone can produce evidence to the contrary!

Many journalists are statistically illiterate and you often get nonsense like this reported, along with nonsense like party x is polling below the margin of error.

I suspect the study is referring to death rate in any one year for people of a certain age, but it is impossible to tell from the story.