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Lies damn lies and statistics. 1) Does it surprise anyone that they have 5x as many men as women as users? I wonder if you broke down by occupation what percen

Lies damn lies and statistics. 1) Does it surprise anyone that they have 5x as many men as women as users? I wonder if you broke down by occupation what percentage of their users are software developers and engineers compared to others? 2) It's not a random sample. While they say "The data for this report was compiled from 8,000 randomly selected men and women", it is not of all people, it is of their users. Those are two vastly different things. 3) "All this adds up to huge differences in the amount of knowledge work men get done compared to women. Our data shows women only work 76% of the time that men do. Interestingly, the National Committee on Pay Equity found that women earn 77% of what their male counter parts do." is one of the dumbest comments I have ever seen in my life. THEIR TOOL DOESN'T CATCH ALL WORK. I stopped using it because it is utterly useless if you step away from the computer and are productive in that time. They are saying "Our data shows women only work 76% of the time that men do. [in front of computers]" Dropping out the in front of computers part is huge. Is the President of the United States a knowledge worker? Because he doesn't have a computer on his desk and therefore would be 0% as productive as someone doing data entry according to this methodology. For that matter, me sitting in front of my computer all day with Eclipse open (no matter how much I actually commit) is more productive than my dad, a CEO, who spends a lot of his time with a pad of paper out talking to people. Hmmmmmm. I understand that this tool has its place, but to say something so outrageously false really casts the company as a whole in a bad light. Blogging this was poor judgement. At best it is just some dumb people who don't understand data, at worst it is offensive.

webwright 17y ago
I think you should re-read the post. The phrase "on his/her/their computers" is repeated 4 times in the (fairly short) post. I think it's pretty clear that this doesn't apply when comparing a pad/paper CEO and an engineer. And we very purposefully didn't draw any conclusions (though we did admittedly ask leading questions to fuel the conversation!). We say a few times in the comments that this could well be a reflection of the types of jobs that the 4000 women have compared to the 4000 men-- they may have more social jobs or more "afk" jobs. It'd be an interesting followup to grab 1000 female engineers and 1000 man engineers to see if the differences hold up. I don't know if it will, but what if it did? Would it be so horrible if women were less suited for multitasking and knowledge work? Because they sure as heck are better at a lot of other things. They're, on average, smarter than men. They have better reflexes. Check out "Is there anything good about men" - great essay: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm If they WERE less suited for it, it would be interesting to see how much culture and education influenced their suitability. i.e. Does the difference fade away if you correct for educational differences, etc. At the end of the day, it's just an interesting chunk of from a single web service that has a very strong bias towards geeky users.
- krschultz 17y ago
  At the end of the day, you flung up some crap on your company's offical blog that is both horribly misinformed from a statistical perspective and about the subject you are posting on. Is that professional? Is that good for your company? If I were an investor I'd be PISSED. If I hadn't canned my account to your site about 6 weeks after I made it (cool tool by the way, just missed too much of my work since I don't spend all day on my computer), I'd be canceling it today. And I sure as hell won't ever be trying it again. And I'll specifically be recommending against it. At my startup we had a discussion about using data from our users to draw attention the way you are trying to here (and Mint.com has very successfully done in the past as just one example). The problem is you have to recognize where the mine fields are. Replace every single place you used the word "women" and replace it with "black people" and see if it is offensive to you yet.
  - webwright 17y ago
    I'm sorry that you're angry. For what it's worth, we worked pretty hard to make this as statistically solid as we could with the dataset that we had. The subject we're posting on is "How 4,000 men differ from 4,000 women in RescueTime". While the data might lead to some interesting questions, I don't think anyone would assume that this is necessarily a reflection of a broader population (any more than Mint's data was). I think your "black people" example is interesting. If we were comparing designers to developers, would you be so incensed? Yours is literally the first actually angry response all day. Is it possible that you're overreacting? In terms of business effect, signups today have been abnormally high and cancellations have been slightly to the low side. It was meant to be provocative, but so far this hasn't ended up being a mine field. Again, sorry that we've upset you.
    - krschultz 17y ago
      I'm not the only angry response you've gotten today. Ctrl+F this thread for "hackermom", do you think she liked your post? Just one among several. I know YOU don't believe that women are 77% as productive as men and that explains the pay gap, I get your tongue in cheek tone. The problem is that there are lots of people who use these half cocked "pieces of data" as part of larger arguments and it is exacerbated by a statement like "a random sample of 8,000 people" when clearly, this is not a random sample. It should say "this is not a scientific sample", because it isn't. This is how we got birthers, "logical racists", and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps I am more sensitive to it, I took a class on gender studies, I hung out with some feminists, my wife makes a lot of money (more than I for a while, and she wasn't on a computer nearly as much as I). I think I just get mad at misapplied statistics, the lack of distinction between correlation and causation, and people saying ridiculous things to get attention (of which this does all 3). Suffice to say fivethirtyeight.com is one of my "read every day" sites.
jquery 17y ago
One could say the same thing about studies that purport to show a huge market-gravity-defying wage/gender gap.* * it's only important because our President is in favor of establishing a government organization to determine "fair" pay.
- krschultz 17y ago
  Well it is a fact that there is a wage gap in the US if you look at the overall average of men and women. Rarely if you look at a man and a woman in the same job is there a huge pay gap. Those are two different things and the latter was what people used to complain about, the former is what people complain about today. But there are lots of reasons why this is the case. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/women-earn-less-than-men-but-gap-is-narrowing-2010-04-20 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/women-earn-less-than-men-bu... None of those reasons have to do with productivity.
  - jquery 17y ago
    If women really are a discount, why hire a man at all? That is the question I have never seen answered convincingly.
    - krschultz 17y ago
      I'm agreeing with you, I don't think the wage gap (today) is talking about two equally qualified people getting paid different amounts for the same job, although it does happen in some rare circumstances it doesn't account for a 20% difference. That is mostly related to personal decisions on what career to choose, work/life balance, etc.
    - MichaelSalib 17y ago
      Maybe women have to settle for less because employers consistently underrate their competence. Since most employers want competent people, if they irrationally believe that women are less competent, they will be less likely to hire women, even at a discount. In general, statements of the form "but that's impossible since all people act as rational utility maximizing agents" demonstrate an ignorance of the many many studies showing that people do not act completely rationally pretty much all the time.

webwright 17y ago

I think you should re-read the post. The phrase "on his/her/their computers" is repeated 4 times in the (fairly short) post. I think it's pretty clear that this doesn't apply when comparing a pad/paper CEO and an engineer. And we very purposefully didn't draw any conclusions (though we did admittedly ask leading questions to fuel the conversation!). We say a few times in the comments that this could well be a reflection of the types of jobs that the 4000 women have compared to the 4000 men-- they may have more social jobs or more "afk" jobs. It'd be an interesting followup to grab 1000 female engineers and 1000 man engineers to see if the differences hold up. I don't know if it will, but what if it did? Would it be so horrible if women were less suited for multitasking and knowledge work? Because they sure as heck are better at a lot of other things. They're, on average, smarter than men. They have better reflexes. Check out "Is there anything good about men" - great essay: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm If they WERE less suited for it, it would be interesting to see how much culture and education influenced their suitability. i.e. Does the difference fade away if you correct for educational differences, etc. At the end of the day, it's just an interesting chunk of from a single web service that has a very strong bias towards geeky users.

krschultz 17y ago
At the end of the day, you flung up some crap on your company's offical blog that is both horribly misinformed from a statistical perspective and about the subject you are posting on. Is that professional? Is that good for your company? If I were an investor I'd be PISSED. If I hadn't canned my account to your site about 6 weeks after I made it (cool tool by the way, just missed too much of my work since I don't spend all day on my computer), I'd be canceling it today. And I sure as hell won't ever be trying it again. And I'll specifically be recommending against it. At my startup we had a discussion about using data from our users to draw attention the way you are trying to here (and Mint.com has very successfully done in the past as just one example). The problem is you have to recognize where the mine fields are. Replace every single place you used the word "women" and replace it with "black people" and see if it is offensive to you yet.
- webwright 17y ago
  I'm sorry that you're angry. For what it's worth, we worked pretty hard to make this as statistically solid as we could with the dataset that we had. The subject we're posting on is "How 4,000 men differ from 4,000 women in RescueTime". While the data might lead to some interesting questions, I don't think anyone would assume that this is necessarily a reflection of a broader population (any more than Mint's data was). I think your "black people" example is interesting. If we were comparing designers to developers, would you be so incensed? Yours is literally the first actually angry response all day. Is it possible that you're overreacting? In terms of business effect, signups today have been abnormally high and cancellations have been slightly to the low side. It was meant to be provocative, but so far this hasn't ended up being a mine field. Again, sorry that we've upset you.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    I'm not the only angry response you've gotten today. Ctrl+F this thread for "hackermom", do you think she liked your post? Just one among several. I know YOU don't believe that women are 77% as productive as men and that explains the pay gap, I get your tongue in cheek tone. The problem is that there are lots of people who use these half cocked "pieces of data" as part of larger arguments and it is exacerbated by a statement like "a random sample of 8,000 people" when clearly, this is not a random sample. It should say "this is not a scientific sample", because it isn't. This is how we got birthers, "logical racists", and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps I am more sensitive to it, I took a class on gender studies, I hung out with some feminists, my wife makes a lot of money (more than I for a while, and she wasn't on a computer nearly as much as I). I think I just get mad at misapplied statistics, the lack of distinction between correlation and causation, and people saying ridiculous things to get attention (of which this does all 3). Suffice to say fivethirtyeight.com is one of my "read every day" sites.

jquery 17y ago

One could say the same thing about studies that purport to show a huge market-gravity-defying wage/gender gap.* * it's only important because our President is in favor of establishing a government organization to determine "fair" pay.

krschultz 17y ago
Well it is a fact that there is a wage gap in the US if you look at the overall average of men and women. Rarely if you look at a man and a woman in the same job is there a huge pay gap. Those are two different things and the latter was what people used to complain about, the former is what people complain about today. But there are lots of reasons why this is the case. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/women-earn-less-than-men-but-gap-is-narrowing-2010-04-20 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/women-earn-less-than-men-bu... None of those reasons have to do with productivity.
- jquery 17y ago
  If women really are a discount, why hire a man at all? That is the question I have never seen answered convincingly.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    I'm agreeing with you, I don't think the wage gap (today) is talking about two equally qualified people getting paid different amounts for the same job, although it does happen in some rare circumstances it doesn't account for a 20% difference. That is mostly related to personal decisions on what career to choose, work/life balance, etc.
  - MichaelSalib 17y ago
    Maybe women have to settle for less because employers consistently underrate their competence. Since most employers want competent people, if they irrationally believe that women are less competent, they will be less likely to hire women, even at a discount. In general, statements of the form "but that's impossible since all people act as rational utility maximizing agents" demonstrate an ignorance of the many many studies showing that people do not act completely rationally pretty much all the time.