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I'm not able to watch the video at my current computer but its actually really typical that when something becomes an advantage for being selected to a certain
by pitt1980 9y ago
I'm not able to watch the video at my current computer
but its actually really typical that when something becomes an advantage for being selected to a certain pool
the success of the those in the pool after the selection will negatively correlate with that thing
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the really obvious example of this is the hockey birthday thing from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers
people with the earlier birthdays were more likely to make it past each selection stage in becoming an NHL player
but those with the later birthdays who were able to be selected in spite of their later birthdays, were typically more successful after the selection
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The authors contend that the strategy might actually work against a team's success because they found that players born later in the year and drafted later actually had more productive hockey careers.
Deaner said the study showed that men drafted in the second half of the year were about twice as likely to have successful careers in the NHL ??? reaching benchmarks like 400 games played or 200 points scored ??? than those born earlier in the year.
"If the team wasn't making this mistake, they probably would have been more successful," he said. "The guys born in the first part of the year are much more likely to be busts."
https://www.nhl.com/news/study-suggests-nhl-has-bias-in-favour-of-players-born-earlier-in-the-year/c-657724 https://www.nhl.com/news/study-suggests-nhl-has-bias-in-favo...
- chongli 9y agoI favour the simpler explanation: Campbell's law. [0] If programming contests are favoured, then people will optimize for them. Simplify/generalize even further and you get Goodhart's law. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- lordnacho 9y ago> the success of the those in the pool after the selection will negatively correlate with that thing Could be relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
- pitt1980 9y agoYeah, exactly
- muh_gradle 9y agoI am familiar with Outliers. I read the book. But I fail to see how this is relevant in any way.
- scythe 9y agoIt's sort of like Simpson's paradox. It's relevant because the statistical "paradox" (contradiction of intuition) described in Outliers is similar to the one in the video.
- kjksf 9y agoHe probably meant that people who do programming competitions are more likely to pass Google interview (they'll be better at doing algorithmic questions quickly) but are not necessarily better suited to do the actual job. Just like hockey players born earlier in the year were more likely to be drafted.
- register 9y agoDefinetely. I arrived at the final stage in a Google interview which I failed and I can confirm that out of the 5 interviews three were based on puzzles that I later discovered are found in books for coding competions. On two I did a good job to work out a solution myself but I completely got the third wrong. Who prepares for this kind of competitions has a huge advantage in these kind of interviews.
- Cofike 9y agoThat's how I felt trying to find a job in the bay area. If I wanted to compete with the top talent then I needed to prepare for the interviews and practice those problems.
- balls187 9y agoGoogle's data shows that their interview process produces a low number of false positives, at the risk of producing a high number of false negatives. That is, despite passing on otherwise talented people, those people who successfully pass Google interviews go on to be successful at Google. edit to add: Couldn't find that original article, this article goes on to speak about success predictors: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- MarkMc 9y agoThat's an excellent point! I can think of another example: In the movie "Hidden Figures" the black, female engineers at NASA are much better than their white, male counterparts simply because it was harder for them to get in. Perhaps the opposite is true today of engineering students at colleges with affirmative action?
- cma 9y agoAlumni preference is at least as big or bigger a factor in admissions than affirmative action. Many of the schools were segregated not so long ago, so you can guess how that affects the alumni pool.
- kenferry 9y agoThis suggests that you think there is no perception bias that affirmative action is trying to counteract. You might be interested to know that when people try to correct for bias, they typically undercorrect. Also, for people coming from more challenging circumstances, getting the same results is literally more impressive.
- paulddraper 9y agoIt's pretty common for tech conferences to give preference for talks to tech minorities. Whenever I hear a conference has done this, I subconsciously deprioritize attending a talk given by a minority, since they got in with a lower bar... Terrible I know, but I'm not sure it is illogical.