> Why are those 15 considered a "false negative"? My understanding is that if you take positive as being offered a position and negative as being denied a posi

> Why are those 15 considered a "false negative"? My understanding is that if you take positive as being offered a position and negative as being denied a position, and true or false as whether that was a correct decision then you have: True Positive - Someone who was offered a position (positive) and who was suited for the position (the positive assessment turned out true). True Negative - Someone who was not offered a position (negative) because they were not suited to for it (the negative assessment turned out true). False Positive - Someone who was offered a position (positive), but who was not suited for the position (the positive assessment turned out false). False Negative - Someone who was not offered a position (negative), but who would have been suited to the position (the negative assessment was false). So those 15 are considered false negatives because they were not offered a position despite being qualified for it - e.g. perhaps there were only a limited number of positions, and the cut had to be made somewhere. > isn't the real-life result the same? Not quite. Increasing false positives is saying those people were given offers but they were not qualified for the job. Decreasing false negatives is saying they were qualified for the job and were picked ahead of other also qualified candidates. > That doesn't imply that at least a few women lucked out for being women, and not because of merit? When put like that, then relative to other applicants in the cohort yes, but not because they lack the merit to work at Google - and the latter is what many people were claiming he had stated, and what I was trying to refute. I can see how the former could also upset people, but if the claims he makes about priority queues for diversity hires, and reconsidering sets of candidates if they are not diverse enough (but not the other way around) are true, then it's not so much that he's claiming people are unqualified, rather he's pointing out a mathematical consequence of those hiring decisions. Insensitive? Perhaps, but to the level worthy of all the internet drama it has caused and to the level of being fired in such a public fashion? I'm not so sure, especially considering many people seem to have misinterpreted what he was saying - both in this and his other statements.