7 ms·

Reminiscent of Simpson's Paradox, the most famous example being a gender discrimination lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley discriminated against women in admissions (

Reminiscent of Simpson's Paradox, the most famous example being a gender discrimination lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley discriminated against women in admissions (57% men vs. 43% women). It turned out there WAS bias - in favor of the women! "The lawsuit triggered a study. The study results showed that not only were women not discriminated against, but that women had a statistically significant advantage! Here’s what happened. Some departments had high acceptance rates and some had low acceptance rates. Women applied to more competitive departments. Men applied to more accessible departments. Taken on the whole men had an advantage. When broken down per department it was women who were more favored." https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox/ https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox/

77pt77 8y ago
Exactly what I thought. How this is even considered a paradox is a paradox to me. Human beings just have very strange presuppositions regarding probability and statistics that are almost always wrong.
- kingo55 8y ago
  Simpson's paradox is a statistical phenomenon where you can measure one outcome in aggregate (e.g. total average pay by gender) and the opposite outcome when you segment (e.g average pay by gender AND job). Univariate analyses can hide lots of interesting things! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox
  - klodolph 8y ago
    Simpson's paradox is easily my favorite paradox. Anyone interested in interpreting stats, even from a lay perspective, should familiarize themselves with it.
- oarabbus_ 8y ago
  what is not paradoxical about it
slg 8y ago
You got too distracted by the Simpson's Paradox reference to see the actual Simpson's Paradox in play. As sokoloff [1] pointed out in a below thread, Google having an overwhelming male workforce means that there could still be a large bias against women at the same time that more man are being underpaid. There is simply not enough information presented in this article to know whether there is truly a gender bias (in either direction) regarding how Google pays their employees. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > There is simply not enough information... Hmm... "Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money. " So, yes, we do have that information.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    I think we're moving the goalposts here: are we talking an abstract man, on average, in general earning more than an abstract, average women or we're talking about a different pay for the same work? My understanding is that we're talking about the latter.
    - cronix 8y ago
      Does "same work" also include the hours worked? Usually not. If someone completes x projects in y hours, and someone else completes the same x projects in z hours, are they the same? Both did "the same work," but one was more efficient and did it faster (presuming the quality of the work by both parties was equal).
      - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
        I assume most of Google employees are exempt, so the exact number of hours spent on a job is hard to calculate.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
titanix2 8y ago
We had something similar in France. There was enough people saying and believing that (ethnic) minorities are discriminated for employment to trigger a governmental supported study on the use of anonymous CV. The conclusion was that minorities were even less likely to get an interview with anonymized CV and were actually positivity discriminated against. Authors of study supposed that it is because some issues in the CV are judged less harshly if coming from a minority.
- haihaibye 8y ago
  Same experiment, same result in Australia: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-... In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door. ... Leaders of the Australian public service will today be told to "hit pause" on blind recruitment trials.
  - notadoc 8y ago
    Fascinating. I wonder why we these studies and their findings never gain much attention?
    - akvadrako 8y ago
      For one, it's not surprising; generally people prefer to help underdogs, not take advantage of them. For two, it doesn't make people angry, it just confuses the issue.
modzu 8y ago
stats. few are qualified to use them.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
There was no lawsuit in that Berkeley case. The article's source also does not claim there was a lawsuit. The author made that up out of whole cloth. The real reason for the Berkeley study is that the seeming acceptance disparity worried administrators, who proactively asked Bickel to look into it. https://outline.com/2HMrKV https://outline.com/2HMrKV
roguecoder 8y ago
So, they identified how discrimination was happening?
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
The study [1] didn't "show" what you say. It claimed there was a bias towards female applicants. To support this claim the study pointed out that the percentage of male applicants _out of all male_ applicants that were granted admission was lower than the percentage for female applicants, for all (examined) departments. However, according to the study, there were 8442 male applicants and 4321 female applicants. So while a larger proportion of female applicants were granted admission, it still meant that many fewer women were addmitted. To clarify, a higher proportion of a smaller number can still be a smaller number. 5% of 1000 is 50, 10% of 100 is 10. Imagine we split a pie in 10 pieces, you keep 8 and I keep 2. I eat my 2, you eat 4 of your 8 and then you accuse me of hogging the pie because I ate 100% of my share while you ate only half of yours. That is what the study actually showed happenned with admissions in Berkeley. _________________________ [1] Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data from Berkeley https://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/1030/Bickel-Berkeley.pdf https://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/1030/Bickel-Berkele...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pdonis 8y ago
  > the study pointed out that the percentage of male applicants _out of all male_ applicants that were granted admission was lower than the percentage for female applicants, for all (examined) departments. Where does the study say that? I find it saying that 44 percent of male applicants and 35 percent of female applicants were admitted, when totaled over all 101 departments.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    It's on section "Pooling", on page 7 of the pdf (400 in the original), second column, last parargraph starting with "We reanalyze Table 1, ...". In that paragraph, the authors state that they estimate the probability of admission of a female applicant "by multiplying the estimated probability of admission of any applicant (regardless of sex) to that department by the number of women applying to it", which I find reasonable. However, immediately afterwards they compare that probability with the probability of an applicant being admitted given that the applicant is female. I quote from the end of the second column and the start of the third one: "Thus, if the chances of getting into a department were one-half for all applicants to it, and 100 women applied, we would expect 50 women to be admitted if they were being treated just like the men". In other words, bias depends on whether the proportion of applicants of one sex, out of all applicants of _that_ sex, was higher than the expectation formed for applicants of any sex. It's a little confusing and the language in the article is not very precise. But that's what's up.
exadeci 8y ago
They did blind recruitment in Australia to fight inequalities and canceled everything when they realised that men were discriminated. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...

77pt77 8y ago

Exactly what I thought. How this is even considered a paradox is a paradox to me. Human beings just have very strange presuppositions regarding probability and statistics that are almost always wrong.

kingo55 8y ago
Simpson's paradox is a statistical phenomenon where you can measure one outcome in aggregate (e.g. total average pay by gender) and the opposite outcome when you segment (e.g average pay by gender AND job). Univariate analyses can hide lots of interesting things! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox
- klodolph 8y ago
  Simpson's paradox is easily my favorite paradox. Anyone interested in interpreting stats, even from a lay perspective, should familiarize themselves with it.
oarabbus_ 8y ago
what is not paradoxical about it

slg 8y ago

You got too distracted by the Simpson's Paradox reference to see the actual Simpson's Paradox in play. As sokoloff [1] pointed out in a below thread, Google having an overwhelming male workforce means that there could still be a large bias against women at the same time that more man are being underpaid. There is simply not enough information presented in this article to know whether there is truly a gender bias (in either direction) regarding how Google pays their employees. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989

mpweiher 8y ago
> There is simply not enough information... Hmm... "Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money. " So, yes, we do have that information.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  I think we're moving the goalposts here: are we talking an abstract man, on average, in general earning more than an abstract, average women or we're talking about a different pay for the same work? My understanding is that we're talking about the latter.
  - cronix 8y ago
    Does "same work" also include the hours worked? Usually not. If someone completes x projects in y hours, and someone else completes the same x projects in z hours, are they the same? Both did "the same work," but one was more efficient and did it faster (presuming the quality of the work by both parties was equal).
    - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
      I assume most of Google employees are exempt, so the exact number of hours spent on a job is hard to calculate.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

titanix2 8y ago

We had something similar in France. There was enough people saying and believing that (ethnic) minorities are discriminated for employment to trigger a governmental supported study on the use of anonymous CV. The conclusion was that minorities were even less likely to get an interview with anonymized CV and were actually positivity discriminated against. Authors of study supposed that it is because some issues in the CV are judged less harshly if coming from a minority.

haihaibye 8y ago
Same experiment, same result in Australia: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-... In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door. ... Leaders of the Australian public service will today be told to "hit pause" on blind recruitment trials.
- notadoc 8y ago
  Fascinating. I wonder why we these studies and their findings never gain much attention?
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    For one, it's not surprising; generally people prefer to help underdogs, not take advantage of them. For two, it doesn't make people angry, it just confuses the issue.

modzu 8y ago

stats. few are qualified to use them.

lern_too_spel 8y ago

There was no lawsuit in that Berkeley case. The article's source also does not claim there was a lawsuit. The author made that up out of whole cloth. The real reason for the Berkeley study is that the seeming acceptance disparity worried administrators, who proactively asked Bickel to look into it. https://outline.com/2HMrKV https://outline.com/2HMrKV

roguecoder 8y ago

So, they identified how discrimination was happening?

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

The study [1] didn't "show" what you say. It claimed there was a bias towards female applicants. To support this claim the study pointed out that the percentage of male applicants _out of all male_ applicants that were granted admission was lower than the percentage for female applicants, for all (examined) departments. However, according to the study, there were 8442 male applicants and 4321 female applicants. So while a larger proportion of female applicants were granted admission, it still meant that many fewer women were addmitted. To clarify, a higher proportion of a smaller number can still be a smaller number. 5% of 1000 is 50, 10% of 100 is 10. Imagine we split a pie in 10 pieces, you keep 8 and I keep 2. I eat my 2, you eat 4 of your 8 and then you accuse me of hogging the pie because I ate 100% of my share while you ate only half of yours. That is what the study actually showed happenned with admissions in Berkeley. _________________________ [1] Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data from Berkeley https://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/1030/Bickel-Berkeley.pdf https://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/1030/Bickel-Berkele...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pdonis 8y ago
> the study pointed out that the percentage of male applicants _out of all male_ applicants that were granted admission was lower than the percentage for female applicants, for all (examined) departments. Where does the study say that? I find it saying that 44 percent of male applicants and 35 percent of female applicants were admitted, when totaled over all 101 departments.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  It's on section "Pooling", on page 7 of the pdf (400 in the original), second column, last parargraph starting with "We reanalyze Table 1, ...". In that paragraph, the authors state that they estimate the probability of admission of a female applicant "by multiplying the estimated probability of admission of any applicant (regardless of sex) to that department by the number of women applying to it", which I find reasonable. However, immediately afterwards they compare that probability with the probability of an applicant being admitted given that the applicant is female. I quote from the end of the second column and the start of the third one: "Thus, if the chances of getting into a department were one-half for all applicants to it, and 100 women applied, we would expect 50 women to be admitted if they were being treated just like the men". In other words, bias depends on whether the proportion of applicants of one sex, out of all applicants of _that_ sex, was higher than the expectation formed for applicants of any sex. It's a little confusing and the language in the article is not very precise. But that's what's up.

exadeci 8y ago

They did blind recruitment in Australia to fight inequalities and canceled everything when they realised that men were discriminated. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...