3 ms·

Professor has twice been denied tenure, and now she is seeking justice

12 points by pretext 5y ago

torstenvl 5y ago
Difficult to take this at face value when there are so many falsities and mischaracterizations. A "yard" is not Academy vernacular for anything, it's Navy vernacular, and that's a pretty meaningful distinction considering the subject of the article.
kweingar 5y ago
> Chun explains: “There are 3,003 scenarios where 10 people can be chosen from the 15 applicants, and only 11 scenarios where all 10 are men. All things being equal, the chance that the top 10 applicants would all be male is 11 out of 3,003.” Or, as Chun calculates it, the likelihood that gender discrimination occurred in the tenure process last year is over 99.6 percent. Everything else aside, this is a very poor argument. "All things being equal, the chance that John Smith won the lottery is 1 out of 10,000,000. Or, as I calculate it, the likelihood that the lottery was rigged in his favor is over 99.999%." There are plenty of arguments to make to support the idea that gender discrimination occurred here, but this is not one. This kind of reasoning has had disastrous consequences in criminal trials. People are inclined to think "given that this person is innocent, what is the likelihood of this outcome happening" when they should be thinking "given this outcome happening, what is the likelihood of the person being guilty", i.e. you need to consider actual evidence.
- version_five 5y ago
  Yes, pretending the raw statistical chance in any way speaks to whether discrimination occurred is absurd and can be summarily dismissed. The issue could be discrimination, but sour grapes type comments like this don't add to the case. Edit: I read your comment before reading the article. She's a math professor. That's even worse I would argue because she should know better. I had assumed she was in some nontechnical area and didn't understand statistics.
tiahura 5y ago
All things being equal …
- iab 5y ago
  From a mathematics professor, no less.
rdlecler1 5y ago
Fooled by randomness?

12 points by pretext 5y ago

Difficult to take this at face value when there are so many falsities and mischaracterizations. A "yard" is not Academy vernacular for anything, it's Navy vernacular, and that's a pretty meaningful distinction considering the subject of the article.

kweingar 5y ago

> Chun explains: “There are 3,003 scenarios where 10 people can be chosen from the 15 applicants, and only 11 scenarios where all 10 are men. All things being equal, the chance that the top 10 applicants would all be male is 11 out of 3,003.” Or, as Chun calculates it, the likelihood that gender discrimination occurred in the tenure process last year is over 99.6 percent. Everything else aside, this is a very poor argument. "All things being equal, the chance that John Smith won the lottery is 1 out of 10,000,000. Or, as I calculate it, the likelihood that the lottery was rigged in his favor is over 99.999%." There are plenty of arguments to make to support the idea that gender discrimination occurred here, but this is not one. This kind of reasoning has had disastrous consequences in criminal trials. People are inclined to think "given that this person is innocent, what is the likelihood of this outcome happening" when they should be thinking "given this outcome happening, what is the likelihood of the person being guilty", i.e. you need to consider actual evidence.

version_five 5y ago
Yes, pretending the raw statistical chance in any way speaks to whether discrimination occurred is absurd and can be summarily dismissed. The issue could be discrimination, but sour grapes type comments like this don't add to the case. Edit: I read your comment before reading the article. She's a math professor. That's even worse I would argue because she should know better. I had assumed she was in some nontechnical area and didn't understand statistics.

tiahura 5y ago

All things being equal …

iab 5y ago
From a mathematics professor, no less.

rdlecler1 5y ago

Fooled by randomness?