4 ms·

You've computed the odds that at least 40 of the 67 union members get laid off, bargaining team member or not. You actually want the odds of a specific set of

by vitus 3y ago

You've computed the odds that at least 40 of the 67 union members get laid off, bargaining team member or not. You actually want the odds of a specific set of 40 individuals getting laid off. It looks like Bandcamp had 118 employees and 60 layoffs per various news outlets (and on the wikipedia page [0]). Assuming each employee was equally likely to get laid off given the target retention [1], you could compute this from the binomial distribution using "number of ways to predetermine those 40 are getting laid off, plus 20 from the remainder, divided by number of ways to select 60 individuals out of 118". Or, more concisely, (78 choose 20) / (118 choose 60), which is actually closer to 10^-16 (2 orders of magnitude more unlikely than the simple approximation of 2^-40, which assumes an infinitely large pool). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp : "Songtradr stated that only 60 of Bandcamp's previously 118 workers had been offered a contract." [1] This is by no means guaranteed.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> You've computed the odds that at least 40 of the 67 union members get laid off, bargaining team member or not. Well, close. I've computed the odds that at least 40 of a group of 67 special people get laid off. There is another comment in this thread suggesting that 67 is the number of bargaining team members. I don't know, because I haven't read the article. So my calculation might or might not be right, depending on whether you interpreted the article correctly or the handful of people taking the other position did. My interpretation was that 40 out of 67 union members got fired, which appears to have been wrong. However... > You actually want the odds of a specific set of 40 individuals getting laid off. I definitely don't want that. You never want to make a comparison against a specific outcome when you ask "what are the odds?" like this. All specific outcomes are rare, so that question will never tell you anything informative. (I almost wrote "will never tell you anything useful", but if what you're looking for is a scapegoat, you might find the calculation you propose useful for that. It's not useful for anything else, and frankly it's a disgrace that you suggested it.) edit: This is what the article says: > “On Monday, October 16, 2023 over half of Bandcamp was laid off as a result of Epic Games’ divestiture to Songtradr,” Bandcamp United said in a statement. “Of those laid off, 40 were in the union bargaining unit out of a total 67 members. None of the eight (8) democratically elected bargaining team members received a job offer.” So it looks like there are these groups: - bandcamp employees (number unknown) - union members (number unknown) - union members on the bargaining team (67) - union members on the bargaining team who got laid off (40) - union members elected to the bargaining team (8) - union members elected to the bargaining team, who got laid off (8) This suggests that the calculation I gave was the same one that was sought, and also that the base rate, as far as we believe in it, was over 50%. Remember that shifting the odds of being fired from 50% to 53% more than doubled the odds of seeing the pattern we did see.
- eep_social 3y ago
  - bandcamp employees (number unknown) 118 (ironically, not 120) per https://finance.yahoo.com/news/half-bandcamps-120-person-staff-235934126.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/half-bandcamps-120-person-sta...
- vitus 3y ago
  The calculation you provided is probably more closely represented as "what is the likelihood that the outcomes affecting the union were random happenstance, versus the union members being singled out". I incorrectly conflated the number of laid off union members with the total number of "special" individuals, while only 8 of them were actually "special" (i.e. democratically elected bargaining team members). It'd be more accurate to describe that probability of the impact to the bargaining team as (110 choose 52) / (118 choose 60) which comes out to about 0.35%, not too far off from the 2^-8 estimate (0.4%) that your approach of using the binomial distribution on this same set would result in. Both approaches would yield similar results, and the result is still somewhat in the realm of plausible deniability. > All specific outcomes are rare, so that question will never tell you anything informative. I'm not describing any specific outcomes in this case, though. You could throw up your hands and say "oh, we laid off these specific 60 people, there's only a 10^-34 chance of picking exactly those 60 people out of 118". That would absolutely be useless. I'm describing the event that "all of this one group got laid off" as a subset of the space of possible outcomes given what we observed, and ascribing a probability to that event. I will admit I used the wrong inputs, but I stand by my approach.

by vitus 3y ago

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> You've computed the odds that at least 40 of the 67 union members get laid off, bargaining team member or not. Well, close. I've computed the odds that at least 40 of a group of 67 special people get laid off. There is another comment in this thread suggesting that 67 is the number of bargaining team members. I don't know, because I haven't read the article. So my calculation might or might not be right, depending on whether you interpreted the article correctly or the handful of people taking the other position did. My interpretation was that 40 out of 67 union members got fired, which appears to have been wrong. However... > You actually want the odds of a specific set of 40 individuals getting laid off. I definitely don't want that. You never want to make a comparison against a specific outcome when you ask "what are the odds?" like this. All specific outcomes are rare, so that question will never tell you anything informative. (I almost wrote "will never tell you anything useful", but if what you're looking for is a scapegoat, you might find the calculation you propose useful for that. It's not useful for anything else, and frankly it's a disgrace that you suggested it.) edit: This is what the article says: > “On Monday, October 16, 2023 over half of Bandcamp was laid off as a result of Epic Games’ divestiture to Songtradr,” Bandcamp United said in a statement. “Of those laid off, 40 were in the union bargaining unit out of a total 67 members. None of the eight (8) democratically elected bargaining team members received a job offer.” So it looks like there are these groups: - bandcamp employees (number unknown) - union members (number unknown) - union members on the bargaining team (67) - union members on the bargaining team who got laid off (40) - union members elected to the bargaining team (8) - union members elected to the bargaining team, who got laid off (8) This suggests that the calculation I gave was the same one that was sought, and also that the base rate, as far as we believe in it, was over 50%. Remember that shifting the odds of being fired from 50% to 53% more than doubled the odds of seeing the pattern we did see.

eep_social 3y ago
- bandcamp employees (number unknown) 118 (ironically, not 120) per https://finance.yahoo.com/news/half-bandcamps-120-person-staff-235934126.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/half-bandcamps-120-person-sta...
vitus 3y ago
The calculation you provided is probably more closely represented as "what is the likelihood that the outcomes affecting the union were random happenstance, versus the union members being singled out". I incorrectly conflated the number of laid off union members with the total number of "special" individuals, while only 8 of them were actually "special" (i.e. democratically elected bargaining team members). It'd be more accurate to describe that probability of the impact to the bargaining team as (110 choose 52) / (118 choose 60) which comes out to about 0.35%, not too far off from the 2^-8 estimate (0.4%) that your approach of using the binomial distribution on this same set would result in. Both approaches would yield similar results, and the result is still somewhat in the realm of plausible deniability. > All specific outcomes are rare, so that question will never tell you anything informative. I'm not describing any specific outcomes in this case, though. You could throw up your hands and say "oh, we laid off these specific 60 people, there's only a 10^-34 chance of picking exactly those 60 people out of 118". That would absolutely be useless. I'm describing the event that "all of this one group got laid off" as a subset of the space of possible outcomes given what we observed, and ascribing a probability to that event. I will admit I used the wrong inputs, but I stand by my approach.