7 ms·

Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

48 points by marcia 14y ago

namank 14y ago
Meritocracy is like traditional view of objectivity that knowledge exists without the knower. Truth of the matter is, knowledge exists without the knower but it is not independent of the knower. This is why 14 year olds writing app is a reason for celebration and why encouraging more females is a good thing. By doing so, we allow our work to expand to incorporate the values that those group represent, which is important because our work is user-centric, it doesn't stand by itself. If the work doesn't stand by itself, how can its creators?
- jfim 14y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it the exact opposite of a meritocracy? If someone makes something awesome, it doesn't really matter if they're 14 year olds, women, men or aliens. I know at least I'd high five someone who made something cool, regardless of gender/age/other factors.
  - cantastoria 14y ago
    The parent is describing the postmodern definition of Meritocracy where "merit" is just a point view. In that world all achievements/failures must be evaluated in light of the person or group's privilege/race/class/gender and sexuality. People who subscribe to this definition really don't believe in meritocracy as it's generally viewed as a way to institutionalize white male advantage. Just a heads up :)
    - eshvk 14y ago
      I am not sure whether this is what the parent meant. I mean one way of looking at it is that the more people from completely different backgrounds do things, the more interesting the work gets. E.g. it is possible that some people (teens, women) have a better perspective on solving some problems that affect them more. I generally support the success of more people from varied backgrounds in tech. Mainly because it makes for a wider variance in problems that get solved. It gets tiring to see every startup out there that solves problems for 20 something people who live in San Francisco (who incidentally might be male, asian/white...). This does not however mean that I ascribe to the idea that one should impose quotas or have lower standards for people who don't fit in these demographics.
      - yummyfajitas 14y ago
        E.g. it is possible that some people (teens, women) have a better perspective on solving some problems that affect them more. Is it possible that some people (men, whites, asians) have a better perspective on solving some problems?
        namank 14y ago
        It is not about the exclusion of some people as much as it about the inclusion of all.
    - namank 14y ago
      While I did borrow from feminist epistomology, that's not the point. Simply put, having a diverse workforce is better because it introduces diversity in work.
    - jfim 14y ago
      I completely agree with you that there is more merit(effort) in coming from a disadvantaged background (say x-5) and getting to point x than coming from a wealthier background (x-3) and getting to point x. I believe though that a meritocracy is a system where people are selected based on an objective criterion, regardless of the above definition of merit and completely orthogonally to privilege/race/class/gender.
      - mjmahone17 14y ago
        I believe though that a meritocracy is a system where people are selected based on an objective criterion, regardless of the above definition of merit Why? If two candidates are equal in every way, why not favor the one coming from a disadvantaged background? Shouldn't they be more, rather than equally, likely to achieve more given the same future resources?
    - hacker789 14y ago
      It's disheartening to watch online communities turn on themselves as they become infected with the cancer of postmodern feminism. It's a bullying, disempowering, dissent-crushing and divisive[1] ideology that erases individual experiences, obsesses over things one cannot control, demonizes nuance, and glorifies experiencing alleged "oppression", as defined in Marxist terms. It's toxic. Unless things change, the evaporative cooling effect will leave Hacker News a divisive, infighting shell of its former self. Hopefully, a few new, positive communities will have sprouted by then. I'm constantly on the lookout. [1] Look beneath the surface of any postmodern Marxist, anarchist, or feminist community, and you'll quickly see that dissent is completely non-tolerated, often in comical fashion. "Check your privilege" and similar anti-intellectualisms are internally thrown around like candy over any disagreement, new members are expected to prostrate themselves, and sub-communities are constantly splintering off and reemerging under new "leaders".
      - namank 14y ago
        Erases individual experiences? That's exactly the opposite of what feminist epistemology proposes, hacker789.
  - namank 14y ago
    The concept of regardless is lost in a meritocracy given the terms of measurement are defined by the the dominant group, which may or may not reflect the required knowledge for the betterment of the system. For example, if you have a computer science scientist judging the validity of a physics experiment, you are not doing the physicist and physics justice, are you? If your meritocracy supports computer scientists, what chance does the physicist have?
cantastoria 14y ago
I'm curious to know what aspects of Khan's recruiting/admission policies resulted in such a large number of female admissions. It would be nice if the authors' response included some description of their policies. As the person who stands at the end of our hiring process’s pipeline, I find “Mark“‘s idea that we’re sacrificing quality to fill some quota merely very insulting. If I were one of the women who has successfully navigated our brutal interview process, I’d be furious. This is said as if there is no basis for "Mark's" belief. Affirmative action programs are notorious for establishing two-tier admissions policies for the sole purpose of fostering "diversity". While official quotas are illegal, it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts. What's to make us think that's not what's at work here? Especially given that increasing female enrollment was a high priority given that there are so many "big smiles" when it was achieved. Again, some transparency would be nice. Edited for spelling and grammar
- gnosis 14y ago
  "it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts" SATs have been criticised for having inherent socioeconomic bias. The validity of both SATs and GPAs, and their appropriateness as gauges of student intelligence, future performance, learning, and appropriateness for use in admissions have all been questioned.
  - LockeWatts 14y ago
    Do you have a better criterion with which to measure?
    - mjmahone17 14y ago
      How about proven ability to overcome adversity?
      - LockeWatts 14y ago
HeyImAlex 14y ago
How can people who claim to be meritocratic immediately cry "discrimination! misandry!" when women outperform men? Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on. And being excited about a historically underrepresented group overcoming adversity isn't the same thing as "we are favoring primarily women applications". Anyone who's actually meritocratic would be ecstatic that the walls in tech are slowly dissolving away.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on. It's not that women can never be better candidates, it is merely that this is unlikely. Consider a set of applications, 20% of which come from women (fairly typical numbers, from what I've read). Assume women and men are equally skilled. If 30 interns are selected without bias, the odds of choosing at least 60% women (18/30) is quite small: In [1]: from scipy.stats import binom In [2]: rv = binom(30, 0.2) In [3]: 1-rv.cdf(0.60*30) Out[3]: 2.8432472531925157e-07 So unless the applicant pool was extremely unusual, it is unlikely that a pool of 2/3 women was selected due to merit. Anyone have more exact numbers to plug into this calculation? Perhaps kamens can give us some more exact numbers? (Of course, in a much smaller applicant pool, e.g. 6 students, you might arrive at results like this due to random chance.)
  - khuey 14y ago
    Assuming men and women are equally skilled is a big assumption. Given that few women enter CS, and many who do leave, it would not be surprising to find that the remaining women who have not been selected out somehow are in fact more skilled than the average male engineer.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Your reasoning contains no fact specific to women. Thus, it should be valid for me to substitute any other group which is underrepresented in computing: Given that few retards enter CS, and many who do leave, it would not be surprising to find that the remaining retards who have not been selected out somehow are in fact more skilled than the average non-retard engineer. It also still doesn't make a >60% women class remotely likely - even if women make up 40% of the top engineers, the odds of recruiting at least 60% women in a 30 person class is only only 0.83%. (PC note: I am only asserting that women are similar to retards in the sense that khuey's argument applies to both of them. No other similarity is asserted or implied.)
spamizbad 14y ago
Are tech internships a big enough deal with people to merit this controversy? Don't tell me you need to participate in one these days to break into the industry(if so, that's sad).
- LockeWatts 14y ago
  I'm in college presently, and to get into the tech world, it's a requirement from where I'm sitting. Good candidates have multiple ones with big name companies\hot start ups.
  - spamizbad 14y ago
    Boo, that stinks. Personally, I think internships are bullshit unless they're having you work on genuinely interesting stuff like Google's Summer of Code. I must have been pretty lucky as I never had to jump through any credentialing hoops to break into the industry (That was in '05, pre-bubble no less. Didn't even finish college). If I were you, I'd pair up with a co-founder, come up with an idea, and apply to one of the incubators while you're still young. Don't waste your youth trying to impress HR drones. Or, if you want to look-before-you-leap, just "intern" at a less sexy startup (You'll learn the same stuff pretty much)
    - spicyj 14y ago
      At Khan Academy, we certainly do our best to have interns work on "genuinely interesting stuff", and we put huge emphasis on good mentorship, more so than is probably possible with a remote program like GSoC. Here's a bit more info about our internship program: https://www.khanacademy.org/careers/interns https://www.khanacademy.org/careers/interns Don't miss the stories from past interns linked on the left.
rjknight 14y ago
One of the commonly-stated reasons for why discrimination persists in a field is that people making hiring decisions are biased. They might not know that they're biased, but they have some notions about the kind of people they want to see working for their company, and they disproportionately hire those people. This is quite an insidious form of discrimination because it's hard to prove, but it is possible to catch people out - for instance if they display a preference for talking to or dealing with male colleagues over female ones, or give more rewards, perks or encouragement to male colleagues. There doesn't need to be a "guys only" sign above the door for this to be a discriminatory environment. Now, the original "Girls, girls, girls" post talks about how "super exciting" it is for KA to have hired twice as many female interns as male ones, how the women at KA network together, how there are exclusive events for female staff where female leadership is advocated. I know what Jessica was trying to say there, but damn if it didn't wind up looking somewhat like the stuff I described in my first paragraph. Now, I do not believe that KA has done anything wrong, but I don't think it's unreasonable for some people to question this. This (as I post every time there's a sexism thread, I really should just get a blog or something) is all controversial because people are applying different ethical rules. Some people are applying deontological ethics, which says that there are rules about how to behave, and we should follow those rules (e.g. don't discriminate based on gender). They look at the "Girls, girls, girls" post and see things that look like they might break the rules against doing the stuff I described in my first paragraph. They're not actually looking at the "big picture" because they don't believe that, philosophically speaking, the ends can be used to justify the means. If bias is wrong, being biased in favour of a minority group is still wrong, in this view. There's another more pragmatic view, which says that we should care mostly about outcomes, especially if no particularly great harms are being inflicted in order to achieve better outcomes. Although I generally lean more towards the rule-based view, in this case, I think KA is pretty clearly producing a good outcome and even if there is some bias[1] then it's not really the end of the world. But I wouldn't condemn or insult someone who thought differently. [1] A key point about bias and discrimination is that people aren't (and often can't be!) aware of their own biases. If people from KA want to claim that they're totally without bias, that's going to make it hard to accuse other people of bias in the future. This is, sadly, just a Hard Problem and the various problems inherent in solving it are why we keep having lengthy discussions like this.
abraxasz 14y ago
I'm from a minority, and I'm currently enrolled in a phd program (well, about to enroll in september) in a top university. I've been working really, really, really hard to get there. Like, really hard. So it does piss me off when people just waive their hands and say: "pfff, must have been affirmative action or something". That being said, I understand their reaction. When I put myself in a white male's shoes and I hear every day that we should remedy this and this instance of blatant discrimination, and the next day I hear that a company celebrates the fact that there are more women/blacks/whatever being hired, then it's true that the connection: they got hired BECAUSE they where women/black is a rather tempting conclusion.. and is sometimes true. I think that some companies are at fault here, using anti-discrimination as a PR move. This can, and I think, does antagonize a lot of people, and is counter productive.
- rjknight 14y ago
  "Discretion is the better part of valour" springs to mind. If I hired some great women for development roles and my first thought was to write a blog post saying "look at these great women I hired", I'd be doing something wrong. It detracts from the fact that they're actually great developers, and if they weren't then I wouldn't have hired them.
yummyfajitas 14y ago
Transparency has been requested by several people, and I think it would be helpful to flesh out transparency. Here are a few quantitative questions which would help us get closer to the truth: What % of the applicant pool was women? What % of the potentially qualified applicant pool was women? [1] How many interns were hired? [2] Are there any objective numbers (i.e., besides the # hired) to suggest that a large fraction of the most qualified people were women? [1] These numbers can allow us to do the same calculation I did here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5233153 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5233153), or even a proper Bayesian probability update. [2] I.e., if 3 interns were hired, this is a tempest in a teapot caused by a statistical fluke.
JDDunn9 14y ago
The world doesn't have to be evenly divided. Just because you see a group of people that are under-represented in a field doesn't mean it needs to be adjusted. We don't need to push for more white people in the NBA. We don't need to push for more men to become nurses. We need to push for equality of opportunity, not outcome.
tzs 14y ago
Maybe I overlooked it, but I didn't see any mention of the size of the intern class. A 2:1 ratio in a very small class has quite different implications than a 2:1 ratio in a very large class.
- spicyj 14y ago
  At the time of the post, it was 4 women, 2 men. (Now it's 4 women, 3 men.)

48 points by marcia 14y ago

Meritocracy is like traditional view of objectivity that knowledge exists without the knower. Truth of the matter is, knowledge exists without the knower but it is not independent of the knower. This is why 14 year olds writing app is a reason for celebration and why encouraging more females is a good thing. By doing so, we allow our work to expand to incorporate the values that those group represent, which is important because our work is user-centric, it doesn't stand by itself. If the work doesn't stand by itself, how can its creators?

jfim 14y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it the exact opposite of a meritocracy? If someone makes something awesome, it doesn't really matter if they're 14 year olds, women, men or aliens. I know at least I'd high five someone who made something cool, regardless of gender/age/other factors.
- cantastoria 14y ago
  The parent is describing the postmodern definition of Meritocracy where "merit" is just a point view. In that world all achievements/failures must be evaluated in light of the person or group's privilege/race/class/gender and sexuality. People who subscribe to this definition really don't believe in meritocracy as it's generally viewed as a way to institutionalize white male advantage. Just a heads up :)
  - eshvk 14y ago
    I am not sure whether this is what the parent meant. I mean one way of looking at it is that the more people from completely different backgrounds do things, the more interesting the work gets. E.g. it is possible that some people (teens, women) have a better perspective on solving some problems that affect them more. I generally support the success of more people from varied backgrounds in tech. Mainly because it makes for a wider variance in problems that get solved. It gets tiring to see every startup out there that solves problems for 20 something people who live in San Francisco (who incidentally might be male, asian/white...). This does not however mean that I ascribe to the idea that one should impose quotas or have lower standards for people who don't fit in these demographics.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      E.g. it is possible that some people (teens, women) have a better perspective on solving some problems that affect them more. Is it possible that some people (men, whites, asians) have a better perspective on solving some problems?
      - namank 14y ago
        It is not about the exclusion of some people as much as it about the inclusion of all.
  - namank 14y ago
    While I did borrow from feminist epistomology, that's not the point. Simply put, having a diverse workforce is better because it introduces diversity in work.
  - jfim 14y ago
    I completely agree with you that there is more merit(effort) in coming from a disadvantaged background (say x-5) and getting to point x than coming from a wealthier background (x-3) and getting to point x. I believe though that a meritocracy is a system where people are selected based on an objective criterion, regardless of the above definition of merit and completely orthogonally to privilege/race/class/gender.
    - mjmahone17 14y ago
      I believe though that a meritocracy is a system where people are selected based on an objective criterion, regardless of the above definition of merit Why? If two candidates are equal in every way, why not favor the one coming from a disadvantaged background? Shouldn't they be more, rather than equally, likely to achieve more given the same future resources?
  - hacker789 14y ago
    It's disheartening to watch online communities turn on themselves as they become infected with the cancer of postmodern feminism. It's a bullying, disempowering, dissent-crushing and divisive[1] ideology that erases individual experiences, obsesses over things one cannot control, demonizes nuance, and glorifies experiencing alleged "oppression", as defined in Marxist terms. It's toxic. Unless things change, the evaporative cooling effect will leave Hacker News a divisive, infighting shell of its former self. Hopefully, a few new, positive communities will have sprouted by then. I'm constantly on the lookout. [1] Look beneath the surface of any postmodern Marxist, anarchist, or feminist community, and you'll quickly see that dissent is completely non-tolerated, often in comical fashion. "Check your privilege" and similar anti-intellectualisms are internally thrown around like candy over any disagreement, new members are expected to prostrate themselves, and sub-communities are constantly splintering off and reemerging under new "leaders".
    - namank 14y ago
      Erases individual experiences? That's exactly the opposite of what feminist epistemology proposes, hacker789.
- namank 14y ago
  The concept of regardless is lost in a meritocracy given the terms of measurement are defined by the the dominant group, which may or may not reflect the required knowledge for the betterment of the system. For example, if you have a computer science scientist judging the validity of a physics experiment, you are not doing the physicist and physics justice, are you? If your meritocracy supports computer scientists, what chance does the physicist have?

cantastoria 14y ago

I'm curious to know what aspects of Khan's recruiting/admission policies resulted in such a large number of female admissions. It would be nice if the authors' response included some description of their policies. As the person who stands at the end of our hiring process’s pipeline, I find “Mark“‘s idea that we’re sacrificing quality to fill some quota merely very insulting. If I were one of the women who has successfully navigated our brutal interview process, I’d be furious. This is said as if there is no basis for "Mark's" belief. Affirmative action programs are notorious for establishing two-tier admissions policies for the sole purpose of fostering "diversity". While official quotas are illegal, it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts. What's to make us think that's not what's at work here? Especially given that increasing female enrollment was a high priority given that there are so many "big smiles" when it was achieved. Again, some transparency would be nice. Edited for spelling and grammar

gnosis 14y ago
"it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts" SATs have been criticised for having inherent socioeconomic bias. The validity of both SATs and GPAs, and their appropriateness as gauges of student intelligence, future performance, learning, and appropriateness for use in admissions have all been questioned.
- LockeWatts 14y ago
  Do you have a better criterion with which to measure?
  - mjmahone17 14y ago
    How about proven ability to overcome adversity?
    - LockeWatts 14y ago

HeyImAlex 14y ago

How can people who claim to be meritocratic immediately cry "discrimination! misandry!" when women outperform men? Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on. And being excited about a historically underrepresented group overcoming adversity isn't the same thing as "we are favoring primarily women applications". Anyone who's actually meritocratic would be ecstatic that the walls in tech are slowly dissolving away.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on. It's not that women can never be better candidates, it is merely that this is unlikely. Consider a set of applications, 20% of which come from women (fairly typical numbers, from what I've read). Assume women and men are equally skilled. If 30 interns are selected without bias, the odds of choosing at least 60% women (18/30) is quite small: In [1]: from scipy.stats import binom In [2]: rv = binom(30, 0.2) In [3]: 1-rv.cdf(0.60*30) Out[3]: 2.8432472531925157e-07 So unless the applicant pool was extremely unusual, it is unlikely that a pool of 2/3 women was selected due to merit. Anyone have more exact numbers to plug into this calculation? Perhaps kamens can give us some more exact numbers? (Of course, in a much smaller applicant pool, e.g. 6 students, you might arrive at results like this due to random chance.)
- khuey 14y ago
  Assuming men and women are equally skilled is a big assumption. Given that few women enter CS, and many who do leave, it would not be surprising to find that the remaining women who have not been selected out somehow are in fact more skilled than the average male engineer.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Your reasoning contains no fact specific to women. Thus, it should be valid for me to substitute any other group which is underrepresented in computing: Given that few retards enter CS, and many who do leave, it would not be surprising to find that the remaining retards who have not been selected out somehow are in fact more skilled than the average non-retard engineer. It also still doesn't make a >60% women class remotely likely - even if women make up 40% of the top engineers, the odds of recruiting at least 60% women in a 30 person class is only only 0.83%. (PC note: I am only asserting that women are similar to retards in the sense that khuey's argument applies to both of them. No other similarity is asserted or implied.)

spamizbad 14y ago

Are tech internships a big enough deal with people to merit this controversy? Don't tell me you need to participate in one these days to break into the industry(if so, that's sad).

LockeWatts 14y ago
I'm in college presently, and to get into the tech world, it's a requirement from where I'm sitting. Good candidates have multiple ones with big name companies\hot start ups.
- spamizbad 14y ago
  Boo, that stinks. Personally, I think internships are bullshit unless they're having you work on genuinely interesting stuff like Google's Summer of Code. I must have been pretty lucky as I never had to jump through any credentialing hoops to break into the industry (That was in '05, pre-bubble no less. Didn't even finish college). If I were you, I'd pair up with a co-founder, come up with an idea, and apply to one of the incubators while you're still young. Don't waste your youth trying to impress HR drones. Or, if you want to look-before-you-leap, just "intern" at a less sexy startup (You'll learn the same stuff pretty much)
  - spicyj 14y ago
    At Khan Academy, we certainly do our best to have interns work on "genuinely interesting stuff", and we put huge emphasis on good mentorship, more so than is probably possible with a remote program like GSoC. Here's a bit more info about our internship program: https://www.khanacademy.org/careers/interns https://www.khanacademy.org/careers/interns Don't miss the stories from past interns linked on the left.

rjknight 14y ago

One of the commonly-stated reasons for why discrimination persists in a field is that people making hiring decisions are biased. They might not know that they're biased, but they have some notions about the kind of people they want to see working for their company, and they disproportionately hire those people. This is quite an insidious form of discrimination because it's hard to prove, but it is possible to catch people out - for instance if they display a preference for talking to or dealing with male colleagues over female ones, or give more rewards, perks or encouragement to male colleagues. There doesn't need to be a "guys only" sign above the door for this to be a discriminatory environment. Now, the original "Girls, girls, girls" post talks about how "super exciting" it is for KA to have hired twice as many female interns as male ones, how the women at KA network together, how there are exclusive events for female staff where female leadership is advocated. I know what Jessica was trying to say there, but damn if it didn't wind up looking somewhat like the stuff I described in my first paragraph. Now, I do not believe that KA has done anything wrong, but I don't think it's unreasonable for some people to question this. This (as I post every time there's a sexism thread, I really should just get a blog or something) is all controversial because people are applying different ethical rules. Some people are applying deontological ethics, which says that there are rules about how to behave, and we should follow those rules (e.g. don't discriminate based on gender). They look at the "Girls, girls, girls" post and see things that look like they might break the rules against doing the stuff I described in my first paragraph. They're not actually looking at the "big picture" because they don't believe that, philosophically speaking, the ends can be used to justify the means. If bias is wrong, being biased in favour of a minority group is still wrong, in this view. There's another more pragmatic view, which says that we should care mostly about outcomes, especially if no particularly great harms are being inflicted in order to achieve better outcomes. Although I generally lean more towards the rule-based view, in this case, I think KA is pretty clearly producing a good outcome and even if there is some bias[1] then it's not really the end of the world. But I wouldn't condemn or insult someone who thought differently. [1] A key point about bias and discrimination is that people aren't (and often can't be!) aware of their own biases. If people from KA want to claim that they're totally without bias, that's going to make it hard to accuse other people of bias in the future. This is, sadly, just a Hard Problem and the various problems inherent in solving it are why we keep having lengthy discussions like this.

abraxasz 14y ago

I'm from a minority, and I'm currently enrolled in a phd program (well, about to enroll in september) in a top university. I've been working really, really, really hard to get there. Like, really hard. So it does piss me off when people just waive their hands and say: "pfff, must have been affirmative action or something". That being said, I understand their reaction. When I put myself in a white male's shoes and I hear every day that we should remedy this and this instance of blatant discrimination, and the next day I hear that a company celebrates the fact that there are more women/blacks/whatever being hired, then it's true that the connection: they got hired BECAUSE they where women/black is a rather tempting conclusion.. and is sometimes true. I think that some companies are at fault here, using anti-discrimination as a PR move. This can, and I think, does antagonize a lot of people, and is counter productive.

rjknight 14y ago
"Discretion is the better part of valour" springs to mind. If I hired some great women for development roles and my first thought was to write a blog post saying "look at these great women I hired", I'd be doing something wrong. It detracts from the fact that they're actually great developers, and if they weren't then I wouldn't have hired them.

yummyfajitas 14y ago

Transparency has been requested by several people, and I think it would be helpful to flesh out transparency. Here are a few quantitative questions which would help us get closer to the truth: What % of the applicant pool was women? What % of the potentially qualified applicant pool was women? [1] How many interns were hired? [2] Are there any objective numbers (i.e., besides the # hired) to suggest that a large fraction of the most qualified people were women? [1] These numbers can allow us to do the same calculation I did here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5233153 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5233153), or even a proper Bayesian probability update. [2] I.e., if 3 interns were hired, this is a tempest in a teapot caused by a statistical fluke.

JDDunn9 14y ago

The world doesn't have to be evenly divided. Just because you see a group of people that are under-represented in a field doesn't mean it needs to be adjusted. We don't need to push for more white people in the NBA. We don't need to push for more men to become nurses. We need to push for equality of opportunity, not outcome.

tzs 14y ago

Maybe I overlooked it, but I didn't see any mention of the size of the intern class. A 2:1 ratio in a very small class has quite different implications than a 2:1 ratio in a very large class.

spicyj 14y ago
At the time of the post, it was 4 women, 2 men. (Now it's 4 women, 3 men.)