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You may have reached what you thought was a statistically significant size but unless you were selecting perfectly randomly - which I doubt you could in such an

You may have reached what you thought was a statistically significant size but unless you were selecting perfectly randomly - which I doubt you could in such an exercise - then it could not be called truly significant.

bigdipper 11y ago
Data was from random volunteers, and at that moment in time over 10% of the U.S. employee base. I say size was statistically significant not quality of data because there were senior engineers who had been with the company for 15+ years and would skew the datasets. We had lots of demographic data too. Can you guess which race and gender won?
- darawk 11y ago
  There is no such thing as a random volunteer.
  - natrius 11y ago
    True, but there are ways to mitigate that. YouGov tries to create a representative sample out of a batch of volunteers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov
    - darawk 11y ago
      I was very curious as to how they would attempt to mitigate that, but your link doesn't actually provide any information about it. I think I would somewhat cautiously state that it isn't something that is possible to mitigate. There are simply two cohorts: people who are willing to take online polls and people who are not. It is inherently impossible to gather this kind of data on the latter.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  >I say size was statistically significant not quality of data Size is not necessarily significant unless is a random selected sample (and I'm not sure volunteers would count as random). Let's say you have a population of 100 and there are two groups (A-80% and B- 20%). Let's say that individuals in group A are more keen to voluteer themselves. You could have a sample of 50% of the population and still not have a representative sample of their entire population (ie. 49 from A and 1 from B), so the sample size didn't matter to much in that case.
  - notfoss 11y ago
    > Size is not necessarily significant unless is a random selected sample (and I'm not sure volunteers would count as random). I would say that most surveys/studies are done on a voluntary basis.
    - pmelendez 11y ago
      >I would say that most surveys/studies are done on a voluntary basis. Also most surveys/studies carefully say that they are not necessarily representative.
      - notfoss 11y ago
        Yes, a disclaimer over the validity of the results would be nice ;). But to be fair, most surveys are taken rather seriously, especially by the common populace and the main stream media, ignoring the lack of absoluteness in the results.
    - Merovius 11y ago
      There is also a difference in e.g. stopping random people on the street and asking if they are willing to participate, or posting an ad online and waiting for people to call, even though both are voluntary.
- belorn 11y ago
  I would be careful with defining winners and losers. How does pay distribution inside any given group look like? What about the age distribution? Health? Overtime policy? Who assigns work and the degree of responsibility attached to each assignment? For example, if we define that white males get the highest page in average, we could also see in the same statistics that middle aged white males who suffer from health issues and can't compete in their group in overtime get less pay compared to someone with the same health and age group but of different race and gender. Are white males then winners?
shadowmint 11y ago
Two things; 1) Honestly, I doubt it matters how randomly the sample was selected, as long as it was representative of the population, does minor variation in the selection bias make much difference? Even if the results are 'only valid to this group of people' rather than, broadly, the entire Microsoft engineering team, I'd say it's probably reflective of the broader situation as well. Why would a small subset of the population have salary ranges that were deeply divergent from all the other groups? Sure, depends on the sample size, but that brings me to 2... 2) Really? I think that I'm pretty happy to accept that when a large group of engineers gets together and collects some data and then generates some results from it... ...they're not all completely retarded and have no idea what statistics are. If they came to the conclusion the results were biased, I think you'll find they did the math to justify those conclusions. People -> not stupid. Especially not large groups of engineers. (Also, while I'm here. What is 'statistically significant' anyhow? 99% +- 1%? Just throw some words around with out any meaning to them, and sure, we can totally argue about if things are significant or not)
- pmelendez 11y ago
  >...they're not all completely retarded and have no idea what statistics are. I am reading this right now: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Done-Wrong-Woefully-Complete/dp/1593276206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437213053&sr=8-1&keywords=statistics+done+wrong+the+woefully+complete+guide http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Done-Wrong-Woefully-Complet... You would be surprised how many talented people (even in engineering) make wrong conclusions in statistics.
  - shadowmint 11y ago
    Let me emphasize: '...they're not all completely retarded...' What's the chance that one lone engineer is pedantic in math and stats? Not 100%, sure. Not every engineer has that background, especially in computer related fields (is stats even taught in college for CS these days?). ...but that none of the people involved either 1) is pedantic and has a strong math/stats background, or 2) bothered to do some learning and read books (like that one) when working on either this, or some other stats related project? Really? Come on~ It beggars belief. I'm willing to wager that a random sample of 10 Microsoft engineers will include at least one person who understands stats. Otherwise, that company is completely broken.

bigdipper 11y ago

Data was from random volunteers, and at that moment in time over 10% of the U.S. employee base. I say size was statistically significant not quality of data because there were senior engineers who had been with the company for 15+ years and would skew the datasets. We had lots of demographic data too. Can you guess which race and gender won?

darawk 11y ago
There is no such thing as a random volunteer.
- natrius 11y ago
  True, but there are ways to mitigate that. YouGov tries to create a representative sample out of a batch of volunteers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov
  - darawk 11y ago
    I was very curious as to how they would attempt to mitigate that, but your link doesn't actually provide any information about it. I think I would somewhat cautiously state that it isn't something that is possible to mitigate. There are simply two cohorts: people who are willing to take online polls and people who are not. It is inherently impossible to gather this kind of data on the latter.
pmelendez 11y ago
>I say size was statistically significant not quality of data Size is not necessarily significant unless is a random selected sample (and I'm not sure volunteers would count as random). Let's say you have a population of 100 and there are two groups (A-80% and B- 20%). Let's say that individuals in group A are more keen to voluteer themselves. You could have a sample of 50% of the population and still not have a representative sample of their entire population (ie. 49 from A and 1 from B), so the sample size didn't matter to much in that case.
- notfoss 11y ago
  > Size is not necessarily significant unless is a random selected sample (and I'm not sure volunteers would count as random). I would say that most surveys/studies are done on a voluntary basis.
  - pmelendez 11y ago
    >I would say that most surveys/studies are done on a voluntary basis. Also most surveys/studies carefully say that they are not necessarily representative.
    - notfoss 11y ago
      Yes, a disclaimer over the validity of the results would be nice ;). But to be fair, most surveys are taken rather seriously, especially by the common populace and the main stream media, ignoring the lack of absoluteness in the results.
  - Merovius 11y ago
    There is also a difference in e.g. stopping random people on the street and asking if they are willing to participate, or posting an ad online and waiting for people to call, even though both are voluntary.
belorn 11y ago
I would be careful with defining winners and losers. How does pay distribution inside any given group look like? What about the age distribution? Health? Overtime policy? Who assigns work and the degree of responsibility attached to each assignment? For example, if we define that white males get the highest page in average, we could also see in the same statistics that middle aged white males who suffer from health issues and can't compete in their group in overtime get less pay compared to someone with the same health and age group but of different race and gender. Are white males then winners?

shadowmint 11y ago

Two things; 1) Honestly, I doubt it matters how randomly the sample was selected, as long as it was representative of the population, does minor variation in the selection bias make much difference? Even if the results are 'only valid to this group of people' rather than, broadly, the entire Microsoft engineering team, I'd say it's probably reflective of the broader situation as well. Why would a small subset of the population have salary ranges that were deeply divergent from all the other groups? Sure, depends on the sample size, but that brings me to 2... 2) Really? I think that I'm pretty happy to accept that when a large group of engineers gets together and collects some data and then generates some results from it... ...they're not all completely retarded and have no idea what statistics are. If they came to the conclusion the results were biased, I think you'll find they did the math to justify those conclusions. People -> not stupid. Especially not large groups of engineers. (Also, while I'm here. What is 'statistically significant' anyhow? 99% +- 1%? Just throw some words around with out any meaning to them, and sure, we can totally argue about if things are significant or not)

pmelendez 11y ago
>...they're not all completely retarded and have no idea what statistics are. I am reading this right now: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Done-Wrong-Woefully-Complete/dp/1593276206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437213053&sr=8-1&keywords=statistics+done+wrong+the+woefully+complete+guide http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Done-Wrong-Woefully-Complet... You would be surprised how many talented people (even in engineering) make wrong conclusions in statistics.
- shadowmint 11y ago
  Let me emphasize: '...they're not all completely retarded...' What's the chance that one lone engineer is pedantic in math and stats? Not 100%, sure. Not every engineer has that background, especially in computer related fields (is stats even taught in college for CS these days?). ...but that none of the people involved either 1) is pedantic and has a strong math/stats background, or 2) bothered to do some learning and read books (like that one) when working on either this, or some other stats related project? Really? Come on~ It beggars belief. I'm willing to wager that a random sample of 10 Microsoft engineers will include at least one person who understands stats. Otherwise, that company is completely broken.