Dennis,
Having the salary data would be desirable. If, on the other
hand, we are only interested in the question "Did the female
biologists at MIT perform as well as their male colleagues,"
your comment is incorrect.
The "dinky" sample size is the entire population, and the
answer can be ascertained. See my Gork example earlier in this thread.
I think there is a conflation of issues. I definitely resonate
to your suggestion [allow me the temporary luxury of interpretation]
that the "utility function" relating citation counts, publication
rates, etc. to academic value is uncertain, and there are a host
of other factors to consider before determining whether anyone
was discriminated against at MIT.
However -- MIT's assertion that it could not release any information
without compromising privacy is obviously untrue. For example, I'm
sure that, had we put you in charge of the investigation, you could
have found ways to describe the committee's methodology [assuming it
actually had any] that would not involve releasing individual data,
but would serve to allow the public to evaluate the process.
In fact, you've made a start at doing that in your posts.
MIT went further than denying the public access to the facts,
or any information about the facts. It specifically denied
that the differential outcomes occurred because the women
"were not good enough," and declared the very question out
of bounds, i.e., "the last refuge of the bigot."
Their comments are analogous to the following.
"Mark Snurd is one of the top .1% baskeball players in the U.S.
So is Michael Jordan. Yet Jordan makes 50 times what Snurd does.
This is discrimination."
"Given Snurd's obvious excellence the suggestion that he makes
less than Jordan because he isn't good enough would be the last
refuge of a bigot."
This is an example of what I call the "compression fallacy,"
the hidden assumption that huge differences cannot exist in the
tails of a distribution.
Our data show that the MIT report authors may well have
engaged, consciously or otherwise, in a compression fallacy.
But of course we do not know enough to reach strong conclusions.
MIT will not let anyone know.
Best,
Jim Steiger
On 15 Feb 2001 14:30:24 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts) wrote:
>At 02:52 PM 2/15/01 -0600, Paul R Swank wrote:
>>I remember a question from some stat book about a situation where there
>>were 8 members of a group, three men and five women (or the reverse, I
>>can't remember
>>which) and on some issue the vote was five to three with all five women
>>voting for. The question was "How likely was this event to occur by
>>chance"? Can we not ask that question?
>
>seems like we could do something like ... IF OTHER FACTORS HAVE BEEN
>ACCOUNTED FOR OR CONTROLLED FOR like ... age, years in ranks, etc. ... ask
>... what is the probability that ALL (or each?) male salaries were higher
>than ALL (each?) female salaries ...
>
>fishers exact test comes to mind but ... that might not be the one
>
>but, of course, as was pointed out, no data were given about actual salaries
>
>so the issue is moot ... from the stand point of the report ...
>
>from what has been reported ... here ... whether one was making one case or
>another ... i still stand by my earlier comment that i would HATE to have
>MY name attached to the report ... unless there were many HUGE BOLD FACED
>caveats ...
>
>there are just far too many problems here ... with the dinky sized set of
>data and the variables that are being used
>
>
>
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