dennis roberts wrote:
>
> At 10:32 AM 4/17/00 -0300, Robert Dawson wrote:
>
> > There's a chapter in J. Utts' mostly wonderful but flawed low-math intro
> >text "Seeing Through Statistics", in which she does much the same. She
> >presents a case study based on some of her own work in which she looked at
> >the question of gender discrimination in pay at her own university, and
> >fails to reject the null hypothesis [no systemic difference in pay between
> >male and female faculty]. She heads the example "Important, but not
> >significant, differences in salaries"; comments (_perhaps_ technically
> >correctly but misleadingly) that "a statistically naive reader could
> >conclude that there is no problem" and in closing states:
>
> the flaw here is that ... she has population data i presume ... or about as
> close as one can come to it ... within the institution ... via the budget
> or comptroller's office ... THE salary data are known ... so, whatever
> differences are found ... DEMS are it!
>
> the notion of statistical significance in this case seems IRRELEVANT ...
> the real issue is ... given that there are a variety of factors that might
> account for such differences (numbers in ranks, time in ranks, etc. etc.)
> .... is the remaining difference (if there is one) IMPORTANT TO DEAL WITH ...
Yes! This reminds me of a newspaper article and radio news item in the UK this
year about female and male professors. They had data to show that there was a
large salary difference. However, they went on to say that the largest
difference was in Anatomy. I mentioned this to a female colleague of mine (who
works in that area) who pointed out there was only one female professor of
Anatomy in the UK.
Thom
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