Dennis Roberts wrote:
>
> this is interesting ... alan mclean says NO ... and, previously radford
> neal said YES...
>
> the opinions of both i highly respect
>
> so, what is the original inquirer to do?
>
> the fact is in this case ... there is either a difference in salaries (for
> which they have the data) or not
>
> let's say for argument ... that there is a difference in favor of males ...
> of $1000 a year ... but, because there is wide variation within the male
> and female categories (because of years of experience) ... a t test fails
> to reject the null
>
> what is the data analyst going to say ... that there is no difference ...
> ??? how can you use the t test RETENTION of the null to persuade the
> females that the $1000 dollars is just a figment of their imagination?
What we can say is that *if* salaries were assigned randomly under a
gender blind model, we would/would not expect to see such a difference.
Such an interpretation of the results does not claim anything about
random sampling in the real world (a possible weak point of other
interpretations) but merely says that the population does or does not
resemble a certain class of models.
Is this relevant? Many people would feel that it is. But equally
important is what is *not* said. No claim is made that a retained model
must be an accurate description of the reality. That has to be
determined by looking at the real world.
-Robert Dawson
.
.
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