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OOXML Vote and the CPI Corruption Index

Posted by kdawson on from the voting-on-the-merits dept.

Tapani Tarvainen writes "It turns out there's an interesting correlation between Transparency International's 'corruption perceptions index' and voting behavior in ISO's OOXML decision. Countries with a lower score (more corruption) on the 2006 CPI were more likely to vote in favor of OOXML, and those with a higher score were less likely. According to the analysis, 'This statistics supports with a P value of 0.07328 the hypothesis that the corrupted countries were more likely to vote for approval (one-tailed Fisher's Exact test). In other words, simplified a bit: the likelihood that there was no positive correlation between the corruption level and probability of an approval vote, that is, this is just a random effect, is about 7%.' Of course, correlation doesn't prove causality."

4 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. OpenISO.org by jafoc · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Since in so many counties the MS-OOXML "evaluation" process was a farce and the outcome shows complete incompetence because it amounts to blind approval of MS-OOXML, I believe that it is time to put some pressure of competition on ISO (which is essentially a cartel of national standardization organizations) by means of creating OpenISO.org, a new international standardization organization committed to principles of openness.

    I've put up a little website with some initial thoughts, and I'd appreciate feedback from the slashdot community please.

  2. .07 is not significant by pbooktebo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most research in the social sciences considers the threshold for statistical significance below .05. Since this is above, few would have confidence that this result is not random chance. So, reporting this result, while informative if you are trained in statistics, is likely misleading to the average reader...

  3. Re:More interesting pattern by arivanov · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Welcome to the world of international organisations.

    Those of us observing the ruthless buying of pro-whaling votes by Japan over the last decade have noticed this one long ago. In that case countries that do not even have a coastline or a single ship registered in their name apply for a membership in the International Whaling Commission with Japanese money and go ahead to vote with a yes.

    Unfortunately the dead body of a standard is not sufficiently heavy and smelly so it will be difficult for GreenPeace to dump it on the Microsoft doorsteps http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4627178.st m . Pity actually. It would have been quite fitting.

    --
    Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
    http://www.sigsegv.cx/
  4. Re:More interesting pattern by asc99c · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Although I don't agree with whaling, I feel I should at least point out that the IWC was a whaling industry organisation that was subverted into a conservation group. This happened as a group of big countries recruited a lot of the smaller countries (with again, no whaling interests of their own) to join the IWC and vote to ban whaling.

    So this ruthless vote buying process is hardly without precedent ...