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Google Diversity Report Straight Out of 'How To Lie With Statistics' Playbook
theodp writes: Among the books recommended by Bill Gates for beach reading this summer is How to Lie With Statistics, the published-in-1954-but-timely-as-ever introduction to the (mis)use of statistics. So, how can one lie with statistics? "Sometimes it is percentages that are given and raw figures that are missing," explains the book, "and this can be deceptive too." So, does this explain Google's just-released Diversity Report and the accompanying chock-full-o-percentages narrative (find-all-%-image), which boasts "the Black community in grew [sic] by 38 percent", while the less-impressive raw figures — e.g., the number of Google employees increased by 5,928, but the ranks of Black females only increased by 35 (less than 0.6% of the net increase) — are relegated to a PDF of its EEO-1 Report that's linked to in the fine-print footnotes? To be fair to Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple and Amazon didn't want people to see their EEO-1 numbers, either.
The big lie, I guess.
Why do you continue to troll readers with theodp submissions? He is a straight up troll, and these diversity stories are always from him.
You "editors" should be ashamed for posting drivel like this to the front page. No wonder Slashdot is such a ghost town these days.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics are commonly known, but others are white lies, true lies, and self-deceptions.
Citation for the number of "Blacks" increased by percentage and then the empirical number for the Black females, a subpopulation of the original baseline value.
What ever happened to finding the right person for the job? Jobs should not be based on color of skin or what parts of the body they have.
If you imagine that you are tired of hearing about it as a reader or tech employee, just imagine how it might be for the people whose job it is to make this bettter at the supposedly forward thinking tech giants.
How are those numbers coming, Jim?
Well, we've hired as many somewhat qualified people as we can find, and it's still not enough. Can we count the cafeteria employees again this year?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Isn't it sexist and racist to have quotas of how many people with dark skin and a vagina need to be hired? If they want to be treated equally, then get rid of the quotas and hire based on qualification and experience.
Why not hire based on merit?
How is this relevant to slashdot?
how do you know "the d-word" has become a religion? when it's revealed that the most innovative/disruptive companies of our lifetime were built w/o it & the response is to attack them versus questioning the premise...
My father told me that when I took math classes in college, that Statistics I will teach me everything I really needed to know about the subject, but that Statistics II would teach me how to lie with what I learned. He was not incorrect. There's so many ways to manipulate the data that I find it very, very difficult to trust ANY stats that I find in the news without also having access to the raw data, the methodology, questions used, selection process, etc., etc., etc.
Love sees no species.
As their diversity increases, their competence decreases. They are no longer hiring the best and brightest, and instead fill the ranks with stat padders. What a shitty way to destroy yourself.
Google hires people based on talent. Women and minorities are under-represented in the technical and engineering community. That is a fact of life. Until more women and minorities CHOOSE to enter this field, getting a "diverse workforce" would have to mean you exclude more qualified white males in order to hire less qualified minorities and women.
Think about that for a moment. Suppose hospitals did things this way? If you need critical brain or heart surgery, do you want your surgeon to be one of the best in his or her field, or one that was a "diversity hire"?
Until you're comfortable with the second option, this "diversity" idiocy needs to stop. It's one thing to exclude perfectly qualified candidates because they're female or minority. It's another thing to make that the primary reason you're hiring them instead of making sure they're the best qualified for the job.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
So the holy grail of diversity is finding a mentally handicapped, physically disabled, lesbian black woman with an impoverished background?
Everyone is ignoring the most important number!
Difference between percantage of [minority] employees and percentage of [minority] applicants.
Heck if you only have 2% white employees, that makes you the most diverse employer ever if only 0.5% of applicants were white.
It would take some steam out of this whole discussion to have a look at those numbers.
Granted, with numbers as in my hypothetical example would definitely point out a problem (or at least an interesting statistical anomaly), but outside the scope of the hiring company. And of course nothing should keep a company from starting programs in schools end universities to fix that problem, but not through some skewed hiring policy.
bickerdyke
Somebody fire up the cloning machines!
Some congresspeople care about the percentage of minorities hired by various companies. Congresspeople can make bad things happen to companies. So, corporations engage in propaganda to fool those congresspeople. This report is none of our concern.
There's no bad time to remind everyone that he's an evil scheming megalomaniac! ANTITRUST4EVER
The second bold point in the "percent" image reads:
The increase in Black and Hispanic Googlers outpaced Google’s hiring growth overall — but they still make up just 2 percent and 3 percent of the company, respectively.
While it is filled with percentages, the improvements are fair percentage-wise. Double digit percentage increment of a small number is still a small number. The most interesting part of the news is that the OP/editor would consider the lying bit newsworthy. There are better examples of outright lying. This is not really it.
Oops, I did slightly understate the denominator (couldn't cut-and-paste numbers), but results are close to same (actually a pinch worse). From the linked-to Google EEO-1 filing: (Current # Black Female Employees (250) - Prior # Black Female Employees (235)) / (Current Overall Total # Employees (32,527) - Prior Total # Employees (26,559)) = 35 / 5,968 = 0.0058646113, or about 0.59%.
At google and every other big tech company.
The number of black women hired is a meaningless statistics without also knowing how many black female candidates were the best person for the job. If that number is higher or lower than the number of black females hired, then they are racist.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I guess when you start demanding statistics from companies that are bullshit and irrelevant to begin with, they don't see a problem in giving you bullshit to shut you up?
TFS blargificates as follows:
Suppose I said "To be fair to [a murderer], [other murderer1], [other murderer2], [other murderer3] and [other murderer4] didn't [fail to murder], either."
Suddenly it becomes (or should become) obvious that there is nothing relevant whatsoever about the other entity's actions that involves being "fair" to the entity being examined.
Google is being evil here. No slack for this should be contemplated whatsoever. It is irrelevant to our consideration of Google if/that others are being evil as well. The metric shouldn't in any way be "everyone does it", it should be "this company is doing bad things, and they should stop."
You don't get a pass or a better evaluation for being an ass just because others are asses too. If you're an ass, you're an ass. There is no moral or ethical relief to be had, no excuse that arises, no forgiveness earned, by simply being part of some kind of grouping of asses.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How do white people benefit from millions of people from failing, third world countries INVADING our countries?
Related to that, however, is the question of what hormonal influences may arise. For one example (of many possible), with males, you often see more aggression, and (obviously) with females, less. Pretending there can be no relevant differences WRT job performance is not an optimum approach. Furthermore, interactions between the people of significantly different sexual identity are of inherently different natures. Much as the incoherent would like you not to believe it, the vast majority of us are sexual creatures. We are naturally and unavoidably affected by other concerns than the specifics of today's TPS report.
Same thing goes for age, various cultural influences, parent or not, single or not, personal maintainance, presentation, health, mobility, superstition, depth of education, and means of education (conventional, autodidact, on-the-job, etc.)
Because of these truths, consideration should be given to such factors. And of course it is, and always will be. But mostly because of the law, much of this is now sub-rosa, which is entirely a bad thing -- a bad thing that at least partially offsets the benefits of the law overriding (or at least attempting to override) people who operate using a chain of reasoning that primarily incorporates blind prejudice rather than "how will this affect job performance?"
Politically correct often means "poorly thought out and mostly harmful." When there are differences, there are differences. Pretending otherwise doesn't make such things go away. It just makes them harder to deal with.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Bury it in an Appendix
Yep, that way you don't even have to lie: you hide dangerous data in plain sight and 90% of managers will never see it.
a) create multiple appendices; all can be mostly useless but should be at least 10 pages long (it's a modified document dump, see?).
b) hide unpopular data in an appendix in the middle of the pack (also, the better you bury the data in this appendix, the better)
c) profit
What is important is how many application were there,were they rejected, and if rejected were they rejected in higher proportion than other people with particular irrelevant melanin amount ? e.g. If only 35 female black presented themselves, and 100% were hired, you can't fault google because no more tryed to get a job by them. Similarly if only 25% of the white person asking for a job were hired, but only 5% of the black person were hired this is a different story than 25% white were hired and 70% black candidate.
raw numbers sometimes lies too.
I have a suspicion when companies grow to a certain size they reach a point where they have to engage in these sorts of politically correct follies or otherwise risk being publicly accused racism, sexism, achondroplasiaphobia, etc. whenever an unqualified candidate doesn’t get hired. It also gives a chance for worthless HR clowns to be elevated to C level positions such as “Chief Diversity Officer”.
I read these comments and see a bunch of women's study feminists trying to justify their choice of education focus. Deal with it fucking bitches.
When the scientific cannon has handed down by the media is full of scientifically proven infallible statistical analysis, that contradict the lay person's own perspective of the world around him, he naturally comes to the conclusion that scienctist are full of shit, in spite of how often the media tells him he is really too stupid to make sense of his own world, and should instead rely on the advice of the chosen priests, (uggh I mean scientists), who have the correct view of the world because they can answer questions the uninitiated can not even comprehend.
Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see. Distrust experts, but understand you are fallible and the easiest person to fool.
There are a few important things to consider on these types of topics. The current muttering is that "Diversity" is a bad word. Some of the considerations that must be brought bear are:
1) Even the discussion HERE on Slashdot may not include people of diverse backgrounds. It may be a narrow, and as such we may only get a dominant chorus.
2) Concepts like "affirmative action" where NOT invented by minorities, but by the majority ethnic group (in control of Government) as a social policy to correct a real problem.
3) The diversity discourse is largely colored by American sentiments and prejudices (i.e. the Diversity discussion is always layered with American statistics, history and provincial thinking).
With this in mind the discussion should change.
The end effect of these discussions are that the minority group is blamed/faulted/chastised for embracing these social policies NOT invented by them to redress real problems. The problems are real.
We all obviously know that companies should hire the best people for the job. This the comment that is repeated over and over again in these discussion. Companies do hire the best. However a different question is that are talented minorities (black, latino) getting a fair chance in hiring? Scientific studies in America (reflecting the American situation), has repeatedly shown that if there evidential data on the race of a candidate, then that candidate will be discriminated against (name of person, social organizations, school they attended, zip code).
Thus the question should be, is if hiring could be done in a BLIND way, showing ONLY the qualifications of the candidate and without anecdotal information on the race or ethnicity of the candidate, would we see a change in the diversity in the employees? If there is real discrimination, would it then shift to the interview process? If interviews are then the place where discrimination occurs, can interviews be conducted in an objective way or in a non-biased way? These are real questions that should be directly answered.
Over the past few years we have seen several companies such as Kodak, Sun Microsystems, Digital Research, Wang Labs and a plethora of others, who have hired excellent people from Stanford, Yale, Harvard ... and despite all the talent, these companies failed. In contrast we have seen companies started by free thinking non-college graduates that have been highly transformative (Apple, Facebook and yes even Microsoft). This I find very interesting.
Also there are organizations in America like NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers), SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) that have large numbers of professional Engineers and have very large conventions. The fact is that there are many talented American engineers of diverse backgrounds. What would be interesting to learn are their experiences in the hiring process, at a lower level their social experiences in Engineering School (did they find it easy to make friends, join study groups or be/feel included).
Beyond this, we should recognize that beyond America, science and engineering are heavily pushed. Even if we look at a place like Puerto Rico, which is an American territory, we will find talented engineers and scientists coming out of Mayaguez. African countries produce many engineers, and their has been massive growth (do your homework - read McKinsey and PWc reports). In Brazil there are many talented Engineers and also France produces many Scientists and Engineers of diverse backgrounds (many of whom get employment in America and Canada). Lastly in Canada, the diversity discussion is different - Their school systems have much more uniform standards from the K-12 level, and the concept of bad public schools is highly unusual (I know first hand).
Some of my conclusions are:
1) Companies will always hire the best talent available so this is not a problem.
2) The "problem" of Diversity is more tied to historical American prejudices, which can foster a closed m
Meritocracy or bust!
Pray tell,
Where do I find the NBA's diversity report?
Same question, same answer, same underlying fundamental reason.
How dare they! Percentages?? What next, improper fractions?
The rest of the world has moved onto decimal fractions, and I highly suggest Google does the same!
I am 1/4 black, by your definition I am a nigger - on that half the other quarter is Amerindian. This nigger got his graduates degree in maths and masters in electrical engineering. This nigger started, made solid, and sold his company for an "upper-medium" eight digit figure - ten digits if you count stock in the buyer's parent company. In fact, if you go to some stadiums then you may have driven across roads and entered a stadium that this nigger's company did the traffic modeling (vehicular and, eventually, pedestrian) for. This nigger did much managing and clerical work (more so at the start) and programmed, made custom hardware like 10BASE-2 boards to network a plotter long before such was commercially available -- it even supported a queue, and submitted proposals as well as performed consulting work across the country and in Canada with an eventual expanding to three offices that were able to cover the entire potential sales area. It was a lucrative business which was better, safer, and easier than this nigger working the corner to sell drugs.
Niggers - we do more than pick cotton and we do it well. I usually avoid using the title (it is often assumed that I know medicine even after I clarify) but I will make an exception for you my bigoted fellow human... You, Mr. Anonymous Coward (who will not personally accept blowback for their racist beliefs) can call me Doctor. You, Sir or Ma'am, have my express permission, nay my demand, to call me Dr. Nigger. I, on the other hand, will be proud of such a title being used by you and your ilk.
I do not hate you. I do not wish you harm. I am happy and you have no power to control my thoughts or actions. I do choose, however, to be sorry for you. Why am I sorry for you? Well, I will leave that as an exercise for your imagination.
Also, I sleep with your white women.
Good day. No, I mean it. Seriously, have yourself an excellent day.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The question should not be "What percentage of your IT staff is African American?".
The question should be "What percentage of qualified African American IT applicants were hired?".
If Google is only getting 5 AA applicants for every 100 white applicants (or asian, or whatever...) then it puts Google in a tough position. Should they be expected to hire all 5 AA applicants, regardless of merit, to give the appearance of "evening things out"? Even if they do hire all 5 then someone will still complain that only 5 AA's were hired vs. X amount of white applicants.
This is what the race haters like Sharpton conveniently ignore. The problem is that companies are not getting enough qualified AA applicants, not that the AA applicants are being discriminated against.
If there is a low percentage of AA grads in IT programs I don't see that as a problem. I see it as a choice. People gravitate towards what they enjoy and what they are good at and employment opportunities and family/lifestyle choices.
Look, my experience as someone with a first name that is gender neutral, but trends female with the spelling, has been awesome. Many of the emails from recruiters address me as Ms., not Mr.
Overall, it is an advantage for me, because I get calls that I otherwise would not. I was told flat out after getting one job that I had been targeted initially because they thought I was a woman. I also know a guy named Brooke, and he gets tons of calls.
If you are a woman in tech, you pretty much have it made, because companies will compete for you. They *are* competing for you. Your biggest challenge is deciding which offer(s) to accept, and while that can be daunting, it's still an enviable position. Complaining about it to men is like complaining about the buffet selection to a homeless person. If you're a woman in tech that's not getting hired, it's *not* because you are a woman, it's because you're .
All else being equal, I *much* prefer to work with women too. They're usually tactful, often have insights that I lack, and they typically have better hygiene to boot. What I don't like is listening to people complain about problems that do not exist. The problem isn't that women are being kept out of tech -- they are being welcomed with open arms -- it's that they don't want to be there, and it's an insult to their autonomy to tell them they *should* want to be there when they don't.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Diversity only matters to the left. If I ran a company and only whites or Asians passed the mark for hiring, I guess we'd only have whites or Asians, and likely 95% men. I don't think it's a problem. I would rather not lower the bar for hiring metrics just to hire some random woman or black/Latino for diversity/PC reasons. I rather liked the places I worked that had zero women because we didn't have to walk on eggshells. We could say what we wanted without fear of something being "offended". I really do miss the 80s when nothing was really offensive to anyone. These days, it's easy to be labeled a "hater", "homophobe", "misogynist", you name it.
Anything is NOT possible! Your string theory people annoy the shit out of me with that crap. There is absolutely no fucking way that I am a dragon getting fucked in the ass with semi truck shaped cupcake. But you dumbasses keep telling me there is. SHOW ME. It IS IMPOSSIBLE that a chicken came out of a rock. A rock shaped coop perhaps, but no from inside of a solid rock. It ain't happening, sorry.
I am thinking of removing anti-discrimination laws completely (not just to create exceptions) and allowing regulators (such as anti-trust) to impose anti-discrimination conditions on specific companies instead.
"Diverse society will fail" --Putnam;
http://www.boston.com/news/glo...
Casteism