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.

Comments

Re:Statistics in School

[tompaulco]

I've always used an example of how statistics can be deceiving. If you put 99 rocks and a chicken egg in a box, and a baby chick walks out, there was a 99% chance that it came out of one of the rocks.

Re:Diversity

[LWATCDR]

I still think a big part of it is location. SF has large asian and white communities and only tiny African American and Hispanic communities. Oakland's African American community is also shrinking but Oakland never had a large educated African American community.
If Google wants a more diverse workforce it needs to open centers in areas with more diversity like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and South Florida. Places where you have "Traditionally Black Colleges" and or a long established Hispanic community.

Diversity or rote political correctness?

[fyngyrz]

what equipment they keep between their legs

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.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[ArmoredDragon]

In this case (there are certainly others), they are using deceptive reporting to mislead people on the current state of affairs. Ask yourself why they would do this. The answer isn't "because they are angels."

Probably because they, like many other tech companies, are getting incessantly railed on an issue that is out of their control.

I don't know about you or any of these other SJWs, but I went to college for an IT career, and I only recall seeing at most one or two black people to a class the size of about 30 in any of my technology classes. In other classes I took (mainly the general requirement classes) there were more. (Most of the ones I met were either going for legal or service industry management careers.)

For whatever reason, most of them don't care to pursue a career related to technology. That isn't Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or anybody else's fault. Meanwhile they have to catch shit about it all the time, and pay ransom money to Al Sharpton (who himself is the real lying sack of shit.)

The same can be said of women, by the way. As another anecdote, two of my cousins are currently wanting to get IT jobs, but their sister wants to become a dentist, and that isn't due to any different treatment by their parents (they buy her as much computer stuff as they buy for her brothers. In fact she often asks for and receives more expensive Apple phones/tablets where they get Android devices.)

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

I've actually done this using my real name and a variation of it. My real name didn't get an interview, the fake "English" sounding one did. I didn't go, but man it was depressing.