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:Diversity

[Chas]

Pretty much.

What color a person's skin is, or what equipment they keep between their legs isn't as important as the knowledge they have in their head and their skill at utilizing it.

Slotting someone into a position ahead of a worthier candidate, simply because they're a certain race/gender, rather than because they're the best candidate is idiocy of the highest order.

It's not Google/Apple/whoever's problem that a given race or gender has historically been downtrodden. Google/Apple/Whoever didn't do the treading, so why should they be guilt-tripped into settling for mediocrity for some lie about "equality"?

Because what's being pushed here is not about "equal" treatment. It's about "special" treatment.

Do you want a diversity hire?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

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.