Re: On inappropriate hypothesis testing. Was: MIT Sexism & statistical bunk

[Thom Baguley]

Radford Neal wrote:
> 
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Recall that this baseball example was intended to clarify how one
> should go about determining whether or not there is reason to think
> that MIT discriminated against women faculty.  From your comment, I'd
> guess that you think that MIT should not pay faculty based on their
> actual achievements, but rather on the basis of some estimate of their
> ability, disregarding "random factors".  That's an interesting
> opinion, but would a policy of paying based on actual achievement (or
> a noisy estimate of actual achievement) constitute discrimination?
> 
>    Radford Neal

No. I was writing about the statistical issues in general. Regardless of what
the baseball example was intended to clarify, the claim that a _huge_
difference exists is a strong one that needs to be explained and supported in context.

On the issue of salaries (in general; not restricted to MIT). I would say that
salary increases should be based on job performance. However, I would hope
that one would measure job performance against publicly available benchmarks
(more than one or two) that cover the range of activities and that a job entails.

Thom


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