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Simpson’s Paradox

We explore two instances where women seemed to be suffering discrimination – but was it just a misunderstanding of the statistics?

A Dutch statistician recently became suspicious by headlines in the Dutch news that women were being discriminated against when it came to getting science research funding. Professor Casper Albers of the Heymans Institute for Psychological Research, Groningen, discovered that the study into the funding process showed that when you looked at the overall numbers of successful candidates, women seemed to be less successful than men. And yet, when you looked at a breakdown of the different subjects people could apply for, it showed that women were not losing out disproportionately to men. How could two opposite findings be true? This contradiction is explained by a famous statistical paradox. We explain what is known as Simpson’s Paradox with the aid of a choir metaphor, performed by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Singers.

(Image: A circle of women and men, Credit: Thinkstock)

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9 minutes

Last on

Mon 2 May 2016 14:50GMT

Broadcasts

  • Fri 29 Apr 2016 21:50GMT
  • Mon 2 May 2016 01:50GMT
  • Mon 2 May 2016 02:50GMT
  • Mon 2 May 2016 03:50GMT
  • Mon 2 May 2016 04:50GMT
  • Mon 2 May 2016 06:50GMT
  • Mon 2 May 2016 14:50GMT

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