Statistical analysis of Discrimination over the past 40 years

• Administrivia:
  • If you dont have a partner for your project, stay after class and see if you can find one.
  • Please email me and nuria with your project proposal. (See web page for email addresses)

Discrimination: the haydays

• Who got Einstiens office? I didn't.
• But I did get John de Cani's office.
  • He did "anti-discrimination" in its hayday.
  • Drove around the south with the ACLU knocking down discriminatory jury duty laws
  • Example: 25% Blacks in state
  • 250 people on juries in past year
  • Not ONE black on ANY jury
  • He said: "the chance of this occuring by chance alone is like dealing 5 full houses in a row in poker."
  • Judge said: "That would be cheating."
  • he said: "Exactly."

Discrimination: modern times

• Prop. 209 (my small part)
  • Prop 209 made affimative action illegal
  • Continuing in the tradition of the office, I was part of a ACLU friend of the court filing against it.
  • We lost.
  • Legacy admissions/children of allumni still allowed in extra. These forms of discrimination are still legal.

• Income is the battle ground now adays
  • 20% difference is considered significant (legal definition)
  • Statistically significant different is only sometimes needed! (should it be the definition?)
  • Covariates now are used: age, profession, years worked, etc.

• Example AAUP (American Association of University Professors)
  • Every year in their salary issue, they point out three problems with status of women:
    • Women are paid less
    • Women are lower ranked
    • women are younger
  • Court cases don't hold up though?
  • What is going on?

• Draw picture of age (X) and income (Y)
  • positively related
  • percentage of women has been increasing (at least in some fields)
  • so women are younger
  • thus sex and age are correlated
  • thus we need to do a multiple regression

• Draw various pictures of age, income and color coded sex
  • easy discrimination (women uniformly lower than men)
  • in equlibrium (fall on same line, at same location)
  • current reality (same line?, different X distribution)
  • Is this discrimination or not?

Last modified: Tue Mar 7 12:47:02 2000