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Length:
9 minutes
Released:
May 2, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
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 BBC Singers.
Released:
May 2, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
What the Dickens?: Boom. Bust. Bah humbug. Tim Harford narrates 'A More or Less Christmas Carol' in which... by More or Less: Behind the Stats