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UnavailableWS More or Less: Simpson’s Paradox
Currently unavailable

WS More or Less: Simpson’s Paradox

FromMore or Less: Behind the Stats


Currently unavailable

WS More or Less: Simpson’s Paradox

FromMore or Less: Behind the Stats

ratings:
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)

Tim Harford and the More or Less team try to make sense of the statistics which surround us. From BBC Radio 4