DON’T BE WEEVILS: Google May be Guilty of Gender Discrimination But Is Definitely Guilty of Bad Data Analysis.

Google employees seem to be up on their applied math, since they put together an analysis so that they could make the following statement:

Based upon its own analysis from January, Google said female employees make 99.7 cents for every dollar a man makes, accounting for factors like location, tenure, job role, level and performance.

On the surface, this seems to suggest that significant gender discrimination just doesn’t show up in the data. BUT…and this is important…this example highlights the difference between doing math and doing data analysis (or, more charitably, data science)- while this conclusion may be mathematically correct, it’s basically a “garbage in, garbage out” use of econometric tools. Simply put, if you’re trying to isolate gender discrimination, you can’t just blindly control for things that themselves are likely the result of gender discrimination!

Why are progressive corporations such cesspits of misogyny?