Case

University of California, Berkeley: 1973 admissions

Bickel and colleagues (1975) analysed graduate admissions: the overall admission rate was lower for women, but within departments there was no disadvantage to women, because women applied more to more selective departments. The standard example of Simpson's paradox.

Industry
Higher education
Frameworks applied
Where numbers go wrong
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Frameworks applied

This case is read through the frameworks below.

  • Where numbers go wrongWhen a manager is handed a report or chart to base a decision on, what should they check in the data, its selection, presentation and interpretation before trusting it?

Sources

References

Listed A–Z by author surname, Harvard style. A source with a DOI links to https://doi.org/…; one without links to its page or says plainly that it has no DOI.

  1. Bickel, P.J., Hammel, E.A. and O'Connell, J.W. (1975) ‘Sex bias in graduate admissions: data from Berkeley’, Science, 187(4175), pp. 398–404.doi:10.1126/science.187.4175.398Source page
  2. Jansen, B.J. et al. (2022) ‘The illusion of data validity: why numbers about people are likely wrong’, Data and Information Management, 6(4), article 100020.doi:10.1016/j.dim.2022.100020Source page