On 18/04/2013 16:28, Pete Resnick wrote:
...
That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an "eyeball" guess
and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling
bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because
we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who
do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave "the way the
rest of us do".
This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question
by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to
understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and
subconscious biases get in the way.
Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the
historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the
I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant
bias in the selection process over the years.
Brian