[FRIAM] Simpson’s paradox

[Nick Thompson]

Bill n all,

 

"The success of altruism ...[in our model] ... is an example of a statistical phenomenon known as Simpson's paradox  (Simpson, E. H. (1951).  "The Interpretation of interaction in Contingency Tables." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 13:238-241).  See Attachment.  Mathematicians need only apply.  

 

Citizen Version: “ During the 1970’s, the University of California at Berkeley was suspected of discriminating against women in its graduate admission policies.  The percentage of woman applicants who were admitted was less than the percentage of men, and the difference was large enough that it could not be attributed to chance.  The University conducted a department-by-department inquiry and found in each department that women were admitted not less often than men.  Evidently, women did worse than men overall, but not in any department.  …The paradoxical finding fell into place when it was noticed that women tended to apply to departments with low acceptance rates.  (Sober and Wilson, Unto Others, p. 23.)

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-----Original Message-----
From: R William MCCALLUM [mailto:rwmccallum at msn.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2019 8:01 PM
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net
Subject: Simpson’s paradox

 

It appears that Simpson’s paradox is not what I thought.  From the description’s I have read the paradox results from applying a model which does not include all variables.

 

 

Sent from tablet

R. William (Bill) McCallum

515 290-1449

 <mailto:rwmccallum at msn.com> rwmccallum at msn.com

1948 Cerros Colorados

Santa Fe NM 87501

 

 

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