tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post6174003165436650872..comments2024-03-27T01:01:09.785-07:00Comments on Probably Overthinking It: BQ is unfair to womenAllen Downeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01633071333405221858noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-64822021863035887942016-04-07T08:45:01.158-07:002016-04-07T08:45:01.158-07:00What you are proposing is what I called E-fairness...What you are proposing is what I called E-fairness in this article. I explained two problems with E-fairness, and then proposed two alternative definitions of "fair". And I discuss the question of what the relevant population of comparison should be. By proposing alternatives and evaluating their consequences, I am not assuming anything.Allen Downeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01633071333405221858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-43010803997726436602016-04-07T08:06:51.750-07:002016-04-07T08:06:51.750-07:00If the male record is about 2:02 and the female re...If the male record is about 2:02 and the female record is about 2:15, then the gender gap should only be about 13 minutes. It seems like BQ is currently unfair to men. I think you need to be careful of your statistics. Are we comparing to pure ability or are we comparing to the pool of people who currently run? There may be a statistically significant difference between the % of men who are talented for running and actually run compared with the % of women. Your analysis assumes a similar spreadAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18005421939677771382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-38066030237696009462011-06-04T07:36:45.902-07:002011-06-04T07:36:45.902-07:00@pentalith: You are right that the shape of the pa...@pentalith: You are right that the shape of the pack is influenced by cultural factors. But the problem with using elites to measure the male/female gap is that there is a biological asymmetry: a woman who is physiologically similar to a man is likely to be a good athlete, but a man who is physiologically similar to a woman is not. I speculate that this asymmetry is the reason the elite women are "more elite" than the elite men, and why the gap between the elites is smaller than the gap between the packs.<br /><br />Thanks for the comment, and for the kind words!Allen Downeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01633071333405221858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-75034738497518737972011-06-03T17:31:56.339-07:002011-06-03T17:31:56.339-07:00I have a couple of issues with your choice of &quo...I have a couple of issues with your choice of "C-fairness". <br /><br />(1) I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Elites as "outliers". If anything, the elites serve as a great measure of what the female/male human body is capable of if you win the genetic lottery and train hard. If you're looking for the true biological difference between male and female, I'd see that as the way to go. When you start looking further down the pack, there are too many other factors involved: maybe more slower women are inclined to take up the sport of running, whereas their equivalently-not-very-talented male counterpart is more likely to take up ping-pong. Or whatever. You get cultural/sociological factors messing things up.<br /><br />(2) I think your data may be skewed by the current BQ differences and its resulting "BQ-effect". Isn't that what that big hump is in your figure? <br /><br />All that said, I actually think that the BQ gender difference should be whatever it needs to be to keep the field at 50/50. But that's just my gut feeling based on the fact that we're already up to our eyeballs in enough gender disparity in the world of politics/upper echelons of business/ science/ math etc, and this is one blessed area in which creating at least superficial gender equality is really easy, so we should do it. <br /><br />Sorry for the late comment, I just discovered your blog and it is awesome!pentalithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04513552377577377429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-40386788518680031192011-03-02T11:06:19.522-08:002011-03-02T11:06:19.522-08:00The essential pieces are (1) the standard should b...The essential pieces are (1) the standard should be based on a relevant population of competitive runners, and (2) the field in Boston should be representative of that population.<br /><br />If you buy that, then the only question is how to define the relevant population. I chose people within X minutes of S because (1) it's simple, (2) it has the property of equal marginal impact, and (3) as you pointed out, it corresponds to matching curvature.<br /><br />By itself, #3 doesn't provide a lot of intuition, but it makes some sense if what we are trying to do is align corresponding parts of the distributions.<br /><br />I considered matching first derivatives instead, but that gives the middle of the pack too much influence, and it doesn't map onto the notion of choosing qualifiers from a pool of contenders.Allen Downeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01633071333405221858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-90433799941928989232011-03-02T10:40:13.258-08:002011-03-02T10:40:13.258-08:00Sorry, still just as baffled as before. I just don...Sorry, still just as baffled as before. I just don't see why local cdf curvature is the relevant (or even *a* relevant) consideration. Why the second derivative of the cdf, rather than the first or third, for instance?Ted Bunnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12230509214302717664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-47096679955540373852011-03-02T10:28:33.881-08:002011-03-02T10:28:33.881-08:00Great question, and you are right about matching d...Great question, and you are right about matching derivatives. The reason this is fair is that we are trying to match up corresponding parts of different distributions. We can't use extrema because they are dictated by outliers, and we can't use percentiles, because they are dominated by the middle and back of the pack, so I am using local curvature to find similar regions. The underlying assumption is that the shape of the distributions is similar in the vicinity of the standard, which is true if X is big enough to provide some smoothing.Allen Downeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01633071333405221858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6894866515532737257.post-36160181868775516612011-03-02T10:20:48.957-08:002011-03-02T10:20:48.957-08:00I'm just not getting the idea behind C-fairnes...I'm just not getting the idea behind C-fairness. I can't map it onto any intuitive notion of "fairness." <br /><br />Let me see if I've got it right: for any value S of the standard, you define the subset of people whose times are in the interval [S-X,S+X] ("contenders"), and then ask what fraction of them are in the range [S-X,S] (contenders who qualify). For small X, that's essentially equivalent to looking at the second derivative of the cdf, or the first derivative of the pdf, as a function of S.<br /><br />Is that right? If so, can you say a little more about how that maps onto a notion of fairness?Ted Bunnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12230509214302717664noreply@blogger.com