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Comment by malchow | Hacker News Reader

"The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges.

What in the world does that alleged statistic mean?

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It's an elementary statistics calculation (which I'm not saying was done right; but that's the direction it was most likely coming from).

Left unstated was what

    P(portion of Asian applications being >= 74%)

should be given that, if I'm not mistaken, the percentage of Asian undergraduates (even at upper-tier schools) seems to top out at around 45% (a very rough figure based on quick eyeballing; but I doubt it pushes 60%).

I understand that, thanks. The problem of course is that it bears no relation to actual reality. It may be the case that, for a pipefitter, every human body with Pipefitter Certification 409B can do the job identically to his fellow 409Ber. But there are very few jobs like that–trending to zero.

Result of this case: lawyers make a few million bucks. Government gets a few million bucks. Palantir has a few million bucks fewer with which to grow and produce new value. Fewer people get hired. No one wins. Administrative overreach: it's a thing.[1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Administrative-Law-Unlawful-Philip-Ha...

Not sure about pipe fitting, but for welding, say, or framing? There are definitely 10X welders. So your "trending to zero" point resonates with me (being a shitty welder).

Without actually doing the math, I believe it means that the odds that, if 21 names were pulled out of a hat with 130 names of "qualified applicants," and 73% were Asian, the probability that only 4 names (or less, I assume) are Asian is 1:1,000,000,000.

Isn't this correct though? That the probability of picking only four asians (if you chose at random) is just over one in a hundred million

Yes - but the objection is that no one in his/her right mind should be making hiring decisions at random. So, comparing it to choosing at random in rather obtuse (and clearly intended only to score cheap points by the person who filed the lawsuit.)

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