Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

What data does not tell us

issue 18 August 2018

In late 1973 the graduate admissions department at UC Berkeley discovered that for the forthcoming year it had awarded places to 44 per cent of male applicants and only 35 per cent of women. Concerned about possible lawsuits or bad publicity, they approached Peter Bickel, a professor of statistics, to analyse the data in more detail.

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