If you successfully design your C++ hiring criteria to be colorblind — to not notice the color of weasels, but only to notice how good they are at C++ — then performance on the hiring criteria will shadow weasel color as an indicator of C++ ability.
You might end up with 99 blue weasels hired for every one red weasel hired; but you will have successfully filtered out all the red weasels that are bad at C++, just as you successfully filtered out all the blue weasels that are bad at C++. After all, only a tiny fraction of blue weasels meet your C++ hiring criteria, too.
So at that point, you should actually trust your hiring criteria and compensate weasels with no regard for their color.
(It’s true that red weasels are likely to, at one or two times in their career, need a couple of months off for frenzied weasel dancing. But it’s also true that blue weasels are more likely to get trodden on by a cow and need medical leave, because they’re less careful when walking through pastures on the way to work.)
Maybe. It depends on the distributions over programming ability that the test and color, respectively, provide. [ETA1: I should have written, “the test and the conjunction of test and color, respectively...”. The point is that, conditioned on test results, color could be independent of ability.] [ETA2: Though, if your “further conclusions” was meant to include things beyond what the test tests for, but which correlate with color, then you’re definitely right.]
The test’s being colorblind doesn’t mean that its results don’t correlate with color in the population of subjects. It means that, were you to fix a test subject and vary its color while holding everything else constant, its test results wouldn’t correlate with the color change.
Learning the color means you can make further predictions about the general distribution of ability over the general populace—not over the populace you have already selected/hired.
You didn’t give a reason for your wrong claim, so it’s hard to guess why you held it.
Maybe this will help: only if the test is infinitely long (produces an infinite amount of evidence as to the actual skill of the tested subject) will the prior evidence be completely irrelevant.
Ok, but I had the sense that, one you’ve already hired, based on skill, learning the colour will no longer give you any help in determining the skills of the people you have already hired… but will only give an indication of what percentage of each colour in the general population has the level of skill you hired-for.
Um—I’m not sure how this relates to what I said… can you please expand/clarify? :)
What I mean is: once you learn the colour, you can reason backwards that “oh, given we have X people with a skill roughly between 13 and 15… 90% of them are blue… this must imply that in the general population, blue weasels are more likely than red weasels to score roughly between 13 and 15 on skill tests at a ratio of roughly 9 to 1”
I don’t know that you can prove much else base don just that data alone.
If you successfully design your C++ hiring criteria to be colorblind — to not notice the color of weasels, but only to notice how good they are at C++ — then performance on the hiring criteria will shadow weasel color as an indicator of C++ ability.
My comment kinda assumed that hiring criteria meeting your strict standard of colorblindness are unexpectedly hard to design. Let’s say all red weasels and most blue ones suck at C++, but some blue weasels completely rule. Also, once a month every weasel (blues and reds equally) unpredictably goes into a code frenzy for 182 minutes and temporarily becomes exactly as good as a blue one that rules. Your standardized test will mostly admit blue weasels that rule, but sometimes you’ll get a random-colored weasel that sucks. If you’re colorblind, you have no hope of weeding out the random suckers. But if you’re color-aware, you can weed out half of them. Of course it also works if a tiny minority of red weasels can code instead of none.
The problems begin when the ability-distribution of red/blue weasels change, and the hiring-committee is still using restrictions based on the old distribution.
eg red weasel ability has been steadily increasing, but the old hiring criteria still says “don’t hire red weasels as they have no technical ability to speak of!”
but yes I agree—it’s all difficult because it’s hard to create a test that is as accurate as actual real-life working with a person. That’s why the popularity of those awful “three month probation periods”.
If you successfully design your C++ hiring criteria to be colorblind — to not notice the color of weasels, but only to notice how good they are at C++ — then performance on the hiring criteria will shadow weasel color as an indicator of C++ ability.
You might end up with 99 blue weasels hired for every one red weasel hired; but you will have successfully filtered out all the red weasels that are bad at C++, just as you successfully filtered out all the blue weasels that are bad at C++. After all, only a tiny fraction of blue weasels meet your C++ hiring criteria, too.
So at that point, you should actually trust your hiring criteria and compensate weasels with no regard for their color.
(It’s true that red weasels are likely to, at one or two times in their career, need a couple of months off for frenzied weasel dancing. But it’s also true that blue weasels are more likely to get trodden on by a cow and need medical leave, because they’re less careful when walking through pastures on the way to work.)
But if you then additionally learn the color, you can make further conclusions which the test failed to deliver because of the color blindness.
Maybe. It depends on the distributions over programming ability that the test and color, respectively, provide. [ETA1: I should have written, “the test and the conjunction of test and color, respectively...”. The point is that, conditioned on test results, color could be independent of ability.] [ETA2: Though, if your “further conclusions” was meant to include things beyond what the test tests for, but which correlate with color, then you’re definitely right.]
The test’s being colorblind doesn’t mean that its results don’t correlate with color in the population of subjects. It means that, were you to fix a test subject and vary its color while holding everything else constant, its test results wouldn’t correlate with the color change.
Learning the color means you can make further predictions about the general distribution of ability over the general populace—not over the populace you have already selected/hired.
I have no problem with being wrong… but I do like to know why :)
You didn’t give a reason for your wrong claim, so it’s hard to guess why you held it.
Maybe this will help: only if the test is infinitely long (produces an infinite amount of evidence as to the actual skill of the tested subject) will the prior evidence be completely irrelevant.
Ok, but I had the sense that, one you’ve already hired, based on skill, learning the colour will no longer give you any help in determining the skills of the people you have already hired… but will only give an indication of what percentage of each colour in the general population has the level of skill you hired-for.
Instead of thinking “I perfectly measured his skill level; it’s 14”, think “I obtained X bits of evidence that his skill is between 13 and 15″.
Um—I’m not sure how this relates to what I said… can you please expand/clarify? :)
What I mean is: once you learn the colour, you can reason backwards that “oh, given we have X people with a skill roughly between 13 and 15… 90% of them are blue… this must imply that in the general population, blue weasels are more likely than red weasels to score roughly between 13 and 15 on skill tests at a ratio of roughly 9 to 1”
I don’t know that you can prove much else base don just that data alone.
My comment kinda assumed that hiring criteria meeting your strict standard of colorblindness are unexpectedly hard to design. Let’s say all red weasels and most blue ones suck at C++, but some blue weasels completely rule. Also, once a month every weasel (blues and reds equally) unpredictably goes into a code frenzy for 182 minutes and temporarily becomes exactly as good as a blue one that rules. Your standardized test will mostly admit blue weasels that rule, but sometimes you’ll get a random-colored weasel that sucks. If you’re colorblind, you have no hope of weeding out the random suckers. But if you’re color-aware, you can weed out half of them. Of course it also works if a tiny minority of red weasels can code instead of none.
The problems begin when the ability-distribution of red/blue weasels change, and the hiring-committee is still using restrictions based on the old distribution. eg red weasel ability has been steadily increasing, but the old hiring criteria still says “don’t hire red weasels as they have no technical ability to speak of!”
but yes I agree—it’s all difficult because it’s hard to create a test that is as accurate as actual real-life working with a person. That’s why the popularity of those awful “three month probation periods”.
+1 for this amusing and surprisingly accurate description of pregnancy and early post-natal care :)