A Way to Detect Bias

Re:A Way to Detect Bias by gleb on Saturday October 31, 2015 @08:13PM (#10484835)

I like the idea, but how do you apply this to power law distribution outcomes and get any statistical significance? I don't know the answer.

E.g. the underlying First Round's analysis likely has no statistical significance. Assuming the power law distribution of outcomes top 5 outcomes will account for 97% of value. So we now have a study with n=5.

To make the point let's apply this to YC's own portfolio. Assuming Dropbox, AirBnb and Stripe represent 75% of its value, we'll learn that YC is incredibly biased against:

  * MIT graduates
  * brother founders
  * founding teams that do not have female founders
  * and especially males named Drew

Hard to believe these conclusions are correct or actionable

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Re:A Way to Detect Bias by graycat on Sunday November 01, 2015 @01:18AM (#10485509)

> I like the idea, but how do you apply this to power law distribution outcomes and get any statistical significance? I don't know the answer.

See my post

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484602

where are distribution-free. So "power law", Gaussian, anything else, doesn't matter.

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