For businesses it's been shown repeatedly to be a good thing.

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ruchikatulshyan/2015/01/30/racia...

https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation

Your sources are misleading at best. From the first article:

> We know intuitively that diversity matters.

I know nothing of the sort. And that is the lead sentence, which implies the conclusion is already made.

> Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

Isn't that somewhat expected? Anybody in any quartile for something has a 50% chance of being above national industry medians. If anything, this would cause people to believe that diverse companies underperform.

From the second article:

> Of 366 public companies analyzed, those in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above national industry medians.

Seems like a regurgitation of the first article, and she presents absolutely nothing to back up those claims. The article quickly devolves into a list of todo items for your company.

From the third article:

> By correlating diversity in leadership with market outcomes as reported by respondents, we learned that companies with 2-D diversity out-innovate and out-perform others. Employees at these companies are 45% likelier to report that their firm’s market share grew over the previous year.

Isn't there a 50% chance that your firm's market share that your market share will grow over the last year? What other variables are you controlling for? And we all know how accurate self reporting is.

> Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

I'd read this as "In excess of their expected appearance rate" (i.e. 1.35 * 50% likelihood).

> I'd read this as "In excess of their expected appearance rate"

That's a successful rhetorical technique.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. What if I told you that 40% of sick days were taken on Monday and Friday?

Your brain instantly fills in "because they want a three day weekend", not "well that was expected".

People who write these articles are experts at letting us fill in the blanks.

These studies never seem to have the troubles that other scientific studies have, repeat-ability, outliers or biases at picking companies. If you pick the best of a wider selection, the result is to be better of course, but even then, some companies should screw up just because - the noise of a complex world, where good employees might not overcome bad management or bad circumstances.

No, I'd parse that as being 2/5. The difference is, you didn't say "40% more sick days are taken on Monday and Friday", which would imply (M+F) = 1.4(T+W+T) -> 58% of sick days taken on Monday and Friday, and 42% of sick days taken on the remaining days.

You seem to be overlooking the word "more" in "35% more likely". It's not "35% chance".

You brain is very good at filling in absent words to change the logical content of a statement.

Is your argument that this interpretation is numerically wrong or that you don't like the phrasing? It matches my read numerically.

Still post hoc fallacy.

Edit: I'd->is