Google Workers Fume Over Executives’ Payouts After Sexual Misconduct Claims

Re:Google Workers Fume Over Executives’ Payouts After Sexual... by ordinaryperson on Saturday October 27, 2018 @08:55AM (#18315501)

Let's say you know the feelings of 100 coworkers on this issue. That's still 100/85000 employees, or 0.1%. Not exactly a representative sample size.

Now, it's entirely possible 60% of the employees actually are outraged, but we have no way of knowing outside a survey.

Hence the NYT is cherry-picking an opinion based on anecdotal data (that just so happens to positively reflect on their earlier coverage), when it's also entirely possible that 80% of Googlers don't really care.

The headline and story imply the NYT has a firm handle on how the bulk of 85,000 people think, which is not the case.

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Re:Google Workers Fume Over Executives’ Payouts After Sexual... by nostrademons on Saturday October 27, 2018 @02:23PM (#18316974)

FWIW, if you have a sample size of 100 out of a population of 85000 and observe 60% of your coworkers care, there's a 95% confidence level that the true number of people who care will be within 50-70%. There's a 99% confidence that it'll be within 47.5-72.5%.

https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

"80% of Googlers don't really care" would be an extreme outlier, statistically.

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Re:Google Workers Fume Over Executives’ Payouts After Sexual... by jefftk on Sunday October 28, 2018 @12:13AM (#18319152)

Only if your sample is random, and my sample is mostly the Google Cambridge office.

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