In this case there is a real question of if this is a clear phenomenon of workplace conditions induced suicide, as harassment, lack of proper training, and other poor conditions were widely reported, so while statistics are a useful tool they don't give all the pieces of the puzzle.
As a French person with family members who've worked at France Télécom, I can vouch that there are factors at play here involving perception of status and employment in French culture that may be novel to e.g. Americans. Japanese culture exhibits similar phenomena. The article summarizes it well:
“These companies were considered family,” Mr. Ledoux told the court. To be mistreated by one is extremely transgressive,” he said.
Reminds me of the very high suicide rate among divorced men. Also friend of mine who's new boss was working to get rid of him. He shot himself rather than accept being fired.
"Assume that a coin is fair, i.e., has an equal probability of coming up heads or tails when flipped. I flip it ninety-nine times and get heads each time. What are the odds of my getting tails on my next throw? 2
Dr. John refers to the question as trivial and gives the mathematically correct answer of one half. Fat Tony calls Dr. John a sucker and says, “no more than 1 percent, of course … the coin gotta be loaded.”"
The point being, what are the odds of getting an artifact of statistics precisely when management is harrassing employees to get rid of them from payroll?
So you could simultaneously be at awe of the incredible improbability of throwing another heads while proclaiming meh over the 50% chance of the last throw.
It's all a matter of perspective.
In the example, Fat Tony is wrong because he contradicts the initial assumption. However, the example is unrealistic because, initially, you don't know if the coin is fair or loaded. You just flip it, see 99 heads and then conclude, with probability very close to 1, that the coin is loaded. (You could still be wrong, but likely aren't).
So in a realistic scenario, Fat Tony would be right, except that the scenario was intentionally set up to be unrealistic.
(edit: typo)
If this was a real life situation, we would assume a reasonable prior for the probability of heads, perhaps with a spike around 0.5 and a small value everywhere else. The posterior would be centered near 1.
If the suicide rate is 17 per 22000, then natural variance alone will push about 14% of random 22k samples into "more than double the base rate" area.
In other words, if you take this indicator alone, then you'll have a false positive about 14% of the time. Obviously, the key word is "alone". With more data about bullying as the cause of suicide you might get better estimations.
Is this true? Can you show the math on this? I'm not seeing it.
Actually (from approximating the binomial distribution with n=22k and p=17/22000 with normal one) getting the rate over 30 per 22k has p<0.001.
GP doesn't seem to have read the article and is throwing some statistics gimmicks.
also i don't think productivity should be the main focus
Excessive worker protection is what's wrong with France's economy.
> The view of many, including the OECD and the European Commission, is that the labour market is at the heart of the problem, though it's not the only factor.
> That reflects a persistent complaint from business: that it's too expensive to hire workers and to fire them or lay them off if they need to.
> The OECD says in its assessment of the French economy: "To reduce the duality of the labour market, the procedures for laying off employees, particularly those on permanent contracts, need to be simplified and shortened….
Excessive billionaires protection is what is wrong with the US economy.
It would be interesting to see research that shows whether being an "employee for life" in an office environment (as opposed to judges) leads to more productivity or other benefits.
35 out 22,000 employees committing suicide is a very high number. If that started in 2007 and happened let's say over 5 years, that would be double of the average Paris suicide rate among adults, or the same as in the worst regions of France (Normandie and the north of France in general).