thomblake comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong

80 Post author: Yvain 07 December 2012 09:04PM

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Comment author: gwern 29 November 2012 09:23:18PM *  10 points [-]

After I posted my comment, I realized that 3 vs 16 might just reflect the overall gender ratio of LW: if there's no connection between that stuff and finding LW interesting (a claim which may or may not be surprising depending on your background theories and beliefs), then 3 vs 16 might be a smaller version of the larger gender sample of 120 vs 1057. The respective decimals are 0.1875 and 0.1135, which is not dramatic-looking. The statistics for whether membership differs between the two pairs:

R> M <- as.table(rbind(c(120, 1057), c(3,16)))
R> dimnames(M) <- list(status=c("c","t"), gender=c("M","F"))
R> M
gender
status M F
c 120 1057
t 3 16
R> chisq.test(M, simulate.p.value = TRUE, B = 20000000)
Pearson's Chi-squared test with simulated p-value (based on 2e+07 replicates)
data: M X-squared = 0.6342, df = NA, p-value = 0.4346

(So it's not even close to the usual significance level. As intuitively makes sense: remove or add one person in the right category, and the ratio changes a fair bit.)

Comment author: thomblake 29 November 2012 09:35:39PM 8 points [-]

After I posted my comment, I realized that 3 vs 16 might just reflect the overall gender ratio of LW

Now I feel dumb for not even noticing that. "In a group where most people were born males, why is it the case that most trans people were born males?" doesn't even seem like a question.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 January 2014 11:03:40AM 1 point [-]

That sounds like hindsight bias. If there were 16 trans men and 3 trans women, you'd be saying ‘"In a group where most people currently identify as men, why is it the case that most trans people currently identify as men?" doesn't even seem like a question.’

Comment author: VAuroch 12 January 2014 01:41:44AM -1 points [-]

I can attest that this reasoning occurred to me knowing only that there were 1.3% trans women; my prediction was 'based on my experience with trans people, this probably reflects upbringing-assigned gender, so I expect to see fewer trans men'.

Comment author: DaFranker 29 November 2012 09:51:34PM 0 points [-]

Haha, that's a great way to look at it. Had skipped over this myself too!

Now it makes me wonder which would be more significant between this and the apparent prominence of M->F over F->M that I just read some stats about (if the stats are true/reliable, 0.7 conf there).

Comment author: thomblake 29 November 2012 09:58:02PM 0 points [-]

I just read some stats about

link?

Comment author: DaFranker 29 November 2012 10:09:15PM 1 point [-]

Oh, heh, sorry.

I mentioned them in a different subthread around here. The linked PDF has a few fun numbers, but didn't notice any obvious dates or timelines. The main website hosting it has a bit more data and references from what little I looked into.