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Activity Number:
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127
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Monday, August 3, 2009 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
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Sponsor:
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Social Statistics Section
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| Abstract - #304971 |
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Title:
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The Potential for Formal Statistical Analysis to Assist Courts with Relatively Small Data Set
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Author(s):
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Joseph L. Gastwirth*+ and Qing Pan
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Companies:
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The George Washington University
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Address:
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2140 Pennsylvania Ave. NW , Washington, DC, 20052,
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Keywords:
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small dataset ; proportional hazards model ; Cochran-Amitage test ; Age discrimination cases ; Fisher's summary statistics ; survival analysis
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Abstract:
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Four plaintiffs brought an age discrimination complaint after being discharged. The court's decision noted some simple statistical measures with information on 44 employees, but does not apply formal statistical methods. We utilize formal statistical tests to re-examine the data: Cochran-Armitage test to detect the decreasing trend in the average age of new hires, and proportional hazards model to test whether there was a relationship between the age of an employee and his probability of being RIFed. Since the plaintiffs alleged that a new supervisor was responsible, the three time periods (before the new supervisor, when he was co-supervising and when he was sole supervisor) are considered important in our analysis. Finally, results from the hiring and firing data are combined and statistically sound conclusions are drawn.
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