TASK: Hiring Discrimination

TASK: Hiring discrimination

An airline has just finished training 25 junior pilots—15 male and 10 female—to becomecaptains. Unfortunately, only eight captain positions are available right now. Airline managersannounce that they will use a lottery process to determine which pilots will fill the availablepositions. The names of all 25 pilots will be written on identical slips of paper, placed in a hat,mixed thoroughly, and drawn out one at a time until all eight captains have been identified.

A day later, managers announce the results of the lottery. Of the 8 captains chosen, 5 are femaleand only 3 are male. Some of the male pilots who were not selected suspect that the lottery wasnot carried out fairly. One of the pilots knows that you are taking a statistics class, and comes toyou for advice. You offer to consult with your classmates and get back to him.

The key question in this possible discrimination case seems to be: could these results havehappened just by chance? Let’s find out.

We will simulate random assignment of males versus females with the random number generator on our calculators. Before we do this, our calculator needs to be “seeded” to do this, follow these steps:

1. Enter a random integer (I use the current month day combination - for example 828 for August 28)
2. Hit the STO button
3. Hit Math, left arrow and 1 for rand

Now that your Random Number Generator(RNG) has been seeded (you should redo this whenever you use it!), draw eight random digits, assigning appropriate digits for “male” and “female” pilots. Record the number of female pilots in the table below, and repeat until you have completed 5 trials.

Now, enter the results in the dotplot on the board, and copy it below:

Discuss the results with the class. Share here what you see.

Here are the results of 500 simulated repetitions of the airline lottery from some software:

•Do the results of this simulation change your opinion about whether the lottery

could have been carried out fairly? Why or why not?

• What would you tell the male pilot who contacted you? Be sure to explain your

reasoning clearly and succinctly.