Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Not statistically significant

The Fair Housing Council of Oregon conducted audits from the citizens' point of view to determine if housing discrimination existed. In Ashland and Beaverton, when African American and white testers were sent to the same location, two-thirds of the black testers faced discrimination in Ashland and 78 percent in Beaverton. Management response in Beaverton was that the testing sample was too small to be statistically significant. But one wonders what the tolerance level is. Even though it was not a large enough sample to generalize to the full population, is it then okay to have some discrimination?

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