A Way to Detect Bias

October 2015 This will come as a surprise to a lot of people, but in some cases it's possible to detect bias in a selection process without knowing anything about the applicant pool.

2015 年 10 月 这会让很多人感到惊讶，但在某些情况下，在不了解申请者群体的情况下也可能发现筛选过程中的偏见。

Which is exciting because among other things it means third parties can use this technique to detect bias whether those doing the selecting want them to or not.

这是令人兴奋的，因为这意味着第三方可以使用这种技术来检测偏见，无论那些进行选择的人是否愿意。

You can use this technique whenever (a) you have at least

只要 (a) 你至少有

a random sample of the applicants that were selected, (b) their subsequent performance is measured, and (c) the groups of applicants you're comparing have roughly equal distribution of ability.

对被选中的申请人进行随机抽样，(b) 衡量他们随后的表现，以及 (c) 您要比较的申请人组的能力分布大致相等。

How does it work?

它是如何运作的？

Think about what it means to be biased.

想想有偏见意味着什么。

What it means for a selection process to be biased against applicants of type x is that it's harder for them to make it through.

选拔过程对 x 类型的申请人存在偏见意味着他们更难通过。

Which means applicants of type x have to be better to get selected than

这意味着 x 类型的申请人必须比 x 类型的申请人更好才能被选中

applicants not of type x.

申请人不属于 x 类。

[ 1 ] Which means applicants of type x who do make it through the selection process will outperform other successful applicants.

[ 1 ] 这意味着通过筛选过程的 x 类型申请人将胜过其他成功的申请人。

And if the performance of all the successful applicants is measured, you'll know if they do.

如果对所有成功申请者的表现进行衡量，您就会知道他们是否这样做。

Of course, the test you use to measure performance must be a valid one.

当然，用于衡量性能的测试必须是有效的。

And in particular it must not be invalidated by the bias you're trying to measure.

特别是它不能因为你试图衡量的偏见而变得无效。

But there are some domains where performance can be measured, and in those detecting bias is straightforward.

但在某些领域中，绩效是可以衡量的，并且在这些领域中检测偏差是很简单的。

Want to know if the selection process was biased against some type of applicant?

想知道选择过程是否对某些类型的申请人存在偏见？

Check whether they outperform the others.

检查他们是否比其他人表现更好。

This is not just a heuristic for detecting bias.

这不仅仅是检测偏见的启发式方法。

It's what bias means.

这就是偏见的意思。

For example, many suspect that venture capital firms are biased against female founders.

例如，许多人怀疑风险投资公司对女性创始人存在偏见。

This would be easy to detect: among their

这很容易被发现：在他们之中

portfolio companies, do startups with female founders outperform those without?

投资组合公司中，有女性创始人的初创公司是否比没有女性创始人的初创公司表现更好？

A couple months ago, one VC firm (almost certainly unintentionally) published a study showing bias of this type.

几个月前，一家风险投资公司（几乎肯定是无意的）发表了一项研究，显示了这种类型的偏见。

First Round Capital found that among its portfolio companies, startups with female founders outperformed those without by 63%.

First Round Capital发现，在其投资组合公司中，拥有女性创始人的初创公司的表现比没有女性创始人的初创公司高出63%。

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