{"id":9323,"date":"2014-04-25T12:24:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T16:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/?p=9323"},"modified":"2014-04-25T12:24:50","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T16:24:50","slug":"adjunct-faculty-and-awful-stats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2014\/04\/25\/adjunct-faculty-and-awful-stats\/","title":{"rendered":"Adjunct Faculty and Awful Stats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via a mailing list, probably via this <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2014\/04\/the-great-reset-higher-education-edition.html\">Tyler Cowen post<\/a>, an awful statistic about adjunct faculty:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>35 years ago there were 44% more tenured faculty than adjuncts. Today there are 76% more adjuncts than tenured faculty, via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chronicle\">@chronicle<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; \u00c1ngel Cabrera (@CabreraAngel) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CabreraAngel\/statuses\/459653368424587264\">April 25, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This is awful in two ways. First, it&#8217;s obviously a sad comment on the state of the college teaching profession. More importantly, though, it&#8217;s a classic abuse of statistics, using a really confusing presentation of the numbers to exaggerate an effect that doesn&#8217;t really need it.<\/p>\n<p>Here, let&#8217;s try this as a poll, since the way this is stated basically amounts to an eighth-grade algebra word problem. Answer before scrolling down to read the explanation:<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\" src=\"http:\/\/static.polldaddy.com\/p\/7996793.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<noscript><a href=\"http:\/\/polldaddy.com\/poll\/7996793\/\">There were 44% more tenured than adjunct faculty. There are now 76% more adjuncts than tenured faculty. The percentage of adjuncts has increased by:<\/a><\/noscript><\/p>\n<p>(A 10-percentage-point increase here means going from, say, 12% to 22% of the total. Which is not the right answer, by the way.)<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>SPOILER SPACE<\/p>\n<p>If you want numbers to make a sensible comparison, you have to solve some equations&#8211; if we say that the number of adjunct faculty 35 years ago is x, then the number of tenure-track faculty is 1.44x, and the fraction of adjunct faculty is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n$latex P(adj) = \\frac{x}{x+1.44x} =0.41 $\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The modern calculation has the number of tenure-track faculty as y and the number of adjuncts as 1.76y, so:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n$latex P(adj) = \\frac{1.76 y}{y+1.767} =0.64 $\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, according to these poorly sourced statistics (I didn&#8217;t turn this up on the Chronicle of Higher Ed site or Twitter feed), the adjunct fraction increased from 41% to 64%. It ought to be enough to note that adjuncts have gone from a sizable minority of faculty to a substantial majority, but the &#8220;X% more than&#8221; formulation is just confusing, in order to sound more scary. Nobody reports numbers this way unless they&#8217;re engaged in &#8220;How to Lie With Statistics&#8221; hackery.<\/p>\n<p>No matter how good the cause, responsible academics should be better than this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via a mailing list, probably via this Tyler Cowen post, an awful statistic about adjunct faculty: 35 years ago there were 44% more tenured faculty than adjuncts. Today there are 76% more adjuncts than tenured faculty, via @chronicle &mdash; \u00c1ngel Cabrera (@CabreraAngel) April 25, 2014 This is awful in two ways. First, it&#8217;s obviously a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2014\/04\/25\/adjunct-faculty-and-awful-stats\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Adjunct Faculty and Awful Stats<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,9,28,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","category-math","category-politics","category-polls","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}