Numbers Two:

Scott Dillon, whose opinions about Indiana University Law School's affirmative action policies are becoming widely known, has a long criticism of my piece at The Hoosier Review, which doesn't surprise me. A rather long post, containing responses to his complaints, follows, more or less in order:

Dillon's first complaint is that I don't mention my father's connection to IU. Both my father, Patrick Baude, and my mother, Julia Lamber, are professors of law at Indiana University (which is why I paid particular attention to IU's affirmative action policies in the first place). My father also signed an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the Michigan affirmative action policies. Whether you think this influences my opinion is up to you. For what it's worth, my politics and views on a wide number of political questions diverge from those of my parents quite a bit. And I'll be working for the Center for Individual Rights this summer, which wrote on the opposite side of the case, if that helps.

Second, there is Dillon's substantive argument, that I ignore three prongs of evidence that point to quotas (taken together). The first is the fact that the number of African Americans admitted remained constant as the number of African American applicants increased. This is an interesting piece of evidence, but economists know that a single trend over a short period can't prove much by itself. The second is the potential gap between LSAT and GPA scores. The third is an assertion by an admissions committee member that the curious data is explained by "coincidence". Without full context, I have no idea what part of the curiosity of the data the professor thought was coincidence, but a lot of it may well be coincidence. Professor Jeff Stake (who is probably the professor to whom Dillon refers) has a piece acknowledging that the university takes race into account in admissions. It is a perfectly logical corollary of that that some applicants get admitted because of their race when an equally-qualified applicant with a different race would not be admitted. That's what it means to take race into account.

(Warning, social-science heavy paragraph ensuing). So if my piece doesn't make this clear (and there were word-count constraints), I think Dillon's story is unconvincing. The data are consistent with his hypothesis, but they're consistent with a lot of hypotheses. The "constant admissions" trend is interesting, but it's just not very helpful. It could be caused because there's a cieling rather than a floor on black admissions (a much different sort of quota than the an affirmative-action quota), or even because IU used to take race into account as a big factor, but is now taking it into account as a smaller factor. So the trend is equally well explained by a minority-preferential quota, an anti-minority quota, or (what strikes me as the most plausible) it could be that in the face of growing opposition to affirmative action and interesting constitutional questions, a smaller advantage is now given to minority applicants. Another possibility, of course, is that those "extra" minorities who have been applying recently don't have the same sort of background that IU looks for when it gives some racial preference. And a final possibility is coincidence. Statistics can show us that trend, but it's going to take much more complicated work to disprove all these other hypotheses, if it can even be done with the data.

Third, Dillon says that I misrepresent media interest in the story-- that Instapundit, the WSJ, and National Review all picked up on the story before the theft of Dillon's data. I apologize for implying that his story did not attain national prominence before the theft of Dillon's handouts. I should have checked the facts. But the theft did bring more attention to the story, including my own. I committed the fallacy of assuming my experience was widespread and should not have done so. I leave it to you to figure out if that affects the rest of the column.

Fourth, Dillon notes that the "data theft" line isn't his. True, it isn't, but it's still an unfortunate term and should be avoided here. That's all I said.

Fifth, Dillon seems upset that my article doesn't contain scholarly statistical analysis. If I develop some interesting scholarly views on his data, I'll be sure to make them known, though I think an HR column is not a great vessel for that. The trouble is figuring out a statistical technique that can tell apart the competing explanations, and that's not an easy task, though I'm trying to think about how to do it. The gap is obvious.

And Dillon appears concerned that I misrepresented myself to him, which was definitely not my intention. My first email to him said only:

Hi; I'm sorry your admissions data was stolen, but if you would be willing to let me have a copy, I would love to look at it.

Thanks.

Will

Will,

Attached is what I distributed to LS mailboxes. If you search www.hoosierreview.com by typing in scott dillon in the search box, you will find a number columns I've written on the subject (discussing further data not mentioned in the attachment). Happy to answer any further questions.

Are you the same libertarian list serve, mathematician Will Baude at U of C?

If not, my apologies. If so - I'm guessing you want the numbers to run a simulation or the like on it. Actually, I intend to do the same thing at some point (after bar review which I'm in the midst of right now). I had spoken with one of my MBA professors, an MIT PhD named Wayne Winston, about running a simulation to estimate the probabilities that the quota I speak of was not committed intentionally, based upon the GPA and LSAT scores I sent you and the admit numbers, a draft worksheet of which I'm attaching here. Just haven't had the time to do so yet.

Sorry if my presumption is wrong - but I'd be pleased to hear the results of any analysis if I was correct and that is what you are planning to do. If you are willing, I have contacts with some people I can pass the results of any such analysis along to who can do rather significant things with it. Attached is some more public data I acquired from the law school - the raw data is the school's, all calculations are my own - just initial scratch.

A few curiosities. What are your objectives and how did you learn about it?

Objectives: hard to say. I'm going to be working on the anti-affirmative action side of things this summer as an intern for the Center for Individual Rights in D.C., and we're studying the affirmative action cases in class at the momeny[sic] (final exam on Wednesday). Personally, I'm against affirmative action as a policy matter, but I haven't made up my mind on the constitutional issue.
So I'm interested in learning what's really going on, and I like playing with numbers, though I don't really have an ulterior agenda on either side at this point. I also run a little weblog (at baude.blogspot.com), and I do need to figure out a topic for my econ. thesis next year . . .

Your line "of course the minority numbers are lower" sounds eerily similar to Dean Robel's stance - did you scrape that from one of her emails? Has your father impressed upon you the party line? I hope there's some independent thought left there.

Numbers:

My column for The Hoosier Review is now available. It's about affirmative action at IU Law School and Scott Dillon, based on two previous posts (here and here).

Scott Dillon has posted some unpleased comments to the piece, which I'll respond to shortly. In the meantime, I will, as he asks make clear something he thinks is important. My father, Patrick Baude, signed Indiana University's amicus curiae brief supporting IU's affirmative action. That fact has nothing to do with my opinions on affirmative action as a policy matter, on affirmative action as a constitutional matter, or of the facts of IU's policy in particular.

Communicado:

Light posting, perhaps. But light packages, no. This man, folks, mailed home roughly a billion boxes filled with what I can only assume were cannonballs or large pieces of heavy artillery. These alleged "boxes" of so-called "books" were large enough to form a pillar in the middle of his room. Pity not this man.

Incommunicado:

Apologies for the light posting-- I spent yesterday hauling a couple hundred pounds of my worldly possessions from Chicago to Bloomington, and now I have to unpack so that I can repack for the summer in Washington. This marks the beginning of our blog's total scattering. All six of our writers will be spending the summer in different places, from California to Boston to Bloomington to Chicago to Maine to D.C.