In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of
more than 130 qualified applicants for the role of engineering intern.
About 73 percent of applicants were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers
Palantir's conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company
hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians.
"The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is
approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed
with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges.
I'm sorry, assuming what distribution? And hiring is not chance anyway. That statistic is mind-numbing. Perhaps it is true that... the likelihood that this result occurred according to chance, assuming applicants were selected randomly, is approximately one in a billion. But the applicants are far from randomly selected from a uniform distribution... The odds of choosing 4 Asians out of 21 interns baring racial discrimination do not sound that long to me considering actual educational dynamics and the population that is applying to US software intern jobs.
