Conditional Probabilities and College Presidents:
Controversy and Competence

FOLLOWUP: The Eclectic Economist reminds us that the Colorado president, Betsy Hoffman, is an economist. EcE asks "What is it about economists as university presidents and controversy? coincidence?"

My answer: COMPETENCE. Because more of them are judged competent to be presidents, economists are much more likely to become university presidents than most other disciplines. The probability of economist conditional on controversy is high, but does not mean the probability of controversy given economist is high.

I suppose it could be true, however, that when trustees hire an economist to be university president they have a belief that she will shake things up, with the side effect of controversy. But it could be true that once you've screened for competence the difference in academic discipline predicts little about how a college president will behave.

Averages and tails. My claim about competence is a claim about the difference in tails of competence distributions of economists and other academics. I seem to recall that talking about the differences in the tails of distributions is what got Larry Summers in trouble. Do note that I am saying Betsy Hoffman, a woman, is in the same tail as Larry Summers.