
Twitter Names Jeffrey Siminoff as New Diversity Chief - gwintrob
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/technology/twitter-names-jeffrey-siminoff-as-new-diversity-chief.html
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gnicholas
>Mr. Miley wrote that black adults accounted for about a quarter of Twitter’s
users, but that black employees made up about 2 percent of the company’s work
force.

Statistics fail: Mr. Miley wrote—quoting a Pew study—that 27% of African
Americans who use the internet use Twitter. The NYT confuses the denominator
and ends up with the unbelievable claim that a quarter of Twitter users are
African American.

In fact, only 20% of all Twitter users are even American[1], and as of 2014,
only 18% of US Twitter users were African American[2].

So the true percentage is 3.6%, not "about a quarter." And even if the NYT
meant to refer to just US users, they overstated the case by nearly half (25%
versus 18%).

1: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2159420/twitter-users-to-
grow...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2159420/twitter-users-to-
grow-244-percent-in-2014-us-still-largest-market.html)

2:
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023044191045793234...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304419104579323442346646168)

Note: although the NYT uses the term "black," the cited source talks about
"African Americans." So even though "black" could be used to refer to non-US
people, in this case it was in reference to African Americans only.

