Legal Commentary

Statistics Are Tricky

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Brian Leiter was was kind enough to link to my previous post (Yes, We’re Hiring) with the headline University of Miami President Committed to 40% Expansion of Size of Law Faculty.

Brian got that idea from the following artful line of our Dean Search committee’s artfully written sales pitch:

The current faculty contains 45 tenure or tenure track faculty members. In the near future, and in the tenure of the next Dean, the Law School will hire 17 new faculty, roughly 40% of the existing faculty.

This is a true statement. But it doesn’t mean we’re growing 40% over our current full size of 45 — the plan is “only” for twelve new lines, as the other five represent currently empty lines that need filling. So in fact our growth over current size were we at full staffing will be a mere 26.7%; our growth over current actual staffing (since we’re short-handed) will be about 42%.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on January 31, 2009 (boomark / email).