Rorty on Pragmatism

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: April 13, 2000
Faculty on the Site.

This sample construction of a dummy table was started in response to question #4 of the Pass or Prepared? on Rorty 's Pragmatism.

On April 15, Donna Woods responded to the suggestion to create a dummy table:

Well, this is what I have come up with:
My two variables (Nominal) are, Blacks needing training, and poor whites excluded. I then looked for mathematical measurements, such as "cost of promoting potential, and the cost of righting wrongs."

I hope that I have the beginnings of a table.

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How would you answer Donna? How would you go about constructing this table?

jeanne's response:

On Tursday, April 14, jeanne responded:

Yes, you have the rudimentary form of a table. But let's take a close look at your variables. They are a little complex.

"Blacks needing training" sounds like two variables to me: race and the need for training.

Race, in your dummy table, would be Black and White. And here is one of the advantages of a dummy table. Once you look at this analysis, you might decide you want to include another color. Or you might decide that if you have no funding, maybe that should be a delimitation of your study. Then you could state in your conclusion that you think more research should include other races.

Need for Training, another variable, could be measured nominally, as you have suggested, by a simple Yes or No. But maybe you could also measure the need for training as an ordinal variable by using the level of education completed: no high school, some high school, highschool graduate.

Then you added costs of training as a way to measure. But that sounds to me like another variable. The higher the cost of training, the more difficult to provide it, and the higher the cost of training the more the relative deprivation of the Whites who do not receive it, but who would qualify if they were Black.

But let's not get that complex with our first dummy table. Let's just keep this simple. Let's make our third variable "Receive Training" with a simple nominal measure: yes or no.

Now try making up a table from this:

Study: Relative Deprivation and Affirmative Action

Table 1. Need for Training by Race
Race	Need Training
---	Yes	No
Black	65%	35%
White	40%	60%

Table 2. Receive Training by Race
---	Receive Training
Race	Yes	No
Black	40%	60%
White	10%	90%

Now you figure out how to put these together, jeanne