Statistics

What percentage of the US population is black? 12.3% according to the 2000 US Census.

So, tell me what exactly the problem is here:
[ Reuters ] A dearth of black models strutting the catwalks is a persistent issue in the fashion world and while the numbers have improved, there are still too few, fashion observers say.

At New York's semi-annual Fashion Week ending on Friday, many designers used two or three black models, in the more than 30 shows attended by Reuters reporters. Several only used one, and some had none. Most of the shows featured between 12 and 25 models.


Two or three? So at the low end of the "many designers" you have 2 of 25 (8.0% -- low but not appalling. It's 60% of full representation.) , and at the high end you have 3 of 12 (25% -- quite high, actually, at almost double their population rate)?

Horrors!

Steve says: When I taught math at the UofM, it seemed to me there were very few blacks in my classes. Then I looked it up and found the black population of MN is about 4.5% of the total. So in a class of 30 one would expect one or two students to be black, and that was about what I observed.

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