Salary Gap Detective: free pay data reading game

What is Salary Gap Detective?

Eight made-up companies share their pay data: a table by role, a chart of women at each level, a pay split into base, bonus and overtime, a team list with one huge salary. Find where the gap hides, with the numbers explained after every case.

Salary Gap Detective is a free data reading game for International Women's Day. Eight made-up companies share their pay data, and each case asks where the gap hides: the same job paid differently, a promotion step where women's share drops, a bonus or overtime split, or an average pulled up by one very high salary.

Every company, name and number is made up and computed by the game, so each case has exactly one clear answer. After you pick, the game shows the numbers behind it: the gap for each role, the drop at each level, the difference in each part of pay, and how the median and the mean compare.

At a glance

Category

Seasonal

Difficulty

Medium

Play time

3–5 min

Price

Free, in your browser, sign-up optional

How to play

Read the evidence

Each case is a made-up company's pay report: a table, a chart of levels or a list of salaries.

Answer the question

Which role pays women less for the same job? Which promotion step loses the most women? Which part of pay holds the gap? What's the median?

Use the hint if stuck

The hint tells you what to compare. It costs the 50-point bonus for that case.

Score

100 points per solved case, +50 without the hint. A wrong answer costs one of 3 lives. 1,200 points at most.

Scoring

100 points per solved case, plus 50 when you solve it without the hint: 8 cases, 1,200 points at most.

A wrong answer costs one of 3 lives. All companies and numbers are made-up examples.

What it trains

Data reading

Reading pay tables and charts and picking the right comparison.

Median vs mean

Seeing how one very high salary pulls the mean but barely moves the median.

Spotting hidden gaps

Finding where a difference really comes from: same job, promotions or extras like bonuses.

Strategy and tips

Compare like with like

A pay gap for the same job means comparing women and men inside one row, not one role against another.

Look at the steps

In a promotion chart, the bottleneck is the biggest drop from one level to the next, not the smallest bar.

Split the total

Total pay is base plus extras. A near-equal base can hide a big bonus or overtime gap.

Sort before the median

The median is the middle value once the list is sorted: the 4th of 7, or the 3rd of 5.

Watch the outlier

One very high salary pulls the mean up a lot and the median hardly at all.

Why play Salary Gap Detective?

Pay gap figures are in the news every year, and they're easy to misread. The same company can show a big mean gap and a small median gap, equal salaries and unequal bonuses, or fair pay at each level but few women at the top. Salary Gap Detective trains the habit of asking which comparison a number makes, and where in the data a difference really comes from.

Frequently asked questions