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Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1]. The male/female ratio is especially high in the higher Math percentiles, where you would expect your best engineers

Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1]. The male/female ratio is especially high in the higher Math percentiles, where you would expect your best engineers to come from. The polite way to explain this is some kind of "expectations effect", which is possible, but females do dominate at all other aspects of education. We cannot rule out simple innate ability, combined with higher male interest in abstract things. [1] http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-huge-gender-math-gap-persists-with-a-33-point-advantage-for-high-school-boys/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-hug...

ama729 13y ago
> where you would expect your best engineers to come from. I frequently see this assertion but I never see it sourced. Most programming use nothing more than simple math or just re-implementation of known algorithms (and we know how it turned out for Telegram to invent their own), why would you need hardcore math skills then? If you said "above average", that would have been understandable, but then there isn't much data to support that point of view since as point out, the effect is especially important in the higher percentiles.
- newnewnew 13y ago
  Startups try to keep a "high bar", only hiring people with sterling academic credentials or proven work in the field. So I would expect the gender ratio to be less equal at startups that draw from the far right-hand side of the graph, and more equal at big firms that are willing to hire from the middle.
  - eropple 13y ago
    > Startups try to keep a "high bar", only hiring people with sterling academic credentials or proven work in the field. Your "high bar" is everyone else's "they're like us."
- ericd 13y ago
  Math and programming both require a facility in thinking abstractly, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between math ability and programming ability.
rokhayakebe 13y ago
Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1] I just want to add that this has to do with culture, and, again, what we were exposed to and influenced to have an interest in from childhood. In high school I can remember the top Science student were all women and they racked more awards than men.
- xrctl 13y ago
  hahah, you recall that the top science students you knew were women? How convincing! I have analyzed the records of the World Cubing Association, and there is 1 woman in the top 100 ranked [1]. I have analyzed the ratings of the American Scrabble Association, and there are 6 women in the top 100 ranked [2]. It is well known that there is only 1 woman in the top 100 ranked chess players (FIDE). I have analyzed the ratings of the European Go Federation, and there are 0 women in the top 100 ranked [3]. But no, I guess I must defer to your remembered impressions. [1] http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-speedcubing.html http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-speedcubing.html [2] http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-scrabble.html http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-scrabble.html [3] Forthcoming
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - esperluette 13y ago
    And this couldn't be in part because women have less free time across the board, about five hours less?[1] Hard to get to tournament quality if you don't get as much time to practice. [1]http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gender-gap-men-spend-more-time-in-leisure-activities/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gend...
    - parennoob 13y ago
      Are you seriously saying that women without children at home having less free time is now somehow society's problem? You don't just "have less free time" automatically. It's probably because you choose to do more housework, which is exactly what the study says ("they spend about six hours more than men doing household work"). Don't want to do it? Cool, practise for a tournament all the time, don't do more housework, and take the risks that come with that. There are tons of lonely male nerds who have untidy houses and excellent tournament records. You are very welcome to join their ranks. In fact they would probably be glad to have more female participation. I on the other hand will err on the side of a more tidy house, and no medals.
quinnchr 13y ago
Men score better than women on standardized tests in math in some countries, while in other countries women score better (http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/gap_sept09.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/gap_sept09.pdf). It's almost as if the culture you are surrounded by somehow affects you. In fact the countries with more gender equality that encourage women in the sciences have higher test scores for women!
- clarkm 13y ago
  Thanks for that link. After looking through Appendix Table 2 (page 25), it's pretty obvious that the only big outlier is the gap in Israeli high-school students. Here's a link to the (gated) paper with the data: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272708000418 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272708... From the abstract: This paper tests for the existence of gender stereotyping and discrimination by public high-school teachers in Israel. Using data on test results in several subjects in the humanities and sciences, I found, contrary to expectations, that male students face discrimination in each subject. These biases widen the female–male achievement difference because girls outperform boys in all subjects, except English, and at all levels of the curriculum. The bias is evident in all segments of the ability and performance distribution and is robust to various individual controls. Ok, that was surprising. Does anyone have any more information about this?
- reinhardt 13y ago
  Sure, if "gender equality" is a euphemism for school grades being biased towards girls: “If, as the data suggest, young girls display a more developed ‘attitude toward learning’ and teachers (consciously or subconsciously) reward these attitudes by giving girls higher marks than warranted by their test scores, the seeds of a gender gap in educational attainment may be sown at an early age, because teachers‘ grades strongly influence grade-level placement, high-school graduation and college admission prospects.” http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/why-girls-get-better-grade...
- newnewnew 13y ago
  Wow, I never knew that the male-female Math gap was so robust. Look at the tables in the last three pages you linked. Except for Israel, nearly every country has a male-biased Math score gap on standardized tests.
0x20 13y ago
http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/fr/GDP1/papers/spencer99.pdf http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/fr/GDP1/papers/spencer99.p... “Characterizing the test as insensitive to gender differences was enough to totally eliminate women’s underperformance in this experiment. Yet when the same test was characterized as sensitive to gender differences, women signiﬁcantly underperformed in relation to equally qualiﬁed men.” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2012.687012#.Ueuwoo3FV8E http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2012.68... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19487665 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19487665
- newnewnew 13y ago
  Some social scientists are skeptical of the validity of stereotype threat. John List, in a paper coauthored with Steven Levitt at the University of Chicago, was unable to reproduce it[1]. Some scholars suspect publication bias[2]. Also see another failure to reproduce by the Educational Testing Service[3]. [1] http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-nonexistence-of.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-none... [2] http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/01/stereotype-threat-scientific-scandal.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/01/stereotype-threat-scienti... [3] http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/11/high-stakes-stereotype-threat.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/11/high-stakes-stereotype-th...

ama729 13y ago

> where you would expect your best engineers to come from. I frequently see this assertion but I never see it sourced. Most programming use nothing more than simple math or just re-implementation of known algorithms (and we know how it turned out for Telegram to invent their own), why would you need hardcore math skills then? If you said "above average", that would have been understandable, but then there isn't much data to support that point of view since as point out, the effect is especially important in the higher percentiles.

newnewnew 13y ago
Startups try to keep a "high bar", only hiring people with sterling academic credentials or proven work in the field. So I would expect the gender ratio to be less equal at startups that draw from the far right-hand side of the graph, and more equal at big firms that are willing to hire from the middle.
- eropple 13y ago
  > Startups try to keep a "high bar", only hiring people with sterling academic credentials or proven work in the field. Your "high bar" is everyone else's "they're like us."
ericd 13y ago
Math and programming both require a facility in thinking abstractly, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between math ability and programming ability.

rokhayakebe 13y ago

Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1] I just want to add that this has to do with culture, and, again, what we were exposed to and influenced to have an interest in from childhood. In high school I can remember the top Science student were all women and they racked more awards than men.

xrctl 13y ago
hahah, you recall that the top science students you knew were women? How convincing! I have analyzed the records of the World Cubing Association, and there is 1 woman in the top 100 ranked [1]. I have analyzed the ratings of the American Scrabble Association, and there are 6 women in the top 100 ranked [2]. It is well known that there is only 1 woman in the top 100 ranked chess players (FIDE). I have analyzed the ratings of the European Go Federation, and there are 0 women in the top 100 ranked [3]. But no, I guess I must defer to your remembered impressions. [1] http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-speedcubing.html http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-speedcubing.html [2] http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-scrabble.html http://rcm-papers.info/gender-and-scrabble.html [3] Forthcoming
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- esperluette 13y ago
  And this couldn't be in part because women have less free time across the board, about five hours less?[1] Hard to get to tournament quality if you don't get as much time to practice. [1]http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gender-gap-men-spend-more-time-in-leisure-activities/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gend...
  - parennoob 13y ago
    Are you seriously saying that women without children at home having less free time is now somehow society's problem? You don't just "have less free time" automatically. It's probably because you choose to do more housework, which is exactly what the study says ("they spend about six hours more than men doing household work"). Don't want to do it? Cool, practise for a tournament all the time, don't do more housework, and take the risks that come with that. There are tons of lonely male nerds who have untidy houses and excellent tournament records. You are very welcome to join their ranks. In fact they would probably be glad to have more female participation. I on the other hand will err on the side of a more tidy house, and no medals.

quinnchr 13y ago

Men score better than women on standardized tests in math in some countries, while in other countries women score better (http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/gap_sept09.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/gap_sept09.pdf). It's almost as if the culture you are surrounded by somehow affects you. In fact the countries with more gender equality that encourage women in the sciences have higher test scores for women!

clarkm 13y ago
Thanks for that link. After looking through Appendix Table 2 (page 25), it's pretty obvious that the only big outlier is the gap in Israeli high-school students. Here's a link to the (gated) paper with the data: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272708000418 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272708... From the abstract: This paper tests for the existence of gender stereotyping and discrimination by public high-school teachers in Israel. Using data on test results in several subjects in the humanities and sciences, I found, contrary to expectations, that male students face discrimination in each subject. These biases widen the female–male achievement difference because girls outperform boys in all subjects, except English, and at all levels of the curriculum. The bias is evident in all segments of the ability and performance distribution and is robust to various individual controls. Ok, that was surprising. Does anyone have any more information about this?
reinhardt 13y ago
Sure, if "gender equality" is a euphemism for school grades being biased towards girls: “If, as the data suggest, young girls display a more developed ‘attitude toward learning’ and teachers (consciously or subconsciously) reward these attitudes by giving girls higher marks than warranted by their test scores, the seeds of a gender gap in educational attainment may be sown at an early age, because teachers‘ grades strongly influence grade-level placement, high-school graduation and college admission prospects.” http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/why-girls-get-better-grade...
newnewnew 13y ago
Wow, I never knew that the male-female Math gap was so robust. Look at the tables in the last three pages you linked. Except for Israel, nearly every country has a male-biased Math score gap on standardized tests.

0x20 13y ago

http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/fr/GDP1/papers/spencer99.pdf http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/fr/GDP1/papers/spencer99.p... “Characterizing the test as insensitive to gender differences was enough to totally eliminate women’s underperformance in this experiment. Yet when the same test was characterized as sensitive to gender differences, women signiﬁcantly underperformed in relation to equally qualiﬁed men.” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2012.687012#.Ueuwoo3FV8E http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2012.68... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19487665 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19487665

newnewnew 13y ago
Some social scientists are skeptical of the validity of stereotype threat. John List, in a paper coauthored with Steven Levitt at the University of Chicago, was unable to reproduce it[1]. Some scholars suspect publication bias[2]. Also see another failure to reproduce by the Educational Testing Service[3]. [1] http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-nonexistence-of.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-none... [2] http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/01/stereotype-threat-scientific-scandal.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/01/stereotype-threat-scienti... [3] http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/11/high-stakes-stereotype-threat.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/11/high-stakes-stereotype-th...