[Haskell-cafe] Re: Are there any female Haskellers?

[wren ng thornton]

Jon Fairbairn wrote:
> Another (provocative) observation is that most of the women
> programmers I've known were good at it and thought they might
> not be, but most of the men claimed to be good at it but
> were not.

I've observed this too, but it's a bit droll. Let:

     p = proportion of people who think they're good but aren't
     q = proportion who think they're not good but are
     M = number of men in CS
     W = number of women in CS

Given that M >> W, we'll naturally find that p*M > q*W if p and q are 
even remotely comparable, regardless of whether p and q are independent 
of gender or not.

-- 
Live well,
~wren