[Haskell-cafe] Are there any female Haskellers?

[Jeff Heard]

The Wisconsin study, which was done in the 1980s and then redone last
year is the primary source for that, and it presents data that there
is no real difference between women and men in math ability.  The only
*statistically* significant (bold because significant is a technical
term, not a term denoting quality) difference that remains in the
revisited study (which can be found in Nature toward the latter half
of last year, but I don't have the ref. on me at the moment) is
between the variances in IQ and testing distribution between the two
genders.  This causes more men to be in the 95th and above percentiles
on the tests that were given, however given what we know about the
tests and work from the specific branch of organizational psych known
as testing theory, the number of questions that differentiates the
populations in the 90th and above percentiles is too small to be
meaningful.  To put together a real test on the extrema of
mathematical ability for both genders, one would have to construct a
second test that tests only extraordinary populations.

So in other words, the results are significant, technically, but using
them to derive the conclusion that the best men are better at
engineering and math isn't possible.  It's another hypothesis, and not
explained by the results of the study.

By the way, I've been on many programming mailing lists and other
techie mailing lists where this subject has come up, and I've never
seen it so rationally discussed as on this mailing list...

-- Jeff

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Alberto G. Corona <agocorona at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> IQ tests, for example. google it.
>>
>> 2010/3/28 Jochem Berndsen <jochem at functor.nl>
>>>
>>> Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>>> >  The reasons for the sexual differences in mathematical abilities are
>>> > different, because math abilities  are not a -primary- reason for
>>> > survival.  Tools engineering and mastering is. If this is politically
>>> > incorrect I beg you pardon, but this is my honest theory about that. My
>>> > other hobby is evolution and evolutionary psichology.  I really
>>> > recommend to learn about it.
>>>
>>> Could you point us to any evidence that supports your assumption that
>>> there are "sexual differences in mathematical abilities"?
>>>
>>> Thanks, Jochem
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jochem Berndsen | jochem at functor.nl
>>
>
>
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