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All it would require is just that the standard deviation for math ability in men (whether by nature or nurture, I am making no judgment either way) is only very
by cycrutchfield 9y ago
All it would require is just that the standard deviation for math ability in men (whether by nature or nurture, I am making no judgment either way) is only very slightly higher than for women. Since we are looking at the tail of the distribution, the result would not be surprising.
- tzs 9y agoAs Helena Cronin noted of men: "more dumbbells but more Nobels" [1]. [1] https://www.edge.org/annual-question/2008/response/10670 https://www.edge.org/annual-question/2008/response/10670
- 77pt77 9y agoThat hypothesis got Larry Summers in a lot of trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_b...
- yorwba 9y agoI once did some calculations to explore the expected effect of that difference in standard deviation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524 I'm on my phone right now and can't redo it for the gender ratio of Fields medalists, but I expect that the effect would cover most of the difference, since the cutoff for the award does seem quite high.