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While this is an interesting statistic, it can be interpreted in many ways, not all of which are meaningful. Statistically, more men have won Nobel prizes than
by alphakappa 13y ago
While this is an interesting statistic, it can be interpreted in many ways, not all of which are meaningful.
Statistically, more men have won Nobel prizes than women (by a large margin). Most Nobel laureates are Caucasian. Most are from the western hemisphere. Other than gender, it may be interpreted to mean that if a group which makes a small fraction of the total world population, they must be better/smarter.
It's a fallacious argument of course, since there can be many other factors at play here. How much of it is because these groups have access to more funds, that most of them are based in the United States which has better and more well-funded universities? What about social factors that have nothing to do with race/religion?
Along these lines, I could submit a link about how Indians who make up a tiny fraction of the American population are so much more successful than $POPULATION [1], but it's a meaningless statistic to have, other than for some misplaced pride.
1. http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americans-opinions-contributors_immigrants_minority.html http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-america...
- benched 13y agoI can understand saying a statistic might be partly confounded by additional factors. I can't understand calling it meaningless. Just that it might not mean exactly what's implied. The stat itself is pretty hard to miss.
- graeme 13y agoAs another commenter noted, the smaller the group, the higher the variance. Extreme cases due to variance actually are quite meaningless. I am not claiming that this particular statistic is meaningless. Just that it isn't necessarily meaningful, either.
- bcoates 13y agoThe nature of variance means that you would expect to find the highest and lowest means in groups with the smallest populations.
- Luit2 13y ago> Statistically, more men have won Nobel prizes than women (by a large margin). Most Nobel laureates are Caucasian. Most are from the western hemisphere. Other than gender, it may be interpreted to mean that if a group which makes a small fraction of the total world population, they must be better/smarter. Consider your magnitudes though. For example, men win 0.961/0.5 = 1.9 times the Nobel Prizes you would expect based on representation alone, whereas Jews win 0.202/0.002 = 101 times the Nobel Prizes you would expect based on representation alone.
- tedunangst 13y agoWouldn't percentage of Jews in the Western world be a better stat, given that's more or less the population from which Nobel prize winners are selected?
- downandout 13y agoAgreed. I'm not sure why this belongs on HN. It seems very divisive and out of place in the context of the HN community. This list is very short in comparison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Nobel_Laureates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Nobel_Laureates . Should we be promoting all of the negative connotations associated with that when compared to the Jewish list?
- brymaster 13y agoThanks. I had submitted that link to the "Black Nobel Laureates" earlier and let it sit for 30 minutes after no upvotes, then deleted it. Made it appear as if this thread was pride-based upvoting that de-evolved into "Jews have super human intelligence" with no discussion on socioeconomics.
- 4hthth4 13y agoWhat have you said in this thread about socioeconomics?
- gcb0 13y agoThe only take away from this is that Obama is secretly a jew.