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So where is your evidence that quantitative fields did not have this "focused effort", but non-quantitative fields did? Can you present some evidence of focused

So where is your evidence that quantitative fields did not have this "focused effort", but non-quantitative fields did? Can you present some evidence of focused effort in medicine, law and biology but none in computing and aerospace engineering? I.e., do you have an upward sloping graph with focused effort on the X and %female on the Y?

tptacek 12y ago
You can for instance read through 'rayiner's comments on how this happened in law.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I skimmed his comments, he hints it was discriminatory affirmative action but doesn't say much in detail. It's hardly clear that engineering and STEM didn't do the same thing - in fact, we know they have done this for some time. I find it a bit surprising that you are so unconvinced by Scott Alexander's actual quantitative data (not to mention all the other academic studies I linked to), yet find vague hints at a single datapoint to be proof positive of an alternate hypothesis.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    In the face of a gigantic participation gap, I am not persuaded by numerology. I don't find the data you have on this issue to be particularly compelling. I think it relies primarily on a vain misconception a lot of people have about the demands on software developers. I think you find it persuasive because you work in a small specialty of CS that is particularly math-oriented (even if I don't buy that your facts apply to your particular specialty).
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      So in the face of weak but suggestive data, we should instead accept an alternate hypothesis with a single data point vaguely alluded to?
      - tptacek 12y ago
        "Single data point vaguely alluded to". That's funny. Women compromise 20% of the software development workforce. For every woman developer, there are four men. Against that fact, you've got statistical studies on the variance of quantitative ability between men and women which purport to explain why women don't chair math departments and win Fields Medals, and which you'd also like to use to explain why there are four men writing SQL queries to every woman.
        yummyfajitas 12y ago
        Just curious, what evidence (if any) would cause you to change your views? Also, given that you keep bringing up CS as somehow unique, does this mean you attribute other STEM fields without women (e.g. physics, aerospace engineering) to a different cause?
        tptacek 12y ago
        Those fields are tiny compared to software development, so I guess I'm willing to believe (a) that there isn't enough social impetus to correct them and (b) whatever biased CS is probably very similar to what biased those STEM fields that have the same problem as CS. Results from unbiased work-sample aptitude tests would influence my views. But they wouldn't influence the views of the "pro-gap" faction; I expect the results would be explained away as "well of course that cohort of women captured by your sample does well on the test; it's all the other women that have the problem." Anyways, I'd pay attention to that, because: the biggest fallacy I see in arguments that suggest the gender gap is benign is the notion that it attributable to intrinsic differences in intellectual attributes between males and females; when people attempt to explain those differences, they appear not to connect to software development in any but the most naive, high-school guidance counsellor kinds of ways. My sensitivity to that fallacy has, like, the inverse vector of what I think yours is: I started my career with a huge deficit in math (my worst subject in high school, which is where my formal education stopped), but was successful regardless, and not because I plugged form fields into databases: after doing somewhat interesting systems programming for an ISP as a network admin, my first real dev job was compiler-theoretic. So I'm automatically suspicious of the belief that software development is closely tied to math aptitude.

tptacek 12y ago

You can for instance read through 'rayiner's comments on how this happened in law.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
I skimmed his comments, he hints it was discriminatory affirmative action but doesn't say much in detail. It's hardly clear that engineering and STEM didn't do the same thing - in fact, we know they have done this for some time. I find it a bit surprising that you are so unconvinced by Scott Alexander's actual quantitative data (not to mention all the other academic studies I linked to), yet find vague hints at a single datapoint to be proof positive of an alternate hypothesis.
- tptacek 12y ago
  In the face of a gigantic participation gap, I am not persuaded by numerology. I don't find the data you have on this issue to be particularly compelling. I think it relies primarily on a vain misconception a lot of people have about the demands on software developers. I think you find it persuasive because you work in a small specialty of CS that is particularly math-oriented (even if I don't buy that your facts apply to your particular specialty).
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    So in the face of weak but suggestive data, we should instead accept an alternate hypothesis with a single data point vaguely alluded to?
    - tptacek 12y ago
      "Single data point vaguely alluded to". That's funny. Women compromise 20% of the software development workforce. For every woman developer, there are four men. Against that fact, you've got statistical studies on the variance of quantitative ability between men and women which purport to explain why women don't chair math departments and win Fields Medals, and which you'd also like to use to explain why there are four men writing SQL queries to every woman.
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        Just curious, what evidence (if any) would cause you to change your views? Also, given that you keep bringing up CS as somehow unique, does this mean you attribute other STEM fields without women (e.g. physics, aerospace engineering) to a different cause?
        tptacek 12y ago
        Those fields are tiny compared to software development, so I guess I'm willing to believe (a) that there isn't enough social impetus to correct them and (b) whatever biased CS is probably very similar to what biased those STEM fields that have the same problem as CS. Results from unbiased work-sample aptitude tests would influence my views. But they wouldn't influence the views of the "pro-gap" faction; I expect the results would be explained away as "well of course that cohort of women captured by your sample does well on the test; it's all the other women that have the problem." Anyways, I'd pay attention to that, because: the biggest fallacy I see in arguments that suggest the gender gap is benign is the notion that it attributable to intrinsic differences in intellectual attributes between males and females; when people attempt to explain those differences, they appear not to connect to software development in any but the most naive, high-school guidance counsellor kinds of ways. My sensitivity to that fallacy has, like, the inverse vector of what I think yours is: I started my career with a huge deficit in math (my worst subject in high school, which is where my formal education stopped), but was successful regardless, and not because I plugged form fields into databases: after doing somewhat interesting systems programming for an ISP as a network admin, my first real dev job was compiler-theoretic. So I'm automatically suspicious of the belief that software development is closely tied to math aptitude.