Yes, thanks for the pointer to the NSF data. Interestingly, that data also indicates that the percentage of women receiving PhDs in mathematics and computer science dropped from 19.3% in the 1920-24 period to 4.9% in the 1955-1959 period. Not quite linearly, but somewhat steadily. (This is an excellent reminder that we must be ever vigilant in providing opportunity to all groups in our society.) Would the "innate difference" believers take this data to mean that women got dumber during that period and smarter during the ensuing years? What explanation other than environment can account for such large variations over a single century?

In general, I have a very hard time getting my head around what exactly it is that IQ tests purport to measure and how much stock we should put in them. For the most part, I think IQ tests measure the ability to take IQ tests.

And could there be gender bias in IQ tests? Certainly there could. Thus, if the "ability to do math at the highest level" really is "closely correlated with IQ," then this could be due to gender bias in the tests.

I disagree with your assertion that it is more logical to believe that gender difference rather than the quashing of savants explains the unequal levels of women and men at the highest echelons of mathematics. The talents required to achieve acknowledged success in mathematical research are not purely mathematical (they are determined by society, after all) and even the mathematical component is not necessarily easily recognizable at an early age.

As you point out, there is no evidence to support either explanation over the other at this point. Logic demands that we wait for the evidence, rather than draw conclusions based on the lack of evidence.

Yes, your story is just an anecdote, and your assertions are an example of very bad math. Just because you were adequate but not great at math *and* were encouraged to excel doesn't mean that there do not exist examples of women who are better at math than you *and* were never encouraged to excel.

The whole danged point of this study is take samples from which gender bias can in some sense be removed, i.e., examine the numbers in societies where genders are treated more equal. In these societies, the number of women represented in the highest echelons are in fact more nearly equal to the number of men.

Simply put, The Jim, I think you are wrong. While Darwin and Newton were not members of "teams", they did not work in a vacuum. They exchanged ideas and criticism via letters, publications, and meetings. They expanded upon and refined ideas put forward by others.

In fact, one excellent example of my point, is that both Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus nearly simultaneously. They worked within a sphere that was pushing mathematics toward calculus all along. No doubt they were both geniuses, but not isolated ones.

If we stop promoting the idea that isolation is the necessary environment for scientific breakthrough, who knows what discoveries we might foster by recruiting new geniuses (and teams of geniuses) to the fold?

Thanks for pointing that article out. I find Sharon Begley to be one of the best science writers around.

So your point is that you did a small study on a non-random group and found that the tiny number of people that fell above 3-sigma on your distribution were all male? And drew conclusions? Gee, could all of that education really have been worth it if you still can't do simple statistics?

Your argument is just rephrasing the "innate difference" argument to make it appear that some uncontrollable factor creates a difference between the groups. If "theoretical math/science and some areas of the arts are solitary pursuits" then they are so because our society has organized them that way.

One of the ways in which this is done is by creating a history of science that focuses almost exclusively on individual effort. I believe this is a mythological narrative which historians have grossly oversold. (For example, the recent Darwin anniversary mania, about which Richard C. Lewontin wrote last month in the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22694.)

In fact, advances in science, as much as any other intellectual pursuit, can be and are achieved by groups and teams. Very few breakthroughs happen in a bubble, and some genuinely important discoveries come from gradual and incremental work that can only be achieved by multiple people.

I think a conscientious stay-at-home parent could plan some very good activities for a kid on such an occasion and the officials' suspicions are insulting.

But what really has me laughing this morning is the fact that this kerfuffle took place in the very school district where I spent my high school years. By the time I reached 12th grade, my school had run out of challenging classes to offer me, so I was allowed to leave in the afternoon. I spent every afternoon of my final semester at home watching baseball with my mother!

I think you've done an excellent job of summing up and capturing the essence of this phenomena.

I usually have a tin ear and a flat response to poetry. My husband got me with humor, not poetry. But last night on the radio I heard these guys and it really touched me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY_I2tCpkkw

The second one, called Outspoken, probably gets plenty of girls.

If hog farms endanger our health and environment, shouldn't we be banning and regulating these gigantic hog operations instead of studying how to make them smell better?