[First, a claimer: No one is more opposed to unfair discrimination in hiring or anything else than I. This post is made solely in the interest of truth.]

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Lytonya, whose job is to statistically evaluate fairness in hiring, writes:

There's something going on if you're hiring the men from that applicant pool at a rate 2 SD's higher than the women from that applicant pool--not to mention even the fact that a low application rate of females in a region where there are plently of qualified females is an issue of recruitment and job advertisement.

The first assertion, which may appear to be obvious, is extremely doubtful.

Here is an example from the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (which is taking place in Stamford, CT, this very weekend). This is the only annual national crossword tournament, and has taken place each year since 1978.

According to last year's statistics, (see http://www.crosswordtournament.com/2005/index.htm), there are close to the same number of males and females among the 455 contestants. Here is the breakdown among the 20% of contestants who ended up with the highest scores. (The scoring is 100% objective. And no one has ever suggested that the knowledge helpful in solving these puzzles favors one sex over the other.) Two percent of 455 is 9.1, so we use 9 people to represent each 2% here:

Top 2%:    2F, 7M

2nd 2%:    2F, 7M

3rd 2%:    2F, 2M

4th 2%:    4F, 5M

5th 2%:    1F, 8M

6th 2%:    2F, 7M

7th 2%:    2F, 7M

8th 2%:    4F, 5M

9th 2%:    1F, 8M

10th 2%:   0F, 9M

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Among the top 20%, (91 people) there are 20F, 71M.

No one knows the explanation for the disproportionate statistics, but they are not a fluke; a similar pattern has occurred over the 27-year run of the tournament (not counting this, 28th, year, whose rankings won't be known until tomorrow afternoon).

Over the 27 years before now, a women has won the tournament 3 times, a man 24 times.

Skill at crosswords per se is irrelevant to any other endeavor, but it may well indicate that some skills that employers seek may be much stronger, on average, in one sex than in the other.

The phenomenon of winning the tournament may be quite similar to being the person chosen to be hired when several hundred applicants, roughly equal numbers of each sex, apply for one job opening.

I have not the slightest doubt that the exact reverse of these statistics -- showing women to have some skills moe strongly, on average, than men. The point is simply that an objectively disproportionate distribution of certain skills between women and men can easily happen.

Conclusion: Disproportionate hiring ratios are not by any means clear evidence of any discrimination in hiring.

As Lytonya writes, there's "something going on" -- but it may very well have nothing to do with discrimination.

Lytonya, please accept my apology for this careless error.

Lytonya, please accept my apology for this careless error.

The previous letter writer points to an article that repeats what is well-known and fully accepted by virtually all education researchers:

A new study profiled in Science Daily refutes the idea that boys are better than girls at math - the study found that girls score as well as the boys in class, but not as well on tests because of confidence and competition factors, not ability...and that they may shun math and science fields because of the intense and aggressive competition, not becuase of lack of interest or ability.

Check it out . . . .

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060223090528.htm

This is useful information, but when you check it out you find that it applies to 5th through 7th graders. That boys show no greater math ability than girls in these grades is well-known and widely accepted.

(Also, the article's claim that the [nonexistent] differences are due to girls' lack of confidence on tests makes little sense, since girls tend to get higher grades in humanitites subjects like English and history throughout primary and secondary school.)

Research I've seen tends to say that the sex differences in math scores are first observed around 9th grade. The most common explanation for this is that it's an age when social pressures -- including the desire to attract boys -- may lead some girls to avoid revealing how bright they are, especially in traditionally male endeavors like math.

Cynthia Montgomery's short letter, "Girls and math and Summers - new study" has absolutely no connection with what Summers ignominiously said:

That there is a notable discrepancy in the frequency that males and females are employed in math at the highest echelons of academia.

This is quite different from saying that boys and girls in 5th through 7th grades having different average math test scores . . . which in any case they don't.