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gjm comments on Open thread, 7-14 July 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: David_Gerard 07 July 2014 07:14AM

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Comment author: gjm 13 July 2014 03:00:01PM 1 point [-]

If you take math test scores from high schoolers and use them as a measure of the population's underlying mathematical ability distribution and run the numbers, you predict basically the male-female split that Harvard has, which leaves nothing left for sexism to explain.

I've seen this said before (notably, Larry Summers took a lot of heat for saying it) and it seems like the kind of thing that might well be true, but I've never seen the actual numbers. Have you actually done the calculations?

Comment author: gwern 13 July 2014 04:58:24PM *  4 points [-]

If you just want some calculations, look at La Griffe: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/women_and_minorities_in_science.htm and http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm / http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm

(I haven't checked his numbers or looked for more mainstream authors, but then again, would you expect to find many papers by prominent authors doing the exact calculation you want, especially post-Sumners?)

Comment author: gjm 13 July 2014 07:27:50PM 2 points [-]

the exact calculation you want

You say that as if I'm asking for something specific and unusual, but all I'm actually doing is responding to "If you do the calculations you find X" with "That's interesting; have you done those calculations or seen someone else do them, then?".

Comment author: gwern 13 July 2014 11:03:28PM *  3 points [-]

The problem is, I want to see someone other than La Griffe do the numbers and I'm not happy relying on him.

I don't know who he is, I haven't gone through his derivations or math, I don't know how accurate his models are, he uses a lot of old sources of data like Project Talent (which may or may not be fine, but I don't have the domain expertise to know), and the one piece of writing of his I've really gone through, his 'smart fraction' doesn't seem to hold up too well using updated national IQ data from Lynn (me and Vaniver tried to reproduce his result & update it in some comments on LW).

But the problem is, given the conclusion, I am unlikely ever to see someone from across the ideological spectrum verify that his work is right. (Whatever the accuracy of his own arguments, La Griffe does a good job tearing apart one attempt to prove there is no variance difference, where the woman's arguments show she either doesn't understand the issue or is being dishonest.)

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 14 July 2014 10:17:53PM 1 point [-]

Your third link begins with the Griffe taking numbers from Janet Hyde, who is on the opposite end of the spectrum. The difference is that she downplays the magnitude of the standard deviation difference. Isn't the main concern the source of the numbers, not the calculation? It's just a normal distribution calculation.

(I don't actually believe that intelligence is normally distributed, so I don't believe the argument.)

Comment author: gwern 14 July 2014 11:58:16PM 1 point [-]

It's just a normal distribution calculation. (I don't actually believe that intelligence is normally distributed, so I don't believe the argument.)

If you don't think intelligence is normally distributed, isn't that a problem for how true his results are and why one might want third-parties' opinion? And I'm not sure that affects his rank-ordering argument very much; that seems like it might be reasonably insensitive to the exact distribution one might choose.

Comment author: gjm 14 July 2014 01:52:54PM 0 points [-]

OK, I understand. (I share your frustration, would count as "from across the ideological spectrum", and have at least a good subset of the necessary skills, but probably lack the time to try to rectify the deficit myself.)

Comment author: Vaniver 13 July 2014 08:12:59PM *  1 point [-]

Have you actually done the calculations?

I got the calculations from La Griffe, linked by gwern in a sibling comment. (For completeness, [1], [2], [3].) I have a vague recollection of checking them myself at some point.

Comment author: gjm 13 July 2014 08:26:51PM 2 points [-]

OK. Thanks.