I address here directly, and in a fairly careful way, what Lawrence Summers, then President of Harvard University and now Chief economic advisor to President Obama, postied about differences in the variance of innate ability -- aptitude -- of men and women in math and the sciences as his best guess about the observed differences at the high end of the bell curve, so to speak.
Woods v Nicklaus and Women in Math.pdf Click on link here.
This is fundamentally about the debate about the aptitude of women in math and sciences. That debate took on new life when Summers decided to say a bit too much, without sufficient thought or sensitivity to his position, at a conference the subject, in Cambridge a few years ago, while he was still Harvards President (Boston Globe, January 17, 2005). I repeat here the main part of his remarks, which really cant be parsed away (any more than Sotomayors oft-repeated racist and sexist remarks) except to say that we all make mistakes, even considered ones:
Remarks of Lawrence Summers, January 15, 2005, NBER Conference on Women in the Sciences and Engineering:
"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable [implying we may just have to accept them] simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them."
As a tenured female faculty member at MIT said then, For him to say that aptitude is the second most important reason that women dont get to the top when he leads an institution that is 50 percent women students thats profoundly disturbing to me. He shouldnt admit women to Harvard if hes going to announce when they come that, hey, we dont feel that you can make it to the top.
It was the first dent, many gleefully observed, in an otherwise stellar rise through life, as Cambridges apparent Master of the Masters of the Universe -- the MOU amongst MOUs. It almost surely blocked his re-nomination to be Secretary of the Treasury in this Administration (Politico.com, November 13, 2005; New York Times, Freakonomics, November 18, 2008). The apparent results of his championing the repeal of Glass-Steagall have also not helped his image. I am willing to give 10-1 odds on any takers, up to $1000, that he will not, nor never will be, the Fed Chairman. I now short-hand his fate, in political correctness circles, as having been Summerized.
Beware the political correctness police. To parapharse lyrics from a famous song by the Police from the 1980s, they are watching you.
There is a good piece by Stuart Taylor of the National Journal (Gender Equity Cops, October 24, 2009), that summarizes a great deal of the debate and information, but does not touch upon what I think may be the most important observation, about a subtle fact, that is the subject of this post, and which can be read by clicking the highlighted, attached file near the top.
I note just one interesting implication of what it is spelled out.
It may be that the problem, which Summers addressed, could be resolved by inducing, willingly, as many women to go into college entry level courses in the relevant subjects. If what the analysis has explanatory power, and I think it does, one would probably expect that without near enrollment equality in these classes, or something no worse the maybe 55-45, that the disparities at higher levels would persist forever. [Note: that ratio is just a guess of mine. It does not represent an attempt to figure out where the distribution of high end talent starts to converge to the ratio of men to women entering math and the sciences, which is what we do not see with a bell curve distribution of talent if the second ratio is reasonably high. I suspect the point at which it begins to converge is also subject to an analytical solution, not just susceptible to investigation through monte carlo simulation.]
Moreover, affirmative action -- for example in hiring at those higher levels -- to appear to solve the problems at higher levels would result in those pernicious effects ticked off about certain types of affirmative action -- the appearance and reality that those who benefit are not as qualified. (The 55-45 threshold, or one close to it, has to do with the shape of the density function of the talent pool, normally distributed, ex hypothesis, and more importantly the shape of the tail of the distribution.) The policy implication is that work at foundational levels, wherever one draws that boundary, is essential.
Table of Monte Carlo Results:
Woods v Nicklaus and Women in Math.pdf Click on link here.
This is fundamentally about the debate about the aptitude of women in math and sciences. That debate took on new life when Summers decided to say a bit too much, without sufficient thought or sensitivity to his position, at a conference the subject, in Cambridge a few years ago, while he was still Harvards President (Boston Globe, January 17, 2005). I repeat here the main part of his remarks, which really cant be parsed away (any more than Sotomayors oft-repeated racist and sexist remarks) except to say that we all make mistakes, even considered ones:
Remarks of Lawrence Summers, January 15, 2005, NBER Conference on Women in the Sciences and Engineering:
"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable [implying we may just have to accept them] simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them."
As a tenured female faculty member at MIT said then, For him to say that aptitude is the second most important reason that women dont get to the top when he leads an institution that is 50 percent women students thats profoundly disturbing to me. He shouldnt admit women to Harvard if hes going to announce when they come that, hey, we dont feel that you can make it to the top.
It was the first dent, many gleefully observed, in an otherwise stellar rise through life, as Cambridges apparent Master of the Masters of the Universe -- the MOU amongst MOUs. It almost surely blocked his re-nomination to be Secretary of the Treasury in this Administration (Politico.com, November 13, 2005; New York Times, Freakonomics, November 18, 2008). The apparent results of his championing the repeal of Glass-Steagall have also not helped his image. I am willing to give 10-1 odds on any takers, up to $1000, that he will not, nor never will be, the Fed Chairman. I now short-hand his fate, in political correctness circles, as having been Summerized.
Beware the political correctness police. To parapharse lyrics from a famous song by the Police from the 1980s, they are watching you.
There is a good piece by Stuart Taylor of the National Journal (Gender Equity Cops, October 24, 2009), that summarizes a great deal of the debate and information, but does not touch upon what I think may be the most important observation, about a subtle fact, that is the subject of this post, and which can be read by clicking the highlighted, attached file near the top.
I note just one interesting implication of what it is spelled out.
It may be that the problem, which Summers addressed, could be resolved by inducing, willingly, as many women to go into college entry level courses in the relevant subjects. If what the analysis has explanatory power, and I think it does, one would probably expect that without near enrollment equality in these classes, or something no worse the maybe 55-45, that the disparities at higher levels would persist forever. [Note: that ratio is just a guess of mine. It does not represent an attempt to figure out where the distribution of high end talent starts to converge to the ratio of men to women entering math and the sciences, which is what we do not see with a bell curve distribution of talent if the second ratio is reasonably high. I suspect the point at which it begins to converge is also subject to an analytical solution, not just susceptible to investigation through monte carlo simulation.]
Moreover, affirmative action -- for example in hiring at those higher levels -- to appear to solve the problems at higher levels would result in those pernicious effects ticked off about certain types of affirmative action -- the appearance and reality that those who benefit are not as qualified. (The 55-45 threshold, or one close to it, has to do with the shape of the density function of the talent pool, normally distributed, ex hypothesis, and more importantly the shape of the tail of the distribution.) The policy implication is that work at foundational levels, wherever one draws that boundary, is essential.
Table of Monte Carlo Results:
hollystar:
