@SteveDeFacto: Although I appreciate your participation on this thread, I feel that you are making posts that are very gender-biased. I only suggest to tone it down.

(From my own experiance in the top group for maths and science at that level the girls out numbered the boys in that class. This continued to A-level exams taken at 18 where the majority of those in the maths and science classes were girls.)

I have the opposite experience. Isn't it generally accepted that the demographic of maths/sciences at professional level are dominated by men? Not based on proficiency, but I'm fairly certain there are just more men in maths/sciences than women regardless of how well both perform.

edit: for example my graduating class in my major (CS) had 2 girls, and my company employs no female SEs. Not because they can't be capable, but because there are so few of them.

@SteveDeFacto: Although I appreciate your participation on this thread, I feel that you are making posts that are very gender-biased. I only suggest to tone it down.

I was not pushing the fact that women generally score lower on math and science. I only passively suggested it and have been ask to provide evidence which is all I have done.

And people wonder why women don't want to join this field.

Leave it to SteveDeFacto to start a sociology/psychology debate in a philosophy post and call it philosophy... I can see how you would confuse the two. Psychology split off from philosophy about 200 years ago, and sociology is a derivative of psychology. But, debating gender differences is definitely not philosophy.

[quote name='swiftcoder' timestamp='1330015438' post='4915898']
Boys fighting to catch up in maths and sciences.

This is obviously due to cultural influences. Also the figures are not loosely significant. Is there anyway you can find the actual test scores? I want to look at the bell curve.[/quote]
You have an amazing ability to ignore actual counter-arguments, and redirect the conversation whenever your thesis is under attack. While this is a popular tactic in junior debate societies, it isn't a useful attitude for philosophical inquiry.

Philosophical theories are by nature holistic - the component parts have to support the whole. If a supporting hypothesis/assumption of your theory is successfully attacked, you must attempt to rethink/replace that part, or you will be forced to throw away the whole damn theory...

And people wonder why women don't want to join this field.

Because it exudes manliness?

I have a haunting feeling that this thread died before it began.

I have a haunting feeling that this thread died before it began.

It was too open-ended. Inviting anyone to contribute any (mot necessarily) philosophical question is a recipe for disaster.

Start a new thread dealing with a specific philosophical query, and we can have a nice, directed discussion.

[quote name='swiftcoder' timestamp='1330015438' post='4915898']
Boys fighting to catch up in maths and sciences.

This is obviously due to cultural influences. Also the figures are not loosely significant. Is there anyway you can find the actual test scores? I want to look at the bell curve.
[/quote]Yes, it could well be. That's the point being made - that your SAT scores do not show proof of biological cause.

I mean, you submit a SAT score as evidence that men tend to be better than women (which, I note, shows a 6% difference in mean, and a large overlap between genders), yet when someone shows another example, that's "obviously due to cultural influences"?

The alleged influence of "lad's mags" I would say is trivial compared to the social influence on young girls about how things like maths and sciences are "men's work".

Incidentally, the link you posted makes the claim about there being more variation among males. Whether this is true is itself a matter of debate - but it's not the same thing as saying they tend to be better (rather, you tend to get more at the higher and lower ends).