Elizabeth Spelke has written a paper avidly denying the well-documented cognitive sex differences.I have known these differences long,so I'll take some time for criticism.I will focus on her denial of the fact that males exhibit greater genetic variability than females regarding math.I'll skip right ahead to Spelke's treatment of SMPY data.
SAT-M scores overestimate the abilities of talented boys,
relative to girls.
The SAT-M is a nice test,from what I have heard.It correlates with IQ at roughly 0.8-a large correlation indeed.By comparison,self-discipline influences grades twice as much as IQ.So,the SAT-M owns grades as far as assessing intelligence goes.
In early samples, more boys than girls entered the SMPY program, and boys went on to take more demanding high school mathematics classes.
And I think I know why-there has been immense pushes for girls to excel,including at male-dominated fields.Earlier,this was absent,and occupational segregration occured more.
In the later samples, however, the numbers of male and female participants were nearly equal, as were the numbers of boys and girls in high school mathematics classes.
See above.Also,numerical equality proves dipshit.Besides which,sex differences start during high school and blossom in college so Spelke should look at that.She does so stunningly badly:
In college, male and female SMPY veterans continued to take equally demanding classes and got equally good grades, as do college women and men generally.
How demanding a class is has got nothing to do with admissions.Many idiots take advanced stuff until they learn it's not for them.However,I'd be interested if these males and females took a test on their demanding classes' teachings.Of course,we have grades instead,and grades correlate weakly with intelligence(see above).Coursework contributing to grades,etc. are simply not intelligence and representations of actual mathematics research.In this,you need effort, not brains.Constant tests and determining the GPA from them are bad as well.Males prefer sudden death exams,a fight or flight mechanism.By comparison,a female will prefer many exams and averaging out grades to play safe,a position consistent with her reproductive value being greater to the society.Gradual evaluation prefers continous effort and females.Let's examine areas where you really need brains:
The field medal:Biggest honor in maths.Equivalent of a Nobel.No woman has ever achieved it.
USA Math Olympiad:2008 team:(click to see full pic)
Not one woman.
They also graduated at equal rates and obtained an equal number of doctoral degrees
And this was based on..grades.
Sex differences were found in students’ fields of concentration: Men received more degrees in engineering and physics, whereas women received more degrees in biology and medicine.
And this is exactly what Cohen expected to find from his E-S model of cognitive sex differences.Checking SMPY data, one reaches the conclusion that males gravitate to the inorganic sciences.Example:
Inorganic sciences(Bachelor's degrees):Cohort 1 males:46.7%,Cohort 2:65.9%,Cohort 3:82.2%
Females:23.2%(Cohort 1),35%,(2),45.4%(3)
And this is damning evidence against Spelke's fantasy that females and males are equally attracted to inorganic sciences.
Nevertheless, male and female students received degrees in mathematics at nearly equal rates.In one SMPY cohort, for example, 10.3% of men and 9.7% of women received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, and 2.2% of men and 2.1% of women went on to receive
master’s degrees in mathematics (Benbow, Lubinski, Shea,
& Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000)
I'll tell you why Spelke gives you this biased picture.The full data is somewhat different:
Cohort 1:about 5 males for 4 females got a Bachelor's in math,11 males for 10 females got a Master's,and twice as many got a Doctorate.
Cohort 2:Spelke's cohort.She apparently didn't notice that more than 80% of math doctorates were male in this cohort.More likely she knew yet distorted the truth.
Cohort 3:Males got more than twice the number of Bachelor's as females.Somewhat strangely,9.1% of females got Master's in math,while only 7.4% of males did.Even more strangely 8.7% of males got a doctorate.None of the females did.It is likely that the small female sample size(24) contributed to these anomalies.
That ends my rant.Have a nice day and don't believe Spelke.
P.S.If in case,you need to look at the SMPY data,here it is:http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:LyqBKhfNG0sJ:www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/DoingPsychScience2006.pdf+male+10.3+female+9.7+study+of+mathematically+precocious&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in
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