From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!qiclab!techbook!szabo Wed Sep 16 21:21:53 EDT 1992
Article 6796 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca sci.bio:3799 sci.skeptic:19600 soc.men:4638 soc.women:4364 comp.ai.philosophy:6796
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!qiclab!techbook!szabo
>From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Message-ID: <1992Sep6.154026.14965@techbook.com>
Date: 6 Sep 92 15:40:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: techbook.1992Sep6.154026.14965
References: < 92233.141512RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <1992Aug24.003020.11881@usage.csd.unsw.OZ.AU> <92241.144153RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Lines: 33

In article <92241.144153RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:

>Exactly.  It seems like a matter of Common Sense, but people seem to have a
>shortage of this commodity.  for example, the chiarperson of a Computer
>Science Dept is asked by the administration to `explain' why only 37% of the
>CS majors are women.  However, Doreeen Kimura states explicitly that high
>mathematical ability (which is involved in many parts of CS) occurs 13
>times as often among boys as among girls.  The implication is clear that the
>chairperson HAS nothing to `explain'.

What is meant by "high mathematical ability", and why is it important
to CS?  Two things that I know are important to CS, are verbal ability
and arithmetic.  In fact, in daily software engineering work these are
very important and "higher math" not at all important.  Women (to
grossly simplify things, as is usually done in these sorts of
discussions) are slightly better at verbal skills and arithmetic.
So, there is still the strong possibility that a bias exists here, and
that it could be ingrained in the prerequisites to CS, classes like 
calculus and physics that are important to the older engineering 
disciplines, but not to CS.  (IMHO, logic and philosophy classes
would be far more relevent, with perhaps a bow to linear algebra).

So, I might (given these simplistic theories) expect to see more 
men in "higher math", physics, and the kinds of engineering
that actually require those skills, but I would expect women to dominate
in computer science, if the prerequisites weren't biased in favor of
men's skills (to be fair, they're biased in favor of traditional
engineering skills, any bias against women may only be a side-effect).


-- 
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