"winning is everything, and women find it repulsive"..there are quite a few female executivea who find competition invigorating rather than repulsive, and who would find the quoted statement pretty bizarre--and this is also true in sports and politics.

Also, I don't think scientists and engineers are, in general, the most competitive people in the world. They are often more interested in "playing against the course" rather than playing against an opponent, and competition is *usually* less important as a motivator to them than it is to (for example) salespeople--and there are a *lot* of very competitive female salespeople.

I suspect that there are a fair number of individuals in academia, and even more in the K-12 schools, who personally dislike competition and who have projected this view onto large populations of others.

I'd be interested to know how many women major in mathematics at Harvard. I'd then want to know why a freshman class -- Math 55 -- isn't taken by one group of majors.

Somehow female math majors are getting a math degree from Harvard without taking 55.

The research on cognitive difference between the sexes is inconclusive. Some researchers agree that the difference exists only at the right-most extremity of the bell curve. Somehow, all around the country, thousands of female math teachers get an undergraduate degree in math before going on to teach in our junior high and high schools. Which suggests women are perfectly capable of completing a major in math.

In my personal experience, all of my math teachers K-12 were women. 40 years ago, you'd have found far fewer women teaching high school math. So I'm loathe to suggest prematurely that women have hit a natural ceiling of ability in math.

(Finally, I find it interesting that conservatives are quick to jump on inconclusive research on sex-related mental abilities but bury their heads in the sand when it comes to something like global climate change. Ideologically convenient, huh?)

(How lucky we are that liberals have no ideological bias.)

I thought the research showed that men are at the extremes on both sides of the IQ curve, not just the right side. There are more men than women with IQs above 160, and there are more men than women with profound retardation. Interestingly, the person who is generally accepted as having the highest recorded IQ is Marilyn vos Savant, a woman.

Here's a true story.

My daughter's high school, which offered SAT prep courses at intervals throughout the school year, offered a special one in the summer for kids who did very well on the PSAT. My girl was among those invited to that course. When we pulled up outside the school on the first day, a little before time for the class to start, she looked out the window at the kids grouped in front of the school and said, "Those are all Asian males."

"I keep telling you you're smart," I said.

"There's a stereotype in there somewhere," she said severely.

"OK," I said, "it's true that you can't pick out an individual Asian and know what his or her IQ is without testing. But it's also true that Asians will be overrepresented in the top group. That's just how it is."

Still disapproving, she disappeared into the building. When she came out a couple of hours later she was laughing.

"Talk about your stereotypes!"

She was the only girl at her table. There was one Asian boy at that table. The class did a practice test to see where they were at the beginning of the course. My daughter had the highest verbal score and the lowest math score at her table. The boy with the highest math score was the Asian boy.

When my daughter went on to take the SAT, she scored 750 on the verbal portion and 640 on the math. I thought she could probably bring the math score up a bit if she re-took the test but it was high enough for what she wanted so she declined. The thing is, she will tell you that she is no good at math even though her math score is well above average. She says that because she compares herself to people in her IQ range, not to the general public.

As to your plethora of female math teachers, Luther: There is a tremendous range of ability between, say, IQs of 100 and 160. Men and women both are all over the place in there. When you're talking about the extreme end of the curve where men split out, you're way, way beyond where a high school math teacher will be. In the high school math teacher range, there will be virtually no difference between the numbers of men and women.

I don't remember my SAT scores, but my ACT score for math was my lowest. I majored in chemistry and math. Through the years in my workplaces, it's been me teaching virtually all of my male and female coworkers and direct reports how their calculations needed to be done, explaining their calibration curves to them, finding their errors, and so forth. These were people who also had science degrees. I've found errors in published methods, that you'd think had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb by people much higher in the food chain than me. I'm still down in the moderately high IQ range. If I tried to take that Math 55 course at Harvard I would look like a complete idiot after the first day. It's apparently not for math majors, but for math prodigies. I'm happy for the prodigies, that they have this challenging course available to them. Congratulations to all that get through it. At the same time, a person can be a non-prodigy, but still have plenty to offer.

When the Larry Summers controversy erupted, I was surprised when a friend, the head of the math department at a major research university, opined that what Summers was getting at was just "common knowledge" as far as the most abstract branches of science go, and that Summers was just barely touching the tip of the iceberg in his tepid statement. But of course, my friend wouldn't be caught dead saying such things in public.

David Foster -- Re the competiveness of science and engineering -- I wonder how much experience you have of high level performers?

Mike...I have lots of business experience working with engineers and computer scientists as well as with salespeople and marketeers, many of them reporting to me and many of them excellent. As far as Nobel Prize winners, no. But the vast majority of the work in science & engineering is not done by Nobel Prize winners and I'm not sure they're the most relevant group for the current discussion.

Most people who choose careers in engineering and science seem to be motivated by the intrinsic satisfaction they find in the work, rather than by the desire to win over someone else. This isn't to say that the competitive spirit is absent, it's just a matter of emphasis.

I'm curious--do you have experience with high-level business-to-business salespeople, venture capitalists, or CEOs that would allow you to compare the competitiveness of these people with that of scientists & engineers? Or how about politicians or college/professional sports players?

David Foster -- my experience is mostly with academics though I have been chairman of a very small corp. on the side. I have known several academic scientists who departed to become CEOs of startups, or corporate research directors. Also have known a couple who went in and out of the academic/startup worlds. I would not say they were much more or less competitive than the pure academic types. Oh by the way once of the guys who left to become CEO of a startup did so partly because he couldn't stand facing classes all the time. In fact come to think of it I think this is somewhat common, the social interactions in academia get to some of them. I find it hard to believe that running a company is any better but there it is.

I would say that research students who go into the academic research university route are more competitive, on the whole, than those who go the corporate employee route or the pure teaching route. Reasons for this are mainly the cut-throat competition for jobs and grants. Note, I am comparing to students who become corporate employees, not those who go off on their own; I haven't had any of those, to my knowledge.

I would say you are largely correct about the motivation of the scientists; it is usually primarily the love of the subject, not the desire for sport or competition.

On the other hand, it gets very very competitive all on its own, especially the higher you go.

I would say that I've never known people more competitive than those at the top of the heap in say particle physics.

My contact with politicians is limited to congressional-level people and one or two very high agency heads (who happened to have been academics). I would not say they were off-scale in competitiveness, but pretty high.

Have never known any pro athletes at the top. I am willing to believe that Jack Nicklaus at his peak was very very competitive, Tiger Woods too.

Oh, I ran into Muhammed Ali once in a restaurant. He was in a different universe. And I mean when he was in his prime.

Mike, I would say that your experience is skewed by academics. I was a top performer in engineering and have spent 30+ years in the industry working at small and large companies, being a underling and a technical project lead. My experience is the same as Foster's. It's not that people don't complete, or that there aren't some extremely competive people, but in general "making it work" is a higher priority. It may just be the nature of the work, because in corporations, you don't win by getting your paper, the one you wrote, accepted. You win when the product ships, and you can never do that by yourself.

It would be worth everyone's time to read the entire Hoff Sommers' article. Her main point is not really about gender differences in math ability, it is to warn readers of a well-funded movement afoot that seeks to fast-track the adoption of gender parity policies in the hard sciences at US universities, à la Title IX in college sports.

Incredibly, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, as well as conservative and liberal politicians are in support of such measures. Programs to achieve this end are up and running at a collection of top research universities, and are funded by millions from the NSF and NAS. I know from personal observation that a significant number of people on committees formed to achieve gender parity in the sciences are not scientists themselves, but hail instead from the humanities, social sciences, and administrative units, which is telling. But regardless, this effort at social engineering for the sake of female uplift could have disastrous results. The entire piece is worth reading, whether you're a liberal, conservative or somewhere in-between.

TG: I think you are right to warn about the coming disaster in American science, especially the physical sciences. It is only in part due to the "gender equity" engineering. There is a lot more social engineering going on especially on the part of the National Science Foundation. It has been going on for years, in fact. Meanwhile, support for real science is getting incredibly difficult to come by. To repeat, the U.S. is on the verge of surrendering its once tremendous lead in physical science.

The sociology of all this is very interesting, but that is a long story that I don't claim to understand ver well.

To AOG: Of course, eveyone's experience skews their views, and I don't hold myself to be an exception.

But I must say, I find your post rather confusing. You seem to be saying that the commercial world is less competitive (because of the need for cooperation in getting the job done) than is the academic world. I'm not sure I would agree with that, but my point is that that appears to be the opposite of what David Foster is saying -- if I understand him correctly, that the academic world attracts less competitive types than the commercial world.

Mike...not exactly...I'm saying that *within the commercial world*, people in engineering are on the average less competitive than people in marketing & sales..the point being that there are a lot of women in marketing & sales, which doesn't fit with the idea that women generally find competition to be "repulsive" as claimed by somebody in the linked article.

I didn't address the question of whether scientists/engineers in business are more or less competitive than those in academia, but I think AOG's suggestion *may* be correct. The size of the projects will to some extent determine the personality characteristics of those working on them: there are things that would be acceptable in someone doing purely individual work that won't be acceptable if there's constant close interaction with other team members. And, almost certainly, there are proportionally more large projects in business than in academia.

One of the key tasks of management should be to direct the competitive spirit outward rather than inward, or at least to use it inside the enterprise in ways that are helpful rather than harmful. Competition between two sales regions is generally a good thing, competition between the mechanical and electrical engineering groups working on the same product, not so much.

David Foster: we probably agree more than not, though our experiences are probably quite a lot different.

Academic science certainly attracts people who want to "run their own show". That is one of the great appeals. Often it attracts people who think they deserve to have big egos. Whether they deserve to or not, it can make for some unpleasantness.

On the other hand, one thing we look for in hiring people is whether we can get along with the job candidate. Because a lot of cooperation is required in a department as regards teaching and many other things. Prima donnas are hard to take especially if they are around for years or decades.

It is kind of a double bind, you want people who will be aggressive and competitive in getting research up and running, but who will be cooperative and group-minded in other things.

I suppose in many endeavors it is hard to be all things to all people.

Actually, to get back to the subject of women in math, I'm not at all sure that differences in competitiveness are the biggest reason for the demonstrable differences in performance, especially at the top.

After reviewing the relevant data, they concluded that to win a postgraduate science fellowship, a female applicant had to be at least twice as good as a male applicant...According to their calculations, to score as well as a man, a woman had to have the equivalent of three extra papers in world-class science journals such as Science or Nature or 20 extra papers in leading specialty journals such as Radiology or Neuroscience.

Three Nature papers or 20 high-quality papers is a reasonable case for tenure, or a slam-dunk application for a faculty position. Claiming it as the delta between typical fellowship applications is preposterous. I doubt if Sweden has even one female PhD student graduate each year with double that load of papers.

Either Somers is completely misstating their conclusions, or their analysis is absurd on its face and obviously has much bigger problems than the one she mentions.

JS: The bigger problems of the Swedish study are apparent in the fact that it was conducted by people who didn't get the jobs they wanted and so found 'proof' as to why.

I am a physics teacher, and my years of teaching has taught me one thing: if girls/women can't EXCEL at a subject, they quit. I've spent countless hours trying to persuade girls not to give up on math because of a B or C grade. That lower grade seems to destroy their self-confidence; from that point on, they have major doubts about their abilities.

Too many kids have bought the bullsh** about GPA; instead of looking at the potential for academic growth and preparation for the next level of education, girls (and minority students) treat grades as the ultimate goal.

As a result, they cripple their chances to choose many of the highest-paying careers (which also are less vulnerable during economic slowdowns).

Linda...have you found the "quit if you can't excel" tendency to have increased in recent years, as one might expect given all the emphasis on "self-esteem?" Or has it remained pretty constant over time?

My daughter has a tendency to set sky-high standards for herself. She doesn't quit if she can't get the "A" but she isn't quite the risk-taker I was. David, I remember my kid coloring in a coloring book when she was 3 or 4, and crumpling to the floor in despair when she strayed outside the lines. Way too early for self-esteem indoctrination. I chalked it up to her being an only child (I'm a middle child myself) and urged her to cut herself a break.

I can see grade inflation in the early years causing a student to freak out when she gets a rigorous teacher in high school. Seems like that would affect boys too, though.

I'm happy for the prodigies, that they have this challenging course available to them. Congratulations to all that get through it. At the same time, a person can be a non-prodigy, but still have plenty to offer.

Laura/Southernxyl nails it. Thing is, you can talk all you want, all day, every day, about how people are represented along the IQ curve (and across various disciplines). However, you don't need to be in the top 0.0001% to contribute. You don't need to put in 100 hours a week to be a good scientist, mathematician, or engineer.

For people working at engineering firms, IQ differentials at the extreme end are immaterial. The tail ends necessarily deal with only a minute percentage of the population. Let the prodigies have their fun.

I would propose an alternative hypothesis to either discrimination or innate ability: confidence and dedication. The desire to sign up for a course like Math 55 necessarily requires a good deal of self-confidence. It also requires a good deal of self-sacrifice. I recall, back in the days when I bothered dating, that most of the men I dated were utterly contemptuous of me when I wanted to study to get the top grades - to push myself with the hardest classes. At best, I had a "great work ethic" (but, apparently, not two brain cells to rub together); at worst, I "didn't need to work that hard/to get top grades/etc" (because, apparently, mediocre should be good enough for me).

Hypothesis #2: after years of working as an engineer in cutting-edge technology, I want to point and laugh at anyone who will cite one single factor as the only variable affecting a complex system. This could be anything from the pipeline of talented girls in Harvard, to those who are encouraged to take the course, to those who have the confidence to sign up, the dedication to work 60 hours a week, the confidence to keep going, and the support system to keep going. Oh, yeah, and the brains. If any part of that system breaks down, the whole thing breaks down. IMHO, it's entirely silly to point to one - and only one - part of that and believe that you've found the overriding reason why

By the way, how many black students finish that course every year? Public school kids? Kids of parents who have not finished college or graduate school?

"(Finally, I find it interesting that conservatives are quick to jump on inconclusive research on sex-related mental abilities but bury their heads in the sand when it comes to something like global climate change. Ideologically convenient, huh?)"

Now Luther there you go again. They had snow in Baghdad and L.A. this year, and parts of the Midwest are getting record snowfalls. So are you sure you didn't really mean that conservatives bury their heads in the snow when it comes to global climate change.

The Cocoa Lover makes a great point: Hoff Sommers's article abuses its synecdoche. Math 55, an extreme course at an extreme university, probably tells us little about why there aren't more math or science professors at anywhere from Harvard to South Florida Community College. (I tried to make this point earlier, by pointing out that clearly, women were getting degrees in math at Harvard even if they weren't taking 55.)

AYY: Not sure what you're getting at. "Global warming" is the brand name for a more complicated array of climate changes and an increase in extreme weather patterns. It doesn't mean simply that everywhere around us, the temp is going up. Anyone who watches the news knows that a warm patch over there doesn't make a warm patch over here. But maybe I'm missing your irony and you're saying just that!