than girls.
If I stop there I probably won’t attract a lot feminist outrage — as did economist Larry Summers, former president of Harvard. Who was tarred and feathered for saying the same thing. But because all of those attacking Summers were clueless about statistics, they understood nothing of what he said.
So far only one journalist at the WSJ seems to have understood the latest study on gender and math performance.
Alex Tabarrok explains the implications of higher variance, given similar means.
All of these reports and many more like them are false. In fact, consistent with many earlier studies (JSTOR), what this study found was that the ratio of male to female variance in ability was positive and significant, in other words we can expect that there will be more math geniuses and more dullards, among males than among females. I quote from the study (VR is variance ratio):
Greater male variance is indicated by VR > 1.0. All VRs, by state and grade, are >1.0 [range 1.11 to 1.21].
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