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The Fields Medal should return to its roots

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Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#41

Post by ajkjk »

Hasz wrote: post #16
wheresmyusern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is it shocking?

If you accept the idea that a penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people, then the odds of 55/56 men winning by chance are very, very, very low.

That gap also exists in the middle-school and high-school levels [0] (at least in the US), so it fully reduces to the simpler question of why that's true. We should be able to agree that by the time we're discussing professional mathematics there's no expectation that it would be randomly distributed among genders.

[0] https://economics.mit.edu/files/7598 (admittedly a bit old; maybe a lot has changed in ~10 years?)

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#42

Post by Retric »

sannee wrote: post #34
Hasz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you accept the idea that a penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people, then the odds of 55/56 men winning by chance are very, very, very low.

> penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people Fields medals are not awarded based on "penchant for math" though. And it surely isn't exactly fault of the prize committee that there aren't very many female mathematicians to choose from. Note: I don't know if 55/56 is "correct" from the point of the actual numbers.

For the last 30 years over 40% of graduating math majors where where women. That drops to 15% of tenure track mathematicians being women, but again that's a long way to sub 2%.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#43

Post by ars »

Hasz wrote: post #16
wheresmyusern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is it shocking?

If you accept the idea that a penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people, then the odds of 55/56 men winning by chance are very, very, very low.

> a penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people

As politically difficult as it is to say, intelligence is NOT distributed randomly among all people.

Not by sex, not by race.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#44

Post by smallnamespace »

Retric wrote: post #42
sannee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people Fields medals are not awarded based on "penchant for math" though. And it surely isn't exactly fault of the prize committee that there aren't very many female mathematicians to choose from. Note: I don't know if 55/56 is "correct" from the point of the actual numbers.

For the last 30 years over 40% of graduating math majors where where women. That drops to 15% of tenure track mathematicians being women, but again that's a long way to sub 2%.

This is the exactly the pattern you would expect to see though if the variance of mathematical ability is higher in men than in women, even if mean ability is precisely identical.

The sex ratio gets progressively more extreme as you go further out in the tails.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#45

Post by drb91 »

snoman wrote: post #24
throwaway0255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took some time to realize that having parents who are academics/engineers helps significantly in guiding you in a career such as mathematics. This is true of every good job. I'm trying to get hired at big 4 tech right now. Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. R…

Wow. Lots to digest here, and I think I detect some strong frustration. My sympathies on that. I have worked at the big 4 (MS) but I'm a consultant now. I do a fair bit of interviewing and what I propose is that you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your interviewers are like, and you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your competitors are like. You would be far better served putting it out…

I read the problem as being a cultural one, not a financial one.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#46

Post by Jun8 »

throwaway0255 wrote: post #8
Fibo144 wrote: post #5

I think the age limit for the Fields medal reinforces this idea that "mathematics is a young mans game." It's one of many reasons why I got discouraged into entering mathematics when I was young because of this and math competitions. When I was younger , I would visit websites such as AOP , and ask questions and then be treated in a condescending way by students who were my age or younger who would then boast about t…

> It took some time to realize that having parents who are academics/engineers helps significantly in guiding you in a career such as mathematics. This is true of every good job. I'm trying to get hired at big 4 tech right now. Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. R…

Honest question: How do you estimate family financials of people interviewing you? Judging by the school they graduated or from the comments they make during the interview?

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#48

Post by tacomonstrous »

rvo wrote: post #18
uptownfunk wrote: post #3

Ok so what awards ceremony selection process isn’t political? Any guess on who is in consideration of the 2018 prize? I imagine those under consideration are already at top tier institutions. Is no noteworthy mathematics being done at less prestigious institutions? (Loaded question I know) but it would be cool to see some undiscovered mathematician doing ground breaking stuff at a lesser known university.

Ciprian Manolescu or Peter Scholze (perhaps he is too young for it for this year).

I would be shocked if Scholze didn't win this year.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#49

Post by seanmcdirmid »

snoman wrote: post #24
throwaway0255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took some time to realize that having parents who are academics/engineers helps significantly in guiding you in a career such as mathematics. This is true of every good job. I'm trying to get hired at big 4 tech right now. Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. R…

Wow. Lots to digest here, and I think I detect some strong frustration. My sympathies on that. I have worked at the big 4 (MS) but I'm a consultant now. I do a fair bit of interviewing and what I propose is that you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your interviewers are like, and you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your competitors are like. You would be far better served putting it out…

> The reason being is that, not only are you almost certainly wrong, but it doesn't matter.

I've noticed that, in this field at least, everyone does come from a much more wealthy background than I do. I once talked about my experience of working at McDonald's as a youth once and got a lot of weird stares. Kids of doctors, professors, etc...I think it is mostly because they went to good schools in the first place, there aren't that man poor kids that go to CMU or Stanford. Heck, it is much worse at the PhD level.

The other points are valid: given the talent shortage in our field, they mostly don't care about your background. It is much more relevant during promotions in dysfunctional orgs.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#50

Post by drb91 »

Hasz wrote: post #16
wheresmyusern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is it shocking?

If you accept the idea that a penchant for math is randomly distributed among all people, then the odds of 55/56 men winning by chance are very, very, very low.

You also need the assumption that the judges are unbiased and that people have equal opportunities.

Lots of room for explanation from many angles here.

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