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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

#51

Post by Retric »

smallnamespace wrote: post #44
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really, you get a fat tail effect at extreme ability reducing the differences. A more likely cause are highly capable women bailing on the field.

EX: Women live significantly longer on average and the oldest women lived 6 years longer than the oldest man. Yet, the 16th oldest person was a man and 6% of oldest 100 people where men. And 6% of the top 100 living people are men https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#52

Post by smallnamespace »

Retric wrote: post #51
smallnamespace wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really, you get a fat tail effect at extreme ability reducing the differences. A more likely cause are highly capable women bailing on the field. EX: Women live significantly longer on average and the oldest women lived 6 years longer than the oldest man. Yet, the 16th oldest person was a man and 6% of oldest 100 people where men. And 6% of the top 100 living people are men https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…

I'm not sure what you mean—why would you assume there is a fat tail expect in the first place, and not something approximating a normal distribution?

And even if you presume something like a Pareto distribution, the likelihood ratio between two distributions grow through the tails if their variance is not identical.

edit: I see you bring up longevity, but I don't see why this is relevant to a discussion about variance in mathematical ability or intelligence? See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188690...

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#53

Post by throwaway5752 »

He should institute a Barany medal instead. It's an interesting idea, but the Fields medal is what it is at this point. It would be very slow to change, and even though his article is well researched, it's a bit idealistic and the interpretation of the original intent isn't black & white.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#54

Post by meri_dian »

eropple wrote: post #40
meri_dian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is more of the case in the UK where class is more of a salient aspect of life than in the US?

Class is profoundly salient in the United States. Unless you've been on the outside it's very difficult to see, because the gradations are more subtle, but they run no less deep.

I've been outside the US. People care much less about where you've come from than in the places I've been (in Asia and Europe).

Of course class exists in the US, but if you're able to move up in a tax bracket people won't judge you for having come from a lower tax bracket.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#55

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

>> Interviewers don't care about how much money the candidates have because...

No, hang on, I get what the OP says and it's a reasonalbe assumption. In large companies with rigid hierarchies, people will often be sort of subtly flash (!) with their money, because it basically marks their position in the hierarchy. You can see this in the clothes people wear, their cars obviously, their phones also obviously, the other tech they proudly display, discussions about where they're going for holidays, or for the weekend etc etc.

If you're getting hired in a company with that sort of culture as a recent graduate, say, coming from a less affluent background, then it's easy to feel somewhat excluded.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#56

Post by auggierose »

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.

How about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#57

Post by dsacco »

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…

Your comment exhibits a lot of disdain. Sorry to hear about the interviewing trouble.

> 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. Rich female kids. Rich European kids. Rich Indian kids.

I'm not sure there's anything I can ever do to make it past the social/socioeconomic judgment round of these interviews.

Is your primary issue that everyone interviewing you is much younger than you are, or that they have more money? If the latter, is it because they presently have more money or because they had a better socioeconomic upbringing?

I’m not trying to invalidate your experience, just understand it. But unless you specifically mean ageism, I don’t see how you could clearly link prejudices in these interviews to a difference of wealth.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#58

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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.

If you think about it, a 55/56 ratio (.98) is only commensurate with a distribution of mathematical talent by which the vast majority of women can't add 2 and 2 together.

Like, it would not even justified by women being "somewhat" less good at maths at the high level than men. Women would have to be really, really bad at maths for that to be a natural result.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#59

Post by Retric »

smallnamespace wrote: post #52
Retric wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, you get a fat tail effect at extreme ability reducing the differences. A more likely cause are highly capable women bailing on the field. EX: Women live significantly longer on average and the oldest women lived 6 years longer than the oldest man. Yet, the 16th oldest person was a man and 6% of oldest 100 people where men. And 6% of the top 100 living people are men https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…

I'm not sure what you mean—why would you assume there is a fat tail expect in the first place, and not something approximating a normal distribution? And even if you presume something like a Pareto distribution, the likelihood ratio between two distributions grow through the tails if their variance is not identical. edit: I see you bring up longevity, but I don't see why this is relevant to a discussion about varianc…

Based on a wide range of ability testing we see fat tails (edit: more black swans than expected), it would be more surprising if they where skinny.

Granted, we can't measure very high ability very well due to sampling bias. I am simply saying even if there is a modest bias that's not enough it would have to be huge to account for these numbers.

So, I am bringing up something else with the kind of distribution we are talking about which has more accurate data. Women live ~ 5% longer both looking at the average lifespans and oldest examples which is a very significant difference. Yet, the oldest population has more men in it than you would think.

Edit: Math: 6 year longer lifespan + 50% risk of death per year = you would expect ~1% of top 100 oldest people to be men.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#60

Post by scarmig »

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…

This isn't meant to question your experiences, but to provide an alternative story, just for the sake of readers who might feel discouraged.

I'm a senior SWE at a major tech company. My background is definitely toward the lower end of the middle: my family went without health insurance at times, we passed down clothes from sibling to sibling, and most nights of the week our usual meal was pasta with canned sauce or hot pockets (we never went to bed hungry, so we were privileged in that respect). I went to public school and got subsidized lunches. I got a full ride on need-based aid for college, and I didn't get a BS in CS. I'm smart, but far from brilliant.

I'm acutely aware of class in a way most of my colleagues aren't. But most aren't from "rich" backgrounds: I'd say the most typical background is upper-middle, with at least one parent who's a working professional.

Have I had to work "harder" than most? Probably, but it seems like a really messy and ill-posed question. Getting a job at one of the big tech companies is a combination of preparation and luck of the draw. It's easy to read conspiracy into the fact that most people from poor backgrounds get rejected, but the reality is that most people from rich or middle class backgrounds also get rejected.

Everyone brings a different set of privileges into the job hunting process. But you have as much agency as anyone, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you trade that sense of agency in for despair or bitterness.

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