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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

#81

Post by throwaway080383 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #55
snoman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 othe…

>> You can see this in the clothes people wear

A company-branded t-shirt and jeans?

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#82

Post by [deleted] »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #61
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, they just have to be vastly less likely to be top 0.001% at math. In any activity where you can distinguish the top 0.001% talents versus the top 0.01%, you're going to get way fewer women at the top. One of the reasons is, half their cells are using one X chromosome and half are using the other, so they're more likely to get their performance dragged down by deleterious mutations.

[deleted]

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#83

Post by allthenews »

twic wrote: post #30
snoman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 The point isn't about the wealth of these people, it's about their background, and the resulting confidence and comfort with which they can negotiate the social structure of interview and employment at these companies. > The other interviewers and I can te…

>The point isn't about the wealth of these people, it's about their background, and the resulting confidence and comfort with which they can negotiate the social structure of interview and employment at these companies.

This is simply not true, and imagined. You've been biased by a small subsample of the industry I believe. Programming is one of the few white collar industries that can be entered without a degree. Those rich kids you're interacting with are less likely to have been rich before their tech jobs than those in most other industries.

I personally know multiple self taught "rich kid" programmers who lived in third world countries and dirt floors as children.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#84

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

barry-cotter wrote: post #63
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To see why this is not true think about the average difference in men and women’s height and the relative prevalence of men and women among people 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9m tall, etc.

The difference with height is that you can train mathematical skill. For women to be trying, presumably as hard as the men, to become good enough to be elligible for a Fields medal, but (almost) never achieving it- they have to really suck at maths to begin with.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#85

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #61
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, they just have to be vastly less likely to be top 0.001% at math. In any activity where you can distinguish the top 0.001% talents versus the top 0.01%, you're going to get way fewer women at the top. One of the reasons is, half their cells are using one X chromosome and half are using the other, so they're more likely to get their performance dragged down by deleterious mutations.

>> One of the reasons is, half their cells are using one X chromosome and half are using the other, so they're more likely to get their performance dragged down by deleterious mutations.

That sounds like something has been severely misunderstood by someone, possibly even me. Are you a biologist?

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#86

Post by vinchuco »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #84
barry-cotter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To see why this is not true think about the average difference in men and women’s height and the relative prevalence of men and women among people 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9m tall, etc.

The difference with height is that you can train mathematical skill. For women to be trying, presumably as hard as the men, to become good enough to be elligible for a Fields medal, but (almost) never achieving it- they have to really suck at maths to begin with.

Nature vs nurture.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#87

Post by vinchuco »

ars wrote: post #43
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.

> 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.

Characterizing something as "politically difficult" is no evidence for a claim.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#88

Post by SamReidHughes »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #85
SamReidHughes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they just have to be vastly less likely to be top 0.001% at math. In any activity where you can distinguish the top 0.001% talents versus the top 0.01%, you're going to get way fewer women at the top. One of the reasons is, half their cells are using one X chromosome and half are using the other, so they're more likely to get their performance dragged down by deleterious mutations.

>> One of the reasons is, half their cells are using one X chromosome and half are using the other, so they're more likely to get their performance dragged down by deleterious mutations. That sounds like something has been severely misunderstood by someone, possibly even me. Are you a biologist?

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-inactivation

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#89

Post by pducks32 »

I recently got to meet a fields medalist who will remain nameless but he mention a really really interesting statistic. No Field’s medalist has ever been the mentor to another Field’s medalist. I (my opinion here not his) think that this glorifies these young mathematicians who never go onto mentor or yield another similarly gifted mathematician. We should be finding great mathematicians who discover great math collaboratively.

Re: The Fields Medal should return to its roots

#90

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #49
snoman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, the…

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