CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Monday, December 06, 2010
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
Previous Posts
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- ISM Employment Indexes Above Fall 2007 Levels
- Perfect SAT Math Scores: Male-Female Ratio of 2:1
- Phrase of the Day: Frugality Fatigue
- Schumpeterian Creative Destruction in IT
- Bright Spots: Temp Help and Mfg. Overtime Hours; B...
- Free Market Capitalism: Best Path to Longer Life
- Monster Employment Index Increases by 13% in Novem...
- D.C.'s Mom 'n' Pops Aren't Afraid of Walmart; They...
- Weekly Jobless Claims Fall to 27-Month Low
15 Comments:
On the writing part shouldn't it be 1.37 males per female given that males outperformed females?
Thanks, Colin. The female-male ratio is correct, but I had the numbers reversed in the chart by mistake.
I wonder if there's a reason for boys doing better at math?
Perusing google results one continually trips over all sorts of inane 'politically correct' postings...
Professor Perry, I'm trying to locate on the site a history of these test results and I'm not having much luck...
Any ideas?
what about the Walmart sex discrimination lawsuit?
Is this like WMDs
PROVE you have no WMDs
PROVE you did not discriminate.
These statistics show discrimination against males in the writing category.
is this adjusted for the number of students taking the test?
my understanding is that more girls take the test than boys.
so is a 1.07 ratio actually equal to parity or even per capita male outperformance because there are more women?
Here are the perfect scores per 100,000 SAT takers:
Math: 11.2 - boys, 4.7 - girls
Reading: 5.8 - boys, 5.4 - girls
Writing: 4.0 - boys, 4.7 - girls
Ratios (boys to girls):
Math: 2.4:1
Reading: 1.1:1
Writing: 1:1.2
Thus, among SAT takers, boys clearly outperform girls at the highest level in mathematics. The differences between boys and girls in reading and writing at the highest levels are small.
The biological, neurological, and performance-based findings overwhelmingly support the theory that, on average, males are better than females at mathematics, spacial relationships, and fields that apply those concepts such as physics and engineering. It is well-known that males have wider intelligence-related variances than females. Combining these two factors explains why the most brilliant mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers, and chess players are almost exclusively men: the uppermost (and lowermost) tails of intelligence distribution have few women.
Note: The best theory on the cause of the differences between male and female brains is the effect of higher levels of testosterone on early brain development. Experiments on animals with sex-based ability differences have shown that adding testosterone during the gestation and infancy of females produces male-pattern brains. Depriving male animals of testosterone in utero and during infancy produces female-pattern brains.
Morganovich, yes, it would be more accurate to use the "adjusted male-female ratio," since "more women (827,197) than men (720,793) took the SAT test in 2010."
"Morganovich, yes, it would be more accurate to use the "adjusted male-female ratio," since "more women (827,197) than men (720,793) took the SAT test in 2010."
Dang! Based on that ratio, it looks like males outdid females by a small margin in reading also. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't want to embarrass myself anywhere else.
"I wonder if there's a reason for boys doing better at math?"
juandos, maybe it's one of those things that just IS. Like the fact that females generally outperform males on the singing-in-a-high-voice portion of the SAT.
Dr T shows males did better than females in reading based on the actual data (5.8 to 5.4).
Also, high school dropout rates are relevant:
High School Dropout Rates by Sex
Percentage of Dropouts from 1960–2006
The percentage of high school dropouts, ages 16-24, has declined since 1960. The percentage of male students who dropped out of high school has decreased from 27.8% in 1960 to 10.3% in 2006. The percentage of female dropouts has decreased from 26.7% to 8.3%.
I was a mediocre student (worked half time and competed ins sports) but excelled, though not perfect in the SATs.
I had friends who scored perfect marks, but they attended SAT training classes and took the SATs or PSATs several times. One of them later committed suicide, for what it is worth.
I had other frinds with consistently excellent grades, who crashed on the SATs. And still others who were academic disasters and still turned out OK.
The gender differences in SAT scores are interesting, and they suggest there are differences that we could study. I doubt the SAT scores are the right tool to use for that purpose, except there is a lot of data available.
If Dr. T is right, men occasionally hit high marks because they are all over the map, while women are more consistent. Maybe we should have more women air pilots. I'm not sure I would be patting myself on the collective male back just becasue we have more erratic geniuses.
SAT stats are interesting, but I don't see the point. My SATs were enough to get me into excellent schools but I can't say they changed my life.
There is a difference between scoring higher on the SAT and "doing better at math". I know plenty of smart, educated people who seem to be successful in spite of it.
These are people who would recgnize a quantitative problem if it hit thme in the nose: people who you wonder how they get through a whole day by themselves.
Whats happening here is a generalized claim of gender differences based on a study of the extreme outliers. How do the average values compare between men and women?
And speaking of quantitative subjects, where are the women on this blog, anyway?
Speaking of standardized tests:
With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science, according to the results of a respected exam.
NYT
Hydra, what about if the top 50% of U.S. students are ranked higher than the top 20% of students in any other country?
Good question
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