30 December 2008

Battle of the Sexes

girl playing chessEd Yong has a great post over at Not Exactly Rocket Science. (Seriously, I might have to put it on both my blogs.) The question here is "Are men better than women at Chess?", and by association "Are men smarter than women?". [Image from Corbis]


The short answer is ...


Far more men play chess than women and based on that simple fact, you could actually predict the differences we see in chess ability at the highest level. It's a simple statistical fact that the best performers from a large group are probably going to be better than the best performers from a small one. Even if two groups have the same average skill and, importantly, the same range in skill, the most capable individuals will probably come from the larger group.
... no. Don't let that stop you from reading the full post though.

The article goes on to discuss Elo scoring as well, something I've mentioned before and will come back to again.

6 comments:

Big Mark 243 said...

But why do men need to go thru such extremes to prove what common sense can tell you, once you solved for chauvanism?

Patrick D Elliott said...

Sorry Big Mark, i can't make head nor tail of that, could you clarify a little?

Ed Yong makes some good points, although it does seem rather obvious that "Why are there so few female chess grandmasters?" is a social as opposed to a cognitive issue. Just think about the male/female denomination in your high school chess club.

Dan Eastwood said...

Mark: I don't get it either; what are men proving? Are you asking why there are more male chess players? Or more male gamers in general? (There might be a post in that)

Phonomancer: That's assuming anyone in your chess club actually played chess. I played a lot of Star Fleet Battles and Diplomacy in mine. ;-)

Brandon Hansen said...

Yeah I think it's more of a social question. Why don't more women play chess?

Rain Blanken said...

Yes, this appears to be a more social question. I haven't seen many frilly chess sets aimed at little girls. By the time they reach an age old enough to play chess, they've been brainwashed by Barbie to begin the eternal search for a man with a sportscar.

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Bradpetehoops said...

Its so nice! Chess is a wonderful game. I like it too.