Ed 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 ...
... no. Don't let that stop you from reading the full post though.
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.
The article goes on to discuss Elo scoring as well, something I've mentioned before and will come back to again.
6 comments:
But why do men need to go thru such extremes to prove what common sense can tell you, once you solved for chauvanism?
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.
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. ;-)
Yeah I think it's more of a social question. Why don't more women play chess?
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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Its so nice! Chess is a wonderful game. I like it too.
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