December 29, 2008 in Everyday Science
Men’s Chess Superiority Explained
A study published by the Royal Society finds that men’s superiority over women at chess at the top levels can be explained by population size. Since many more men play, there’s a wider range of abilities, meaning more individuals at the very top. Karen Hopkin reports.
Women are so much better than men at so many things. But according to a report published by the Royal Society, chess is not one of them. The topic of sex differences when it comes to matters of the mind is, needless to say, a divisive one. Those who wish to argue that women are just not as smart as men often point to chess as their proof. Although girls can obviously play, no woman’s ever been world champion. But before looking for cultural or biological explanations for the disparity, scientists say you need to do the math.
Serious chess players are assigned ratings based on their performance against other players. So the scientists compared the ratings of the top hundred male and top hundred female players from Germany. And they found that the men indeed outperformed the women. However that difference can be almost entirely explained by statistics. Because the larger the population, the wider the range of measured scores—the bell curve has a longer tail. And because many more men play than women, the best male players are extreme outliers on that bell curve. As more women play, a few should also reach those extremes, right out there with the men. To which one might be tempted to say: Checkmate.
—Karen Hopkin
Source: http://www.sciam.com (Scientific American)
Women have about the same average Iq as man.. they’re just not interested in doing “abstract” things. They are absent in science (only 3% of Nobel prize winners are women. How will you explain that?), they’re absent in politics, they’re absent in sport and in chess as well. They are just more into “social” things: parenting, gossiping, shopping etc. and taking care of their looks. That’s their nature.
The excuse search continues.
Women made major advances where arbitrary selection is the way. They did not, where true and measurable competition is the way. Chess is one of those, you are defeat your opponent, or you don’t.
As for the percentage of women in chess, it depends on the percentage of the girls who become INTERESTED in chess. Which of course depends on the initial success. If a child keeps defeating other children opponents, later adults, obviously he/she is far more likely to become serious about chess than somebody who gets regularly defeated. Whether the person is a male or female. That is what determines the percentage of participants on higher levels later.
This theory doesn’t explain why there are fewer chess playing women. It could be that the women chess playing population is already the tail end of the bell curve.
Wrong – this politically correct crap is bunk
Truth – There are more men than women at both ends of the intelligence bell curve. ie The super smart and the super dumb are much more likely to be male. Why? who knows?
The average women is just as smart as the average man. But, there is and always will be more men GMs.
The Black man jumps higher than the white man. Not racist – just fact.
There are many super intelligent women – just not as many as there are supper intelligent men.
Women are so much better than men at so many things
Which ones? Cooking, babysitting, cleaning the house?
Those who wish to argue that women are just not as smart as men often point to chess as their proof.
Those who argue that women are so much better than men at so many things, don’t even come up with arguments or examples for that.
this politically correct crap is bunk.
How is an article that simply says “women are so much better than men at so many things” politically correct?
The Black man jumps higher than the white man.
Most world record holders in high jump I can remember where quite pale.
Funnily enough I wrote a research essay for an English class about 20 years ago on the very same subject and reached the very same conclusion, for the very same reason. Since many more men play chess than women (for whatever reason) there will be, simply because of that fact, more men at any level of skill.
Of course this answer just changes the question to “why do so many fewer women than men play serious chess”?
By the way the “bell curve” isn’t a necessary factor for this. Whatever the distribution of chess ability is the same conclusion will be reached.
To show that women who play chess are weaker than men who play chess one would have to show that the average rating of women was lower than the average rating of men by a statistically significant amount. It is also conceivable that the statistical distribution of chess strength among women could be different, but I know of no evidence for this.
The plain fact is that the mere observation that there are fewer women at the very top than men does not by any means justify a conclusion that men are, on average, better at chess than women.
The only purpose to playing chess is to find out who’s better at it. This is something that is more likely to appeal to men than to women (on average)
Women are awesome chess players. I think the men are just sore nerds who feel treatened that a woman can beat him senseless at chess.
I got a good laugh from the article and the Anonymouses comments. Ha!
The only thing that matters about women chess players is if they have a good ass or bad ass? In generally they are pretty ugly. Everybody knows that beauty is in inverse proportion to inteligence. So we have the elite of women playing chess, and those ladies still can’t play a good game.
“The only thing that matters about women chess players is if they have a good ass or bad ass? In generally they are pretty ugly. Everybody knows that beauty is in inverse proportion to inteligence. So we have the elite of women playing chess, and those ladies still can’t play a good game.”
What a sad man (or woman) you are brave anony-mouse! Women make the best Chess teachers because the men are so boring and stink because they do not bathe! Chess women give the game hope because they produce the future chess generation. Men, on the other hand produce oddities like Fischer and Kasparov who have taken the game to the highest levels of weirdness and antisocial behavior! Heck, the socialist don’t even want Garry! He is too wierd! He wears his “blunder face” too much and it scares old women and small children!
Women Chess players are most loved and appreciated no matter their “looks” and believe me, Maia Chiburdanidze may not be better than Garry Kasparov, but I would rather be caught in bed with her than with Garry! Garry wouldn’t be nice enough to provide a reacharound because he is so selfish! I am sure Maia would rock any mans chess game, if you know what I mean!
Go Women Chess Players!