[TriLUG] The biggest deterrent for women in tech

[Brandon Van Every]

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 9:49 AM, John Vaughters <jvaughters04 at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> No one can tell me that our genetic population distribution is worse at
> math than China or India. They just put more time into math and therefore
> have better math skills.


It's not that simple.  The Chinese also have a better linguistic mapping to
numbers than we do.  IIRC I think their word for "twenty" translates to
"two tens."  They don't do teens.


> I find it funny and sad that my kids actually think Asians are smarter
> than them, but I point out it is not that they are smarter, they just have
> a harder work ethic than you. And once I start asking them about their
> Asian friends life, they agree, they work harder. This is a cultural
> difference. Studies have shown that Americans spend much less time on
> studies than Asian Cultures.
>

It may have to do with rice vs. wheat cultivation.  Rice took enough
expertise to grow that Asian farmers tended to own their own land, and work
their own fields to maximize its production.  Rice production got better
the more work one threw into it.  In Europe, wheat was mass farmed with
lords owning the land.  Wheat wasn't sensitive to individual or specialist
effort, the mass peasant approach worked fine.

Both of these thoughts from a book by Malcolm Gladwell, I think it was
"Success."


Cheers,
Brandon