New book says women are better at everything!

[Mack27]

Yawn, this tired old thing thing again? Here's the article:

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/why-women-really-are-better-at-almost-everything-q-a-with-author-dan-abrams-2460114/

Overall better drivers, overall better lots of things blah, blah, blah.

But what really got me was in the comments where someone posted something fairly intelligent and a lot of Yahoo commenters jumped all over her. Here's what she posted:

An intelligent question was raised :

B B 4 hours 14 minutes ago

Q: Why are Men acknowledged as the best Chefs, yet most of the cooking in the world is done by women?

According to R. Baumeister, Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology & Head of Social Psychology Area, Florida State University ... a PROFESSIONAL in this field ... (not a lawyer promoting his own book and media empire) .... his research indicates that men are biologically and genetically geared to go to extremes more than women. Given his findings, you would expect that men dominate the rankings of the absolute top chiefs in the world (which they do). They also dominate the other extreme as well. They cook and prepare LESS of the average daily food in most ordinary homes.

So the professors observations are hold equally valid for cooking as it does for all the other examples he cited in his address.

Excerpt :

"Almost certainly, it is something biological and genetic. And my guess is that the greater proportion of men at both extremes of the IQ distribution is part of the same pattern. Nature rolls the dice with men more than women. Men go to extremes more than women. It’s true not just with IQ but also with other things, even height: The male distribution of height is flatter, with more really tall and really short men.

Again, there is a reason for this, to which I shall return.

For now, the point is that it explains how we can have opposite stereotypes. Men go to extremes more than women. Stereotypes are sustained by confirmation bias. Want to think men are better than women? Then look at the top, the heroes, the inventors, the philanthropists, and so on. Want to think women are better than men? Then look at the bottom, the criminals, the junkies, the losers.

In an important sense, men really are better AND worse than women.

A pattern of more men at both extremes can create all sorts of misleading conclusions and other statistical mischief. To illustrate, let’s assume that men and women are on average exactly equal in every relevant respect, but more men at both extremes. If you then measure things that are bounded at one end, it screws up the data to make men and women seem significantly different. "