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Re: Men vs Women on Conlang

From:Tim May <butsuri@...>
Date:Sunday, December 8, 2002, 21:52
Arthaey Angosii writes:
 > >And the other question, that gets frequently circulated on CONLANG, is the
 > >usual: why are there at least four times more men on CONLANG than women?
 >
 > Because I'm strange and like numbers, I reviewed the list of all the people
 > subscribed through the Brown server (this means people in Yahoo-only mode
 > weren't counted).  There are 271 men, 35 women, 18 unknowns (I hunted
 > Google for information on all the unobvious names -- I even found photos of
 > some of you!), and 18 concealed members.  That means there's over 7 men for
 > every woman on the list.  I never would have guessed the list was that
 > male-heavy!  Not that I think this is necessarily a problem, I just find it
 > interesting.  :)
 >
 >

Well, now, it's theoretically possible that all the unknown and
concealed members are in fact female, which would render only a little
over 3.8 males/female.  On the other hand, if all those are male, the
ratio is a little under 8.8.  Reality is no doubt somewhere between
these extremes...  Last time I checked the list I noticed that some
people are subscribed more than once - did you correct for this (where
possible)?

Of course, at best we can only attempt to gather statistics on what
people _say_ they are.  I wouldn't assign a very high value of
certainty to the sex of anyone online you haven't met face to face.
But this is probably statistically insignificant.

Replies

Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Padraic Brown <elemtilas@...>