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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2054 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why are there so many women in data science? I don't mean fake boot camp data scientists who know how to use pandas or matplotlib. I mean women with a math degree then a master's in data science. I won't pretend to be a data science expert by any means, but when I was getting my CS degree, I took a couple data science electives and they were really hard. I'd put them up there with my operating systems (dinosaur book) and computer systems classes in terms of difficulty. There was a ton of calculus and probability on top of coding in there. If you look at low level programming in C or assembly there's almost no women in any of those classes unless its a requirement. It's the same in industry. Yet there are a ton in data science, which I found to be just as difficult to be good at as programming in C.

Is this just some kind of networking effect where women gravitate to a field with other women? This is something that seems super obvious to me and I've never heard anyone give a good explanation.

I studied applied maths in biology/medicine and my year was literally 4 men and about 20 women. I already knew that it was much more gender balanced than pure/theoretic math but was still surprised, so I talked with some of them about why they chose to study this. The answer was fairly uniform: They had always been very good at math, but didn't particularly like it. Some originally wanted to study medicine, but were put off for some reason (and there's more than enough good reasons!). This allowed them to take advantage of something they're good at, while still ultimately working on a topic they like.

I'd wager data science is in a similar boat, albeit to a slightly lesser degree.

I think this is the most likely explanation. The most significant difference between men and women when it comes to careers is preferences, not abilities.

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