Complexity Digest 2009.01 - 06

04-Jan-2009

Happy New Year 2009!
To all our readers, contributors, and friends!
We are now entering the 10th year of publication of Complexity Digest and we are proud that over the years we could keep up the weekly schedule only occasionally interrupted by an accident and illness of the Editor in Chief. Unfortunately my health situation got worse, so there will be some changes and in the short term we might have to switch to a bi-weekly schedule. We will keep you posted. Thank you all for your support.

PDF files of our annual editions are available at www.comdig.de/AnnualEditions.html

Aletter from Gottfried Mayer to our readers and friends is at http://www.comdig.de/GMLetter.html

Why Are (The Best) Women So Good At Chess? Participation Rates And Gender Differences In Intellectual Domains, Proc. Biol. Sc. Bookmark and Share

Excerpt: A popular explanation for the small number of women at the top level of intellectually demanding activities from chess to science appeals to biological differences in the intellectual abilities of men and women. An alternative explanation is that the extreme values in a large sample are likely to be greater than those in a small one. Although the performance of the 100 best German male chess players is better than that of the 100 best German women, we show that 96 per cent of the observed difference would be expected given the much greater number of men who play chess. (...)