Originally Posted by mithawk
Originally Posted by deacongirl
I strongly reject the idea that boys are inherently better at chess than girls. I cannot even believe any credence is given to that position in 2014.

Why would you automatically reject this idea? Here is one plausible explanation for it.

* Spatial ability is an important part of chess
* Boys have an higher standard deviation of spatial ability than girls.
* If the mean of boys and girls spatial ability is the same, then both extremes would be dominated by boys. The boys with high spatial ability would typically dominate girls with high spatial ability when it comes to chess.

There are of course exceptions. I know an extremely talented young girl player, who routinely dominates skilled boys that are a few years older.

I'm skeptical that your premises are correct. But even assuming they are, for argument's sake, how does a characteristic about the extreme tails of the distribution of "ability" (arguably >3sd) translate into a meaningful comment about a gender split in chess participation closer the mean, say +1-3sd, where most players fall? You can't meaningfully infer the expected performance of the gender distribution from the tails.

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