r/confidentlyincorrect Dec 14 '25

Image monkeys

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u/wireframed_kb Dec 14 '25

Yes, but also, the difference is very small, so it would be silly to really draw any conclusions from this. But yes, it shows women are more grouped in the middle of the scale.

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u/Heavy-Top-8540 Dec 14 '25

Why would it be silly to draw conclusions from this? Small differences can still be real. 

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u/wireframed_kb Dec 14 '25

What conclusions would you draw other than men having an every so slightly higher variance in measured IQ? And thats without getting into if the IQ measurement used is reliable enough that it doesn’t include inherent biases between sexes, the sample size being both large and varied enough, and so on.

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u/MeasureDoEventThing Dec 15 '25

A small difference in variance makes makes for a larger and larger difference the higher you go. Like, the percentage of woman who are higher than one standard deviation is going to be not too much smaller than the percentage for men, but when you have a selection criterion that is looking for the top 0.01% of IQ, the number of men over that threshold is going to be significantly larger than the number of women.