Frozen,

You wrote:
"While you point out the fallacy in taking isolated cases to make a general point (anecdotal evidence)"

No, I did not refer to "isolated cases" or "anecdotal evidence".
I mentioned "biased sample". There is a big difference.

You wrote:
"the fallacy that you are falling to is to assume that most members of a group will have the typical characteristics of that group"

I do not assume that, in general. That is why I wrote :

"This does not address the Average
skill-level of each sex. It also does not address how
Varied those the skill-levels are."
By "Varied" I was referring to variance or dispersion
from the Average.

Example:
If you sample 50 men for height,and take the average,
it could be that none of them is average. However,
many will be close to average, if the Variance is small.
It really depends on the Variance.

It would be wrong to assume that the Variance is always
small or that it is always large.

You conclude with a vary broad statement and
offer no support:

"There's just too much overlap between characteristics and behavior of men an women for these distinctions to be useful."

It sounds like a PC prayer.
Did you really mean it?






Edited by Hike4Fun (01/31/07 07:16 PM)