> edit: downvoters can't handle the truth?

No, your logic is flawed. Let's say there is a population of 1,000 male programmers, with a normal distribution of IQ (mean 100, S.D. 15), and therefore 15.87% are at or above 1 sigma. That's 159 male programmers, more or less, regarded as exceptional.

Let's further say that we have a population of 100 female programmers with exactly the same statistical breakdown, with 15.87% above 1 sigma, reflecting the IQ stats for the population as a whole, male and female. This makes 16 female programmers, more or less, regarded as exceptional.

This means (a) there are more exceptional male programmers by count than female programmers, but it also means that (b) statistically, a selected male programmer is likely to be equal to a selected female programmer, and the more programmers you compare, the more equal the outcome becomes.

Mathematically:

emp / tmp = efp / tfp = 15.87%

Where:

emp = exceptional male programmers

tmp = total male programmers

efp = exceptional female programmers

tfp = total female programmers

This means that your claim above:

> So the male candidate is probably better a coder most of the time.

Is perfect nonsense, and coincidentally calls into question the presumed intellectual superiority of males.

You have this a bit wrong.

If ability is normally distributed for a given sex (and the mean of the ability of the same), then it is true that there would be more above-average male programmers than female programmers - just as there are more male programmers than female programmers at any skill level. If you are provided a skilled programmer, they are most likely male. And if you are provided any programmer, they are most likely male. However, If you pick a random male programmer and a random female programmer, the woman is just as likely to be a good coder as the man.

This means that if you are talking to an anonymous person online and they are a good coder, you should assume they are male (if you're going to assume anything). This does not work backwards - if you are talking to a female programmer and you do not know their coding ability, it would not be particularly likely that they are a poor coder.

You should not assume anything. Given any random coder, yes, the chance that they're male is larger than the chance that they are female, but the chance that they are female is still present, and if you jump to the wrong assumption too early, you end up effectively denying their existence, which is a big part of the problem.

Consider it from the point of view of the female coder: in every discussion, people will always start out assuming either that she is male or that she can't code. And it's up to her to either correct that (with all the crap that often comes with it) or not, and let people believe there are no female coders. Constantly running into people assuming you don't exist, can be very demotivating, and may lead her to look for a more welcoming job. Let's not do that anymore, okay?

I don't know if you meant for your argument to be applicable to Gayle, but if so... well, it is not applicable. People only knew her gender and assumed she was not skilled because of it.

They knew her gender and that she'd been talking code for an hour, and still assumed she was not skilled because of it. Some people are unbelievably dense.

> This is what I meant. Given a skilled programmer, it's more likely to be a male.

That might have been what you meant, but it isn't what you said. You said:

> Then we can conclude that there are more male programmers that are above this mean.

Not as a percentage of their cohort, which is the only rational way of expressing this idea.

But you were responding to a quote ">Woman. Probably not a good coder"

Which would imply the probability of a woman being a good coder was lower from the probability of a man being a good coder.

This is quite different to the probability of a good programmer being a man being higher than the probability of a good programmer being a woman.

I mean, the probability of a good programmer being swedish isn't that high but it doesn't tell you much about the quality of programming in Sweden.

Sure, but that point is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Which is probably why you keep getting downvoted.

I'm not sure I understand your argument. Are you suggesting that because there are more male programmers in total and hence more male programmers that are 'above average', that a randomly selected male candidate is statistically more likely to be 'above average' than a randomly selected female candidate?

If so that would be incorrect.

> There are more males above average then females who are above average.

You have dropped the qualifier "programmers", also if you hadn't done that, you aren't adjusting for population sizes, therefore you have left the realm of rational discourse.

As to males versus females, adjusted for population size, they're equal (and this is a statistic, not a popular PC pronouncement). As to male programmers versus female programmers, without specific data but knowing that women are better at calculation, we can safely conclude that their population-adjusted abilities are either equal or contradict your implied thesis.

The supreme irony of this conversation is that, if you were any good at calculation, you would see the systematic error in your claims. There's a large element of self-reference here.