Dr. Randal S. Olson: 'Qs are typically classified as follows:
130+: Very superior intelligence
120-129: Superior
110-119: Above average
90-109: Average
'Considering that many of the female-dominated majors heavily involve interpersonal interactions, my initial thought was that this all made sense: Women are widely known to be more socially-inclined and nurturing than men, so we would expect to see them dominate fields that heavily involve people. But how does that explain the drastic IQ differences between male- and female-dominated fields, if the average man and woman have the same IQ?
'When we plot the students’ Quantitative SAT score against the major’s gender ratio, we see the negative correlation appear again. This tells us that the original plot is actually showing preference for quantitative majors: The higher the estimated IQ, the more quantitative/analytical the major, and the fewer women enrolling in those majors.
'This brings up an interesting question of how valuable the SAT is as a standardized test across all majors, if a higher SAT score is really only indicating that the student is better at solving quantitative/analytical problems. Not all majors require a high analytical aptitude, after all.'
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