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Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

Interesting link in the comments: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/women-...

This graph shows that the drop off was nearly identical for men.

Maybe the initial bump was just people getting overexcited for this computer thing and then hearing from their friends that it's kind of nerdy.

Edit

Another interesting link seems to show that women receive degrees at a significantly higher rate than men, and that the gap is widening: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72

Why is this?

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Read the graph again. The dropoff for women is much larger.

$ python

>>> 20000.0 / 17000.0

1.1764705882352942

>>> 12500.0 / 7000.0

1.7857142857142858

CS enrollment for women in 1984 was 78% larger than in 1996; For men, it was 17%.

I'm not sure where you're picking these numbers off and from which graph. The graph I linked has the following values(ish):

* Men: 27,500 - 17,500 -> 1.57 ~ 36% drop * Women: 15,000 - 7,500 -> 2 ~ 50% drop

So yes, you're right that women did seem to drop off more but not as much as you say.

The graph you linked to. I'm comparing the 1984 numbers to latest available, since 1984 is what the linked piece talks about (and which I mentioned in the original comment)

> drop off was nearly identical for men

> women did seem to drop off more

These two statements cannot be both true at the same time.

In this case, a drop off needs to be compared to a peak value which 1984 is not. 1984 is before the 1986 peak. I'm not saying they're exactly identical but it's clear that there are similar patterns. Perhaps not "nearly" identical, but similar enough.

What are you trying to prove with this cherry-picked time points?

Author notices that number of women in CS significantly went down in 1984 and searches for reasons. According to the graph provided in the parent comment it was actually CS as a whole which went down. Both lines on the graph are awfully similar, and one can assume that there wasn't any sudden catastrophe for women in CS at that time.

When analyzing 'What Happened To Women In Computer Science?' the absolute number is not important, but the ration of women in CS and when that went down (and why).

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