Comments on: Hotties and Notties

By: polis

polis — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:00:03 +0000

See another strong correlation here.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/08/cost-of-being-pc.html

The Cost of Being PC

Here is a ranking of academic disciplines by political correctness:

The most PC: Psychology, Sociology, English, History, Elementary education

The least PC: Criminal justice, Economics, Marketing, Accounting, Computer science, Biology, Finance, Management information, Mechanical engineering, Electrical engineering

Political correctness is defined here as “the belief that gender gaps in math and science fields are largely due to discrimination; support for affirmative action; and belief that discrimination is a key cause of racial inequities in American society. Generally, members of this cohort see race and gender as fundamental .”

I notice that the non-PC disciplines appear to correlate with the most lucrative college majors. Some might take this fact as even more evidence that life is fundamentally unfair.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:59:10 +0000

Isn’t it a bit odd that none of the possible disciplines record a score even of nought? Maybe this says something about the mood-killing atmosphere of a survey, rather than much about the hotness of academia in general.

I wonder what the results would be if it weren’t actual students scoring professors, but rather members of the public faced with a photo and some summary information about each person (like a Top Trumps card).

I also wonder what a bespectacled chess player with a passion for mortgages, and who moonlights as a bull-fighting martial artist astro-fireman would score on this scale.

By: R. L. P.

R. L. P. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:58:21 +0000

Let’s face it. This shows that Academics in general are not hot.

By: MikeN

MikeN — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:17:56 +0000

Who was the famous European physicist whose outraged comment when his wife ran off with another man was “a bullfighter I could understand, but a chemist??!!”

By: Joe S.

Joe S. — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:40:55 +0000

I was a chemist. I went to law school to find a bride. Mission successful. Hah!

By: Tom Carter

Tom Carter — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:56:33 +0000

Seems like some folks are running out of useful things to survey.

Having labored many years in the vineyard of political science, I have to wonder who would rate it as almost “hot.” I mean, sure, it’s hotter than chemistry, but what isn’t?

I also notice that among the hottest disciplines, the only one that people sometimes make serious money at is law. Maybe the message here is the high-achievers were under-represented in the survey sample….

By: fmackay

fmackay — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:12:45 +0000

Barry@45: Although Stross lives in Edinburgh, he is in fact English.

Re: hotness – I am worried by the absence of Physics – not enough data, or off the bottom of the chart?

By: salient

salient — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:39:58 +0000

1 Real Social Scientific Data is a term of art here

You stole that from a CNN news ticker, didn’t you?

By: R. L. Pour

R. L. Pour — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:39:34 +0000

Social scientests are neither.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:44:21 +0000

The gender break down of the discipline would greatly effect the ratings of the professors. Because most colleges have some language requirements for graduation, the gender break down of the students would be roughly equivalent to that of the university. But in disciplines that are still skewed toward one gender, the students and professors would be more likely to share a gender (and thus be unable/unwilling to accurately describe the attractiveness of their professor).

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:27:42 +0000

Is academia sexy you ask. Well perhaps it is. However, I am a retired fireman. Now women really like firemen. That much I can tell you! :-)

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:27:43 +0000

Hermenauta 01.22.09 at 8:37 pm

“All this is fine, but where is the Stross seminar?

Not that I think Stross is hot. :)”

Come on, a Scottish SF writer? He’ll certainly know out of this world techniques for stuffing a haggis, so to speak :)

By: Moe Green

Moe Green — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:25:24 +0000

Well the Poli-scie people have to crow about something. Discipline is internally focused and no major ideas have broken out to influence anyting. The nexus of psychology, sociology and economics and attendant advances are dominating social science (such as it is) and sicence and engineerng is also emergent. Last but not least lots of literature shows that IQ and GRE scores are highly correlated and Poli-sci is down the list. Larry Summers is right—you guys may be hot but you are not very smart or relevant…
Check the GRE scores—the hoties are not so brainy….

http://seekerblog.com/archives/20081108/gre-scores-by-field-of-study/

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:27:14 +0000

Very weird: “Athletics” (that’s definitely not a discipline where I come from) scores 23rd in hotness, but 7th in quality, making it the strongest outlier in the general trend that hotter teachers are also rated higher quality.

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:23:09 +0000

The linguistics grad student laughs at all you nerds!

(Nevermind that 90% of what I actually do is computer science and math.)