There's no screening in the U.S., but I'm not sure we do so terrible a job of serving gifted children depending on where one lives. It's just hit or miss. The city and state where I grew up don't have a reputation for being "good" in terms of education, but there were selective magnet programs at the junior high and high school levels that were pretty decent. My elementary school split its classes by ability, so even at that level I was in a classroom with kids in the top ~quartile. That's more rare these days, but my son's public elementary does the same thing starting in 2nd grade.

...find ways for us to develop our own native talent without exacerbating inequality.

Good luck with that.

What's interesting is that if you talk about running or weight lifting...

Kind of apples and oranges. Physical activities are much more easily measured, and there the sex differences are apparent even among average individuals as opposed to only at the margins. Arguing that men have (on average) more upper body strength than women because of socialization is like arguing men are taller (on average) because of socialization. It's not plausible. It's entirely plausible, though, that women's math performance is impacted by socialization. My personal opinion is that socialization doesn't explain the entirety of the gap, but it's certainly not as obvious as the physiological basis for strength and speed.

This researcher found statistically significant differences between boys and girls at the high-end of mathematical ability as early as Kindergarten. So we're talking about 5-6 year-olds. Of course this is just one paper and (for all I know) it's been refuted elsewhere in the literature.

Does she hate math because she was indoctrinated or because she finds it frustrating and difficult? Or a combination of the two? Its pretty reasonable for a kid to "hate" a subject he or she finds particularly difficult.

It's a tough thing to analyze since the physiological explanation could coexist (and possibly give rise to) the socialization explanation. Here's another paper that specifically looks at "high-end" SAT/ACT scorers among students who took the test in 7th grade. While the male/female ratio among those who scores 700+ on the math section declined (significantly) over time, it has settled at an approximately 4:1 level. Similar results for the ACT. If socialization is the primary cause then its fairly extreme and its happening fairly early.

Yes, but more women take the SAT than men, and yet the ratio of perfect math scores is 2:1 in favor of the men or 2.5:1 after adjusting for the fact that more women taken the test. Something's going on there. Maybe it's entirely socialization; I'm not discounting that possibility. But it's not that women are opting out of taking the SAT. It's also worth noting that the math on the SAT is not particularly advanced. So it's not that women's scores are suffering because they opt out of taking more advanced math classes in high school. That might be the case if we were talking about AP Calculus exam results, but IIRC the SAT only goes up to basic algebra and geometry, classes every student (usually) has to take in order to graduate.

There's isn't ample evidence to the contrary with respect to I.D. So, yeah. If you consider I.D. to be unscientific, e.g. untestable and/or unfalsifiable, then what sort of "evidence to the contrary" could possibly be given? Neither evidence that supports an old earth nor evidence that supports of the evolution of species necessarily contradicts I.D.

When it comes to women in math, most people have probably come into contact with a woman who was more mathematically gifted than they are. Or, at least, who was competent. In high school, at university, on the job, etc. So they have personal, experiential knowledge of the fact that some women, at least, can "do math". Even the most chauvinistic folks I've met don't argue women can't do math. They may argue men are, on average, better at math, or that women shouldn't do math (even when they have the ability to do so), but they rarely go so far as to make a blanket claim that no woman, ever, anywhere, can "do math". Probably because that claim is so trivially disproved.

Think women can't do math?

Hardly anyone thinks this because there is ample evidence to the contrary. Moreover, the average woman is probably about as good at math as the average man. But when you're hiring in a "mathematical profession" you're not looking at the entire population; you're looking at the set of men and women with relatively high mathematical ability. Within that set, at least in the United States, men outnumber women. This could very well be the result of socialization; I'm not necessarily arguing from physiology. But it's hard to argue with numbers. The ratio of men to women among the set of SAT takers with a perfect math score, after adjusting for the fact that more women than men take the SAT, is 2.5 to 1. So, all else being equal we should expect about 28% of engineers and mathematicians to be women. Interestingly, if you look at the percentage of Math Ph.D.s granted to U.S. citizens (in 2010) women earned exactly 28%. With respect to engineering and computer science, approximately 20% of bachelors degrees (in 2008) were granted to women, so there may be work to be done there. My guess is that this is due to the stereotypical reputations of CS/Engineering (bearded hackers with poor hygiene and huge egos) being less appealing to women than to men.

Where I went, the needles are small. But there are two, one in each arm. Pretty mild compared to some other shots you get; they do these into the fat, not muscle, and the needles are tiny. But you go way more often than once per year; especially at the beginning. When I started it was 3x a week. Then once a week, then once every two weeks, then eventually once a month. You have to wait in the office 30 minutes after getting the shot, but they have WiFi so I just work. Or read slashdot.

You can pay to live close-in so as to avoid traffic. But, yeah, that jacks up the CoL and makes Austin less of a deal. My commute to the Arboretum area is 10 minutes w/ minimal traffic.

I'm Austin and started allergy shots because I'm allergic to pretty much all pollen, including cedar. I've found them to be pretty effective.

This is basically the deal. I live in central Austin, though not downtown. The price-per-square-foot of my home is approximately twice what my in-laws paid for their home in Cedar Park.

Yeah. To be honest, it sounds like you kind of have a problem with authority. If I knew ahead of time that, in the event of an unresolvable technical disagreement, a candidate would rather quit than work within a technical vision that isn't to their liking...that's probably not a candidate I'd hire. Certainly I value folks who aren't afraid to voice disagreement and back it up with persuasive arguments; I'm not so inflexible that I can't be swayed. But if your attitude is essentially "I do things exactly the way I want to do them or I'm out of here" then you're not someone I'd want as part of a team. Does that not seem reasonable?

Work ethic = ability to force yourself to do things you don't naturally want to do. Like grind out a programming assignment that's not intrinsically interesting. Work ethic = willingness to inconvenience one's self to get something done by a deadline. Work ethic = insistence on doing quality work instead of being willfully sloppy.

These kinds of things won't make you the next Steve Jobs, but not having them (and not being brilliant) will probably have a large negative impact on your performance both in school and in the work force. And none of them have anything to do with cleverness, innate learning ability or deep, intuitive understanding of subject matter.