Top all-time · #447
Randal S. Olson
Personal blog · randalolson.comaidatascience
Randal S. Olson's personal blog at randalolson.com covers ai, data and science. Since 2013, 127 different Hacker News readers have linked it 187 times, most often “Percentage of Bachelor's degrees conferred to women by major, 1970-2012”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his charts of US degrees by gender and by major, and of IQ by major, in debates over women in computer science. Comments cite the charts as data.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Listed among personal sites the commenter likes, as portfolio inspiration; nothing on the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
AI researcher and builder with 15+ years building AI. Creator of TPOT and 50+ peer-reviewed publications in AI/ML.
Most-linked posts?
- Percentage of Bachelor's degrees conferred to women by major, 1970-201218 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2014-06-15
- Average IQ of students by college major and gender ratio11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2014-06-26
- Retracing the evolution of Reddit through post data6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-03-13
- Here’s Waldo: Computing the optimal search strategy for finding Waldo5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-02-04
- Computing the optimal road trip across the U.S5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-03-09
- The "are you sure?" Problem: Why AI keeps changing its mind4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-02-11
- What makes for a stable marriage?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-10-11
- The double-edged sword of gender equality4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-06-15
- Putting Big Pharma spending in perspective4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-03-02
- /wp-content/uploads/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png3 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2015-02-06
What Hacker News says?
Women have graduated computer science at a less than 20% rate (which is the ratio of women in tech at Google) for more that a decade. Why? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo... http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo”Submitted It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays as a story · 200 points
HN discussionFor one thing, it's much harder to pay your own way through college now (impossible, depending on who you are). [0] [1] [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/the-myt... [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/03/22/its-impossible-to-work...
Comment linking /2014/03/22/its-impossible-to-work-your-way-through-college-nowadays
on “The days are long but the decades are short”Submitted What makes for a stable marriage? as a story · 152 points
HN discussion> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pur…
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo”Submitted Evolution of chess: Popularity of openings over time as a story · 95 points
HN discussion> You're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math, science, etc. And yet over 40% of graduates majoring in math and statistics are women. How does this sit with your explanation of social conditioning? http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo”Submitted Programming Language Breakdown for the HealthCare.gov Website as a story · 93 points
HN discussionIt's a good time to invest in reddit. Not because it will become cooler over the coming years, but because it will become more valuable as it monetizes itself and sells off it's goodwill/equity. Reddit as a platform peaked in 2013- quantitatively[1] and qualitatively. It's mainstream now, and will soon be passe (something like SomethingAwful). If reddit has any value as an investment, it's for advertising and person…
Comment linking /2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-post-on-reddit-every-day/
on “Reddit”Submitted The evolution of chess: Game lengths and outcomes as a story · 86 points
HN discussionhttp://www.randalolson.com/apps/default_subreddit_status.htm... If you want to see which default subreddits are running or down /r/netsec and /r/programming are down.
Comment linking /apps/default_subreddit_status.html
on “Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin”Submitted Accuracy of three major weather forecasting services as a story · 80 points
HN discussionMy personal site is https://jonathanstreet.com/ It's in need of some help so I've been looking around for inspiration. I'll be taking a look at everything posted. Some I've found previously I like: http://blog.echen.me/ https://www.liyaoxiang.com/ http://www.randalolson.com/ https://jvns.ca/ http://www.nowozin.net/sebastian/ http://www.emilio.ferrara.name/ http://danielnee.com/ http://daynebatten.com/ https://thomas…
Comment linking /
on “Building a Kickass Portfolio”Submitted The Reddit world map – How to map out online social networks as a story · 74 points
HN discussionYou are assuming that the change in the 80s was something that made programming less attractive to women. But that's not the only change that could explain what happened. It could be that one or more other fields changed to become more attractive to women. Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming…
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science”Submitted What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2 as a story · 66 points
HN discussion* institutionalized discrimination: Policies that explicitly favor one group over another based on phenotype differences. For example, Jim Crow laws or "diversity" hiring policies. * "institutionalized discrimination": The hypothesis that society is skewed by the vast conspiracy of "bias". For example, for the past 10 years, computer science graduation rates skew under 20% / 80% for female / male graduates [0]. Pres…
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “Outraged about the Google diversity memo?”Submitted Do Men on OKCupid Follow the Standard Creepiness Rule? as a story · 43 points
HN discussionPeople with graduate degrees have higher than average IQ, but people with higher IQ do not necessarily have graduate degrees. That is, intelligence is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to get a graduate degree in STEM. The other necessary conditions you mention (training, interest, etc.) are also important, but still require a baseline ability. Even looking at undergraduate degrees, IQ is a significant fact…
Comment linking /2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by-college-major-and-gender-ratio/
on “Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children”Submitted Percentage of Bachelor's degrees conferred to women by major, 1970-2012 as a story · 38 points
HN discussionWell said, I would only disagree with the treatment of Gilead and pharma in general. The moral outrage is against greed. Even when the cost-benefit relation works to other (similarly overpriced) treatments, their margins are way too excessive from the patients' pov imo, because 1. manufacturing cost next to nothing 2. pharma spends way more on marketing than r&d [1] [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/01/design-c…
Comment linking /2015/03/01/design-critique-putting-big-pharma-spending-in-perspective/
on “First Human Embryos Edited in U.S”Submitted Computing the optimal road trip across the U.S as a story · 31 points
HN discussionIt's a somewhat interesting read, but one that I cannot agree with the conclusions as the author seems to have not bothered to read up on the data with regards to gender ratio in other careers. For example the following claim made by the author: >Women are less likely to be interested in programming than men. But if you ban the smart women from every other occupation – well, they’ll take it. Once you unban them, the…
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge”Submitted Health insurance claim denial rates range from 13% to 35% by insurer as a story · 30 points
HN discussion>Having worked outside the software world, I absolutely do not believe that software people are any smarter, on average, than anyone else The average CS major has an IQ of around 125[1], meaning the average software engineer is somewhere around the top 5% of the population in terms of intelligence. The average IQ at the top tech companies is probably a standard deviation higher than that. Despite this, the consensus…
Comment linking /2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by-college-major-and-gender-ratio/
on “The Bulk of Software Engineering in 2018 Is Just Plumbing”Submitted Artificial Intelligence has crushed all human records in 2048 (2015) as a story · 23 points
HN discussionJust commenting to add more graphs: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-stud... http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/15/the-double-edged-sword...
Comment linking /2014/06/15/the-double-edged-sword-of-gender-equality/
on “No Longer an Inspiration”Submitted Here’s Waldo: Computing the optimal search strategy for finding Waldo as a story · 22 points
HN discussionI feel you are misrepresenting the male/female balance of various disciplines. Here are male/female distributions of bachelor degrees across many majors. Few of these sit right at 50%: http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... Are you arguing that every field that doesn't sit right at 50% is sexist against the underrepresented gender? (I don't dispute that sexism in tech exists. I just dispute…
Comment linking /2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/
on “The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google”Submitted How AI crushed all human records in 2048 as a story · 16 points
HN discussion
