"I don't think the SAT thing is very interesting: presumably (or possibly, at least) it is still a culture thing that women are less interested in maths, which would explain the gap by the end of high school."

That could be it. But I'd actually be more worried about students who were just "less interested" than students who were interested and tried really hard.

"The IQ test people also claim their tests are culture insensitive, but that is definitely not true. Just think about the following kind of test: show 10 kanji symbols on a page of the book and on the next page ask the reader to identify them."

Actually, what IQ testers found was that the culturally insensitive tests exacerbate group differences. Unless there's something cultural in being able to remember a sequence of numbers and recite it in reverse, or to have high reaction time, or to remember the orientation of a set of geometric shapes.

There is definitely something cultural to being able to remember sequences of numbers in reverse: I am sure societies that don't have a concept of numbers would have a much harder time with it... As for the geometric shapes, remember the example of the africans building 2d models of the 3d drawing. It seems likely that there is a cultural component to seeing abstract shapes. The Kanji example was perhaps bad - OK, think about recognising kaukasian and chinese faces. They are just faces, no? But somehow it is hard for many kaukasians to tell chinese people apart, and presumably vice versa. I don't think that is genetic, it is trained. It makes me think twice about the cultural aspects of recognising "geometric shapes".

For completeness I want to mention that I don't doubt that IQ tests measure something. Like if they predict success in the military or whatever, they are probably right, ie the IQ63 guy from Ethopia (from another post) would probably have a much harder time in the US military than the IQ 100 American. It is just not clear that it measures "intelligence" per se. And perhaps for the Ethopian military, the results would be reversed. Ie try putting up "surviving in the Saharah without water" as an IQ test.

I used to tutor junior high and high school kids in physics. In junior high, nearly all the top students were girls. For some reason, in high school, there was this huge switch -- suddenly, most of the girls weren't interested in physics or math. It was weird, but I suspect that it's largely a matter of social pressures.

Luckily, I've had no direct experience with this. I skipped high school.

You skipped high school? How did that work out?

Pretty well. I graduated in Computer Science and Physics with a first class honors degree, and the university medal (I was the top student), at 17.

I then went into Princeton to start a PhD in plasma physics -- I did that for two years but that's on hold now -- I'm starting a startup, as I guess is the ambition of many of us here.

Socially, I've always been fairly mature for my age. I got along better with college students than my age peers. It was a very good move. I hated school.

Wow, Dani. Impressive. Need a co-founder? Any workers?