Women crap at parking: Official A team of University of Pennsylvania boffins appears to have confirmed the commonly held notions that while women are absolutely useless at parking cars, they thrash blokes when it comes to multitasking and empathy. The scientists scanned the brains of 949 peoples aged 8-22 - 428 male and 521 female - and discovered "unique …
For me, it's co-operative multithreading. What I see of others, tends to be pre-emptive multithreading.
I don't see true concurrency going on, just the task switching able to happen swift enough to keep on top of everything.
My weakness is recalling the context of a thread when I switch back to it A thought thread where I'm trying to do programming, generally has a big context that doesn't get stashed nearly effectively enough for me to resume it.
"greater significant differences within each sex than between them"
I've seen this point raised in many places following this kind of study, as if it somehow discredits or invalidates the findings. This seems bogus to me. So what if the within-group variation in a metric is larger than the between-group variation? The between-group variation is still a real, measured fact of the world. For example, it is perfectly true, and in some contexts useful, to say that men are taller than women. The fact that some women are taller than some men, or that the range of heights in either group is larger than the difference in the means, is irrelevant.
People seem to hate generalizations, especially about gender. Don't panic! Generalizations are fine, and essential in many areas of life. What's NOT ok is assuming that a particular generalization will be true for all members of the population. While this should be obvious, many people don't seem to realise it. So, maybe women are worse drivers on average, but one really can't assume anything about any individual woman based on that. Still, at the population level, it's worth knowing, and is essential for calculating insurance premiums fairly, etc.
It's not bogus in the least. The reason is because the in-group variation is normally HUGE and the between-group variation is normally tiny. Height is not a good example, as the differences are quite significant between men and women, and clearly sex-oriented. But the difference in driving skills between men and women is (a) probably not as much as people make it out to be and (b) potentially explainable in other ways that "she's a woman, therefore she's worse". For example, one possible explanation is that most people have been brought up to believe that men are better drivers, and so tend to let men drive more, so they get more practice, which generally makes them better drivers....
Hmm, well, that's not really relevant, at least for an insurer's purposes - they just want the best possible estimate of the 'expected cost' of each individual, they don't care about the massively complex web of social, biological, etc effects that lead to that result. In the same way, the fact that women earn less than men (on average) doesn't *necessarily* mean that all employers are sexist - there are massively complex webs of cause and effect in that case too.
In the case of this particular research, they claim to have found an underlying biological cause for the observed difference in spatial awareness abilities; this is exactly the sort of research that is needed to decide whether the observed differences are due to biology or society. This is interesting and valuable research, regardless of how it affects the 'political correctness gone mad' crowd etc. This would have been a valuable finding even if there were no observable difference in the gender's spatial awareness abilities (ie, if it was found that men and women achieve equal spatial awareness in different ways).
So, I stand by my earlier comment that research of this type is not *necessarily* discredited by in-group variance being greater than between-group variance.
So men were designed to be the hunters and women to me the mothers... I think that nature has known this for a long time already.
There is nothing intentionally derogatory about the above remark, so please abstain from the usual PC diatribe.
Of course there are exceptions, but they are after all just that, exceptions.
"Multitasking" - A yuppie illusion. Doing three things at the same time totally half-arsed if not plaing wrongly and possibly with disastrous consequences (going from wrecking one's hand to burning down the house) is not "multitasking". It is having a wrong idea of one's capabilities.
Also:
Neuropsychologist Ruben Gur, who participated in the study, conceded that "at any given moment, a woman is likely to be using her whole brain while a man is using half of his". Speaking to Philadelphia's Enquirer, he "struggled when asked if this structure makes men superior at anything".
What is this "if" that reporter is talking about? The real question is how women still manage to foobar things even if all the brain is engaged. Seeing how most of their decisions seem to be driven by mating reflexes (which is then strenuously denied) and peer group dynamics (even more strenuously denied), it could well be that all those active modules are the "social" ones.
Agree. I have a manager who "multitasks" by doing e-mail during meetings. The end result is that meetings last three to four times longer than they should due to having to go over agenda items again and again, and that the emails are so poorly absorbed (because he insists on trying to read everything on a Blackberry, has the attention span of a gnat on speed and keeps breaking off reading to find out what the f*ck the people at the meeting are talking about) he has to call meetings so the content can be explained.
I got so sick of this I offered to put in some mail filters for him (declined) then pointed out that the first thing most "effective management" books suggested was to stop reacting to email in real time. This got me disinvited to a bunch of meetings so - result, sorta.
I don't need no study for the answer to that, it's because my wife can't drive. However this doesn't prevent her from interfering with the driving of the car nor, even though she has the spatial awareness of a brick, stop her from asking every two minutes "are we going the right way?". To put this in perspective, if I ever wanted to lose her I just need to move house and take her to the end of the road, she'd never find her way back.
I am under the distinct impression that a growing number of people, of all genders and ages, are becoming sh*t at parking. That and refusing to take a shopping trolly back to the correct repository and instead choosing to leave it in the middle of the adjacent parking bay. When I park I like to consider the person(s) already parked, or who might park, next to me. They may for instance be elderly, have need of pushchairs and tons of baby-related equipment or just require that they can open a car door more than 2.5 inches for reasons of ingress/egress. I accept that in may cases car park layout with bays that are patently too narrow must take some of the blame, but generally a lot more consideration for others wouldn't go amiss.
I disagree. If you park with your drivers-side door 1 inch from the line, I'm going to assume that you get in and out via the passenger door. And if I had noticed you standing behind your vehicle BEFORE I walked out of the Walgreen's on the corner of Riverside & 120, I would have gone back inside and had a discussion with the pharmacist.
You can learn any skill. We have to back up a narrow bent alleyway to get onto our house's parking space, and ten years of that has made us both pretty damn good at reversing and parking. My wife has on occasion been asked by a neighbour to park their car for them because they were finding it too tricky, and been given a standing ovation by a bunch of builders watching her parallel-park in a spot that most people, me included, would not have attempted. I have no idea whether she or I had the greater naturally innate parking skills, and, frankly, who cares?
I've just watched a woman driver fail to park her car in a perfectly adequate space between two other cars. She then proceeded to repeat the same process on the other side of the road where she finally managed to fit her car into a space exactly the same length of the one she'd previously failed with.
During her manoeuvres she was assisted by her female friend who stood on the pavement and empathically checked out her messages on the phone.
That said, most 'parking' these days seems to entail slamming two of the cars wheels over the kerb and leaving it sprawled untidily on the pavement.
Yesterday, I watched a woman reverse her car into a space in a half-empty supermarket car park. She opened the driver's door to see out behind her, slowly reversed into the space, then switched off and went to do her shopping. The car was left at an angle of about 70° with 2/3 of it in the space, and the other 1/3 in the access lane beside it. She stopped about 3 feet away frim the car behind.
I seriously think she could have parked it just as well if she'd simply closed her eyes and waited for the crunch. I parked as far away from her as I could.
Yesterday, in traffic, I sat watching a woman attempt to park her car on the side of the road, one-handed, while having a conversation on her mobile, held to her ear with the other hand. Traffic was stopped, so I had a good opportunity to watch as she went back and forth, back and forth, never really making much progress.
It was only when she finished her conversation and directed all her attention to the task at hand, that she successfully got her vehicle parked. I felt bad for the cars in the lane she was blocking during the course of her attempt, but they also had a red light, so not much harm done, I suppose.
Sadly, the one-handed driver is a serious problem here. They don't even see you if to do so would involve turning their head. Don't even get me started on the ones checking their Facebook status in their laps. They think they're being subtle, but it's pretty obvious.
...Yesterday, in traffic, I sat watching a woman attempt to park her car on the side of the road, one-handed, while having a conversation on her mobile, held to her ear with the other hand. Traffic was stopped, so I had a good opportunity to watch as she went back and forth, back and forth, never really making much progress.
It was only when she finished her conversation and directed all her attention to the task at hand, that she successfully got her vehicle parked. I felt bad for the cars in the lane she was blocking during the course of her attempt, but they also had a red light, so not much harm done, I suppose.
So your anecdote illustrates:
1) the tendency of women to multi-task and indulge in social activity
2) the requirement for concentrated spacial awareness during parking maneuvers
3) the ability of women to intuitively balance multiple group needs and take actions which result in 'not much harm done'...
I saw a classic the other day... a long residential road in Bristol, with cars parked on both sides so that it was effectively a single lane road. As our group was walking along to the pub, we saw two cars facing each other, not moving, one red, one blue. We all looked up and down the road to see where the nearest passing spot was, and saw that it was 15 yards behind the red car. The driver of the blue car opened her window and shouted something to that effect. The drover of the red car shouted "I can't". Views were exchanged frankly between the two women, before the driver of the blue car shouted "For fuck's sake!" and hooned it down the road in reverse, placing herself in the middle of a T junction to the confusion of some other cars fresh on the scene. After all the fuss, and three vehicles had been put out by the red car's inability to reverse, the blue car choose a different route after all.
> we saw two cars facing each other, not moving, one red, one blue
Many years ago, I had a knackered old Transit van. Rear vis was dire.
One night, I was driving down a narrow road when a car came hooning round the corner and (just) stopped in front of me. There was a space a few yards behind him, but he wasn't going to reverse into it to let me pass.
So I started the long process of reversing a large van up a narrow street. I didn't hurry. This matey insisted on driving up to the front of my van at all points.
As I approached the crossroads (where I was planning to turn), I noticed another set of headlights waiting there. I backed into the side-road and glanced over my shoulder to see who it was - it was a cop van.
Said cop van then stormed across in front of me and forced the car to reverse all the way back down the street...
Some days are just lovely.
Vic.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
