Well forward in the competition for “Silliest Commentary on the Larry Summers Flap” is Andrea Peyser in America’s Newspaper of Record yesterday. Quote from Miz Peyser:

“Harvard University President Lawrence Summers did, in fact, declare that,

in his learned opinion as head of one of the world’s leading educational

institutions, women, on average, are dumber than men.”

Summers did not say anything of the kind. The only thing he said that even

came close was: “There is relatively clear evidence that whatever the

difference in means — which can be debated — there is a difference in the

standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.”

The word “means” here means “averages.” There are all sorts of differences

between men and women in their mean measurement of various attributes –

rates of incarceration, for instance. Whether there is a difference in

means for cognitive ability is, as Summers said, debatable. (If there is

one, it is small.) There is no doubt, however, that there are differences

in standard deviation; and that, as Summers also said, such differences have

large effects at the tails of the bell curve: “Even small differences in

the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the

available pool substantially out.”

To understand the difference between a mean and a standard deviation, you

need to have mastered some elementary statistics, a thing that plainly

Andrea Peyser never bothered with.