Very much to my surprise the BLS tells us that you do not in fact need to have a college degree to become a power plant operator. Not even in a nuclear plant, which must make this one of the best paid jobs in the US where you don’t actually need a college degree. $65,000 a year on average, that’s a truly stunning sum these days for something which doesn’t require those years of preparatory training.

However, as always, there are some reasons. The first is that the training usually takes place within the workplace itself. It’s just as long as a college degree, taking years, and of course the pay is much lower while training. There’s another reason the pay is high too: it’s shift work. As power plants run 24/7 they also have to be manned 24/7. So power plant operators tend to work either one of two 12 hour shifts or one of three eight hour ones in a day. And those rotate, weekly or monthly, so that everyone gets to do the overnight or graveyard ones: and, yes, the weekend ones as well.

The usual entrant is a high school graduate with an aptitude for science and engineering, but this is changeing because of the competition for these highly paid jobs. Those with some or all of a college degree will find it easier to land a job even thought the qualification is not required. Military training is also highly desired, well, it is if you’ve been helping the Navy run some of its nuclear power plants, at least.

As for our EQSQ personality tests this is very much a male brain or systemizing type job. Power systems are, well, systems, and very complicated ones at that. As the job is to keep them running, and when they either break or look like doing so, figuring out why and stopping them from doing so or repairing them from having done so, well, yes, a systemizing job, don’t you think?

I’m putting this in here because I find the whole process so entirely bizarre. As far as our EQSQ personality tests are concerned most Post Office work means dealing with the customers so of course we would hope that it would be the female brain or empathic types that would go into the work. I’m not sure that that has quite been my experience of the USPS so perhaps there’s something about the system that irons that out of people?

The first thing that amazed me was the application process. You take a simple enough test (can you lift a mailbag, read an address on an envelope quickly?) and have you graduated high school? That seems like and extraordinarily low standard to hold people to when the full time jobs pay $45 to $55 thousand a year. Not surprisingly, there are vastly more people who pass the exam each year than actually get hired. But, instead of manager hiring whoever they think the best amongst those who passed the exam, people go off and wait for a year or two until they rise to the top of the seniority list and then get hired. Usually, they are part time at first and then as they continue to rise up the seniority lists they get higher and better jobs, full time, perhaps go out on a mail round and so on. This just seems so bizarre to an economist type like myself. Why not have personality tests for example? Sort through those who would be better at the customer work, those who would be better at sorting, those who would be better at the actual deliveries?

The BLS also tells us that postal workers get a lot of the benefits common to other Federal workers: amongst them I would imagine is the near impossibility of being fired.

I recommend the BLS page to you. In there is the perfect description of why the USPS is like it is. It may well be that the best people go into it, that the training system is excellent, but the way the institution is designed is simply terribly, terribly, odd.

I’m not sure that we’ll actually find any definitive answer from our EQSQ personality tests as to the brain type best suited to this profession. I have a feeling that it’s one of those where there is so much variability within the profession that all, from the highly empathic, to the highly systemizing, will be able to find a suitable place. For example, those working with juveniles or in victim support might tend to the female brain side, while FBI agents (who have to have a law, accounting or electrical engineering college degree) clearly tend more towards the systemizing side.

We’re all aware of what we think is the police job from all the TV shows we watch, from Law and Order through to CSI. But there are myriad different jobs being done under the same title. Clearly, being the only policeman in a community of 500 people is entirely different from being in a SWAT team in parts of Los Angeles. So, as I say above, I’m not sure that we could possibly determine that only one personality type is appropriate.

The field is also one where there are many possible entry routes. Some departments take on people as soon as they graduate high school and put them through on the job training (in the form of paperwork, of course) until they are old enough (usually 20) to actually join the force. Others have academies where there is a 12 or 14 week training course that must be passed before becoming a patrolman.

Yet other, mainly the very much larger departments or the State and Federal agencies, want people to have a college degree in police sciences (as an example), or at least a year or two of study of this subject. In general, the larger the department, or the higher in the bureaucracy it is run from, the higher the training requirements are, including those college degrees.

It’s also worth noting that military training is highly prized by police departments. Most especially those who have been military policemen.

I’m reading an excellent book from the 1930s with the above title. By Hans Zinsser it’s well worth a read if you get a chance: or are interested in the biography of a bacillus, typhus. Yes, I know, sounds very odd indeed and what’s the application to this blog? Well, doesn’t this sound rather like our EQSQ personality tests?

The capacities of intelligence form a sort of spectrum which extends from what we may call an infra-emotional to an ultra-reason range.

He then goes on to point out that such things as music and lyrical poetry lie at that infra-emotional end (what we in our terminology might call empathic behaviour) and maths at the other, the ultra-reason one (what we definitely would call systemizing behavior). The argument he’s making is really about the difference between science and art. The artist says that the scientist can never understand emotions, so how can he understand the world, while the scientists says that the artist is only understanding emotions, not objective reality, so how can the artist understand the world?

Which really does start to become very like the underlying thoughts behind our personality tests, doesn’t it? Yes, there are extreme systemizers (extreme male brain types is the phrase we also use for them) but we see that they are also autistic, and so not what we might describe as fully functional members of society. Similarly, while we don’t have a specific name for them, the extreme empathizers don’t look at the structures around them (this is most notable in politics) and are thus not able to pro9vide any constructive suggestions as to how things might get better.

I just thought it interesting to see our same basic ideas in something quite so old. Shows that good ideas take time to mature perhaps?

No, that’s not the line from Blazing Saddles. Rather, that’s Christine Bowers asking, over at the PSD World Bank blog, where are all the women blogging on economics? That women might have more interesting things to do than blog on economics is probably not a good response to a blog post on economics written by a woman.

Instead, I’d rather use something from our EQSQ personality tests to explain why economics seems to be a male dominated profession. As only a fraction of any group actually blogs, this might explain the paucity. As regular readers know, the results of our EQSQ personality tests are that some 17% of women have the male type brain, a similar number of men the female. We also know that certain jobs draw more heavily on those skills and aptitudes common to the female brain type (nursing for example, requiring empathy) and others on the male brain talents (programming, requiring systemizing ability). Before anyone starts to get upset about sexist terminology, Simon Baron Cohen’s work is not about reinforcing stereotypes: it’s about attempting to understand them and then further show why they are a decidedly incomplete view of the world.

Now, if we found that a subject like economics draws heavily upon those male brain talents then we would expect there to be more male economists than female. This is in the absence of any direct discrimination, or of social disapproval or any other such factor: purely upon the prevalence of the brain type (which I’m sure still happen, although much less than they did). So, can we say that economics draws on certain male brain type talents? Chris Dillow certainly thinks so, when he describes economic modeals as being like maps: spatial recognition being one of those male brain talents in our definition. When we asked a female economist, Lynne Kiesling, about her map reading skills we were not surprised to find that they were above average: above average for men, not just for women.

So, something of an answer for Ms. Bowers then. Very few people blog seriously anyway. There are many fewer female economists than male economists as those who are good at the profession are the male brain types. Thus there aren’t that many serious female economics bloggers.

Although here are two very good ones: Lynne Kiesling and Virginia Postrel (who is, if you want to blame someone, responsible at least in part for my own dive into blogging).

A podiatrist (what I think in English I would call a chiropodist) is a doctor specializes in the treatment of feet. You might think this is pretty simple as the sorts of problems most people have with their feet are either from injury (broken bones etc) or simple in themselves, like corns, bunions and so on. Most of those are caused by ill fitting shoes and so pretty easy to solve.

However, rather like the optometrists we looked at earlier there’s a whole other level to the profession. Yes, 95%, even 99% of the work is simple stuff, but that last fraction is what saves lives. For example, often the first sign of diabetes is the existence of ulcers that won’t heal on the feet. Podiatrists need to know all of these life threatening diseases and their symptoms so that they can refer pateients to the relevant experts.

Thus the training is rather more than learning that there are 54 bones in the feet and this is what a corn plaster looks like. It’s the same old medical route, a college degree (usually some form of pre-med) and then a further four years at a school of podiatric medicine to get the next college degree, the Doctor of Podiatry. There’s then a further two to four years of hospital based residencey before they are let loose on the general public.

We know from previous looks at various forms of doctors that under the classifications of our EQSQ personality tests we would want people to have strong systemizing skills, male brain capabilities. We also know that those who work with patients who are both alive and awake (so unlike pathologists and surgeons) there’s a need for strong empathizing or female brain skills as well. So I think that with podiatrists (especially since so many of them run their own practices) we would be looking for the balanced brain type, those with both systemizing and empathic skills.

Coming as I do from a city that was built in stone (Bath, in England, if you want to know) in the Georgian style (actually, my place is opposite this pub) I’ve not much experience with stucco masons, but I do know a huge amount about plasterers, having hired them many a time. The internal decoration of those houses is still almost exclusively done in the traditional manner.

The difference between the two jobs is simply the material used and whether it is inside or outside. So my experiences with plasterers can be taken to apply to the masons as well. The thing is, you see, this is one of the very oldest specialist building trades. It’s always done by hand and it takes a good few years (at least three) to be able to do it well. It’s been going on for centuries, using very much the same tools and techniques, even the same mixes for the plaster. Odd when you think about it really: that despite all the advances in other areas of life and technology, the inside walls of houses are still finished exactly the same way they were three hundred years ago.

Given this use of near ancient techniques there are of course no college degrees in the subject. Training is very much hands on, on the job. It might be an apprenticeship, or a combination of community college and local employer, or it might simply be working as a junior for a more experienced person and picking it up as you go along. But college degrees and programs, no, there are none.

As to our EQSQ personality tests I have absolutely no idea what is the best brain type for this job. What I do know is that it is unremittingly physical though, hours and hours a day of moving heavy weights at shoulder height. I know we’re not supposed to say these thing these days but I find it terribly difficult to believe that there will be any (OK, maybe a few) women with the requisite physique to do this for a living. Whether or not it’s a male brain job I’m pretty sure it’s a male physique job, and a fairly unusual one of those too.

There’s an absolutely fascinating piece in The Guardian (a lefty British newspaper) today by a woman called Julia Payne. The meat of her argument:

Our research shows that it doesn’t stop there: when you look at the behaviours needed for high performance leadership in the business world - strategic thought, relationship-building, influence, power and communication - women actually have a higher overall average capability than men. So why aren’t the equally, if not more capable, people in society running the show?

What’s so wonderfully fascinating is quite how poor her logic is. Yes, as we know from the results of our EQSQ personality tests that it is indeed true that on average women are more empathic: things like relationship-building and communication are indeed empathic skills. However, we also know that that is indeed an average, it doesn’t tell us very much about the individual. That’s exactly why we use the personality tests, of course.

It’s also true that there’s been a huge change in who are getting the college degrees (the first step in any business career). At many colleges the student body is 60% female and certainly it is true that a majority of those getting a college degree are now female. So, perhaps yes, we might indeed expect more women to be at the very top of our organizations.

However, this is to ignore some things. The first is the logical point that averages tell us very little, if anything, about extremes. To find out about extremes (and those who manage to become CEOs are quite obviously extreme types) we need to know the standard deviation around those averages.

This is of course what got Larry Summers into all that trouble at Harvard. Stating that men have a wider dispersion around that mean and thus you have more idiots and more geniuses amongst males than females. Now, if that is true (and it certainly seems to be for all sorts of ways of measuring people) then we’ve found the flaw in Ms. Payne’s reasoning. It may still be true that women are being discriminated against in promotions and so on, but we can’t prove it by looking at averages. We need to know the distribution around those averages as well.

Two little stories that I think shine a little light, not on our EQSQ personality tests, but on the way that the same things we talk about here are viewed out in the wider world. Both stories are from Reuters and the first one is about a coal mine in China (yes, really, there is a point to this!). The mine has just hosted the weddings of ten of its miners 1,000 feet down the main shaft. Quite a show of empathic behaviour don’t you think, on the part of the brides? Obviously they weren’t wearing white (or at least I hope not) so that’s one thing they gave up. But another is that Chinese coal mines are incredibly dangerous places and so they got to see, for one day only, what their now husbands have to go through each and every day just to put bread on the table. Clearly, I’m not going to end up as a bride but it’s also true that you wouldn’t get me going down a mine at all, not even to get married.

The second story is about a baby bag (for carrying around the pacifier, clean diapers, baby wipes and so on). The headline (Real men do change diapers) is in that rather jokey little style familiar to any man who has ever had anything directly to do with the care of babies. For it’s still regarded as an amazing, effeminate, thing to do. So these baby bags are now made from the discarded inner tyres of trucks. Something macho and rugged, to take away the sting of doing something so obviously feminine. That’s a rather sad supposition, don’t you think? That men are thought to need something big and masculine to compensate for doing something that is regarded as women’s work?

As I say, neither story is really about our personality tests, just instead a slightly random look at how some significant part of the rest of society looks at men and women and their roles.

Well, I am sure that Greg Mankiw’s comment is correct, that Paul Irwing isn’t going to be President of Harvard anytime soon. He’s gone really a long way further than Larry Summers did to get himself fired before his resignation. Then Professor Summers was postulating that the distribution of intelligence amongst men was different from that amongst women. More astonishingly bright men (and incapably dumb ones) while women tended to cluster around the middle of the distribution.

Paul Irwing on the other hand seems to think that there is a difference in the distribution of intelligence between men and women. That men are, on average, as many as 5 IQ points (or 5% on average) more intelligent than women. Now before anyone gets outraged that I would even discuss such a matter perhaps I should point out that discussing anything is fine. It’s the conclusions that matter.

Let us, just for a moment, accept his conclusion. No, not that men are more intelligent, but that he does indeed find a difference in recorded IQs. Using our EQSQ personality tests I think we can show that this is in fact due to failings in the IQ tests, not to any difference in actual intelligence. Think of it this way. From our personality tests we find that just over a plurality of women have the female brain type. 17% have the male, the rest the balanced. The figures for men are different, 17% having the female brain type but fewer the balanced.

We also know that things like pattern recognition and spatial orientation are heavily male brain (or systemizing) traits. Now look at IQ tests. Yes, there are parts of them that deal with language, but much more of them are about pattern recognition. We might therefore say that IQ tests are deliberately designed to measure the male type of intelligence, not the female brain type. If we then find that men, on average, score better than women, umm, should we be exactly surprised by this?