Carlsen, Caruana & Yifan: a ratings analysis

ditto

although i'm male

Also remember this: a generalization is not only about you personally. And just because you, as a female, feel perfectly fine with the chess board, doesn't mean there is no generalization to be made. Feel however you want about chess.

You should strive to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

serious question: where have i heard this before?

oh, wait, is it from Alice in Wonderland? did that head-chopping Queen say that?

Let me know when you reach the top 

Well, you have to realize that whatever difference we're talking about is very small. If the 100-point inter-gender gap persists, it means that the average male will beat the average female two times out of three. If you're playing casually and not taking count, you might not even notice a difference there. Also, if you're playing casually, the ratings distributions at your level are so intermixed that you won't see much of a ratings difference anyway - you might be playing at a club where there's a strong female player and several comparatively weaker male players.

You have to keep in mind that the only place where this statistically perceived difference actually comes into effect is the very top level of chess, where the likes of Carlsen, Caruana, and Nakamura dominate. For people like you and me, who play chess casually, gender makes no discernible difference whatsoever.

I just want to make a point on the nature vs nurture debate

the "nurture" side of things is much more "flexible" and succeptible to change than the "nature" side

i mean, when you talk about genes, or brain structure, or gender, those are things that don't easily change - on the other hand, the way someone is educated or trained, or the social structures, are things which can change much easier

so usually the "nature" side is supported by people who are satisfied with the current situation and don't want things to change, and want to convince other people to accept things as they are

That can be true but it's not necessarily. It's not true in my case. I also don't draw a false dichotomy by deciding on nature "or" nurture. It's pretty widely acknowledged now that both play a role in who we are.

oh, surely, both play a role, but people argue all the time about what is the % of nature and what is the % of nurture in the final result, and those percentages vary very much from theory to theory (from person to person).

i just wanted to make a general observation (point)

i have been hearing a lot of theories about "genes of violence", "genes of whatever sexual behaviour", "genes of drug abuse", "genes for this", "genes for that", "your gender is this and that's how your life is supposed to be", and i'm appaled by such "scientific" discoveries.... ummmm, maybe i'm not expressing my thoughts very clearly, but i think you get the gist of what i mean

There is an issue with this, namely: since the people who've been studying brain differences probably didn't put high rated chess players in their samples (honestly we need to check that but 2100+ players are so rare it is very unlikely), how do you relate that extra performance with  biology based gender studies?

In the nurture vs nature debate  we too often forget that the education a kid receives shape his brain, so you cannot conclude easily state between brain parts sizes and performance in specific which ones are the cause of the other.

 It would be nice to provide studies about how the brain of high rated players work: imaging and stuff.

related thing:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00825/full

That article is interesting, but I don't see how it's related.

The experiment involved 11 male "experts" (IMs and GMs) and compared them to 11 male non-experts (people who had never played in a tournament or had relatively low USCF ratings) and found that experts tend to "chunk" data better than non-experts. 

Here is the data for Judit Polgar.  She didn't appear on the FIDE top 100 at ages 15 & 16.  Maybe inactivity?

Kramnik

Morozevich

I chose the last 2 because they're approximately the same age as Polgar so you can do an comparison for her era.

Was able to get some older data:

Polgar

Kramnik

Morozevich