Stereotypes
Tonight was the season premiere of The Big Bang Theory, and it gets right into one of the ugliest, most vicious stereotypes of the intellectually gifted. I want to go on record right now and hopefully put an end to this right here and now.
Relationships between mathematical-physics Ph.D.s and stunning blonde ingenues are not inherently doomed by the educational mismatch. Despite the veneer of “geekiness”, such members of the professoriate can — and often do — have other interests in common with a wide cross-section of society. One might even argue that such a pairing would be particularly beneficial to the young woman, since through his polymathy she will be brought into contact with many realms of discourse which would be otherwise unknown to her.
In short: hotties need to start dating math professors.
Since a previous relationship of mine was with a young undergraduate of Wesleyan University, I am contractually bound to issue the following disclaimer: analogous arguments apply to similar couples of all gender-pair descriptions. The gender-specifics in the above rant were chosen solely with reference to the point of inspiration.
DrMathochist 
I concur.
As a Ph.D. in physics and graduate student in math, I second your conclusion!
Mathematicians and physicists tend to be ultra-analytical and rational. How many hot, analytical, rational women do you know? I know none.
I know hot women, but they are over-emotional and a bit irrational. Rational women tend not to procreate.
I don’t agree that hotties need to start dating math profs. Hotties have high market value… so why would they date intellectuals? Intellectuals have low market value and low social status (there are exceptions though).
My proposal is different: math / phys people need to switch off the rational / analytical parts of the brain, and start growing some game. Women like to be challenged. They just tend not to like the kind of challenge that math provides.
Actually, this isn’t always the case. I was an average, uneducated (and uninterested in education) hot girl until I started dating a programmer. Now I’m working on my bachelor’s in pure math.
Rod, I think you’ve proven your own point. Rational and analytic to a fault…
LOL, you got me! Let’s put things this way: being analytic is necessary for Math / Phys. But once one gets off the lab / office, it’s good to somehow shut down the brain. Stupid people tend to be happier 😉
Jokes help too, I’m told. If you can’t shut down the brain, subverting it is an option.
Rod, speaking as a woman in mathematics, I can assure you that there are plenty of mathematicians (and physicists, etc.) who are very hot indeed, both male and female. There may be a slight correlation between non-hotness and rational thinking, but not a very strong one and certainly not one that justifies the stereotype.
The bigger problem is that this particular stereotype tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Young teenagers who value their looks may perceive math and science as fields for nerdy-looking people, and stay away as a result. Likewise, many very intelligent women may avoid math because they believe it’s not field for women. The stereotype reinforces itself by keeping many potentially excellent mathematicians out of the field.
Rod, I suspect you are counting the hits and forgetting the misses in this case, and thus reinforcing a stereotype that shouldn’t be reinforced.
Good catch, Susan. I didn’t say anything in my prescriptive statement about who the hottie could be 😉
And I’ve known a few in my time, but I’d probably get myself in significant trouble if I named names.
@ musesusan
Pardon my lack of political correctness. I am pretty sure that there are exceptions. I just don’t happen to know any of those exceptions.
On the other hand, the world does not need that many mathematicians and physicists. People who stay away from math / phys because they think that these fields are for “nerdy-looking people” probably lack the passion, the motivation, the perseverance to become mathematicians or physicists. Choosing a career in Math / Phys is an act of love, it’s about following one’s inner voice.
To cut a long story short, the passionate people, be them man or women, hot or not-hot, will keep flocking to the hard sciences. If the American kids don’t, I am sure there are more motivated kids elsewhere in the world. Science won’t stop because many scientists are nerdy-looking 😉
Dear Rod Carvalho, you are not politically incorrect. You are just not rational enough. As I might be old enough to be your mother (as Miss Palin would say), let me explain.
What makes a woman hot in today’s culture? Some features are noncorrelated with brains (body and face shape) but others are negatively correlated. Scientist of all genders typically like comfortable, not fashionable clothes. Most female scientists I know don’t wear high heels, or miniskirts, or lots of makeup. I even heard that some naiveness is considered attractive in females.
And of course there is statistics: if body quality is unrelated to brain quality, the chances that someone will be both very beautiful and very intelligent are not very high indeed. Plus, females are indeed discouraged from the hard sciences, so your pool is much smaller than mine was at your age.
Hence, you may have to choose. Personally I chose to insist on rationality, namely I found a brilliant mathematician whom I estimated would be a great husband and father, and so far it has worked well (btw, if you think female scientists don’t have children you really should get out more). I didn’t worry so much about looks, and not at all about things like ability to match colours, wear a tie or distinguish clean from dirty clothing.
And you may well have hit a key point in your last sentence: restricting yourself to Americans is restrictive indeed. Other countries (southern, eastern Europe; South America; parts of Asia) have a larger proportion of females in the sciences.
There was once where I saw an video on game theory.
It says there are people have highest rank in the dating market and there are people who are not.
The people who are in the dating market plays their own strategy, they do w/e they want.
It seems the hotties are in the highest rank.(actually… rich people are even higher…)
So they do w/e they want in choosing who to date. They have the upper hand.
And intellectual people are very low in the dating market, sucks for them.
and.. I would like to retain rational thinking instead of score a hottie… because that’s the rational choice… oh crap, I chose to be rational because it’s rational to chose rational, I can never unrationalize myself!
“I didn’t worry so much about looks, and not at all about things like ability to match colours, wear a tie or distinguish clean from dirty clothing.”
I am very glad there are women like estraven out there. It’s the only way I found a wife.
estraven, I should make a point about one thing you said:
Sarah Palin is Mrs. Palin. I know, I know, she got knocked-up first, but she did eventually marry Todd Palin. Miss Palin is 17 years old, and she’s about four months from being old enough to be anyone’s mother.
@ estraven
If we were to have a rigorous discussion, we would have to start by defining what makes someone “hot”. I don’t want to go that way, because it would be an utterly shallow and superficial discussion.
Lacking a rigorous, universal definition, let’s agree that this discussion itself is not very scientific (nor meaningful). We are all just ranting, basically.
BTW, as an European citizen living in the U.S., I can confirm that, indeed, there are more women in Science in (some parts of) Europe than there are in the U.S., and some are quite cute. Yet another thing I miss about Europe, LOL
@Rod:
Mathematicians and physicists tend to be ultra-analytical and rational. How many hot, analytical, rational women do you know? I know none.
Let’s see … there’s my wife, a linguist. There’s the cute danish group cohomologist who gave mathematics up for music. There’s the three different colleagues I had back at my alma mater. And those are only the ones I think of immediately.
Seriously, there is not that much of a shortage of the combination brains and looks.
Mikael Mikael Mikael he just said he knew none. He didnt say there was none.
Maybe people have different taste on who is hot who is not?
Did you just write a post simultaneously admitting that you are hard enough for dates that you felt the need to defend dating mathematicians as a class AND that you watch The Big Bang Theory? I’m not sure which is worse.
And yet someone left an even more embarassing comment. What will the internet come up with next?
Go on and hate. Every other Chuck Lorre project is good. D&G: good, 2.5 Men: bad, BBT: good.
And you know what? I accept that I fail in the whole dating game. I won’t even reach for the excuse that I’m currently stuck in the middle of nowhere southern Kentucky, where every woman near my age who isn’t married is either twice-divorced with kids or dramatically unacceptable (mostly politically). But I make a point not to turn this weblog into my own personal whinge-fest like so many become. I saw an opportunity for a joke and I made it. Do I look like a loser for it? So what else is new, Mr. Gets-All-The-Good-Math-Jobs?
I want to be hairsplitting (I’m a mathematician, after all).
Miss Palin, when she is my age, will be able to have a child who is Carvalho’s age, as I conjecture that the difference in our ages is about 27. When I was 17 I was so ugly that nothing of the kind could have happened to me.
As far as the available data goes, there’s no conclusive proof that Mrs Palin was pregnant when she decided to wed Mr Palin.
On the other hand, I do agree with you that having very different political ideas is indeed a problem.
Rod: I agree that hotness is not a rational concept. What I meant is that, as the years of maturity approach, most people I know decide to forget about hotness and concentrate on more essential qualities.
So if a girl is hot it is okay for her to be dumb and uninterested in intellectual pursuits?
It would be nice to think that the guy could bring her some insight into what she is missing out on, but I am pretty sure she wouldn’t care, or even understand.
(Depending just how wide this ‘educational mismatch’ is.)
It’s a nice thought, but, I can’t see that actually working.
I always am afraid to approach the math grads at my school for fear of not being smart enough to converse with them.
Don’t you seek stimulating conversations about math and other things of interest?
I didn’t say that all attractive people are dumb. But attractive people of average intellectual accomplishments tend to think that nerds, especially math/physics/computer science ones are only interested in that sort of intelligence. Give a nerd a chance and he (or she!) may surprise you with the breadth of topics he finds interesting.
Well, I’d love to date a mathematician. I’m not a perfect 10 but I am reasonably attractive and I do have a PhD in neuroscience (I’m 31). In my experience mathematicians actively avoid relationships with women. Two theories as to why:
1.) they are not used to dealing with women – or frankly with humans at all – and are therefore often puzzled by the subtle signals of flirtation I have been known to release on occasion, or are even put off by them, not knowing what they mean
2.) Once a relationship IS established, often men who are quite involved in mathematics become a bit overwhelmed by the complexities, and/or give and takes, of a healthy relationship. They fall back on math as their first love because it’s ironically simpler and easy to understand, and they just ultimately figure that relationships are the type of puzzle they aren’t interested in.
It makes me sad.
That’s an interesting observation, Leslie, and I think it ultimately goes to a split I noticed in mathematicians way back.
Some people go into math because they’re geeks and just happen to be math geeks (as there are history geeks and bio geeks and so on). And some people go into math because they’re just nuts and driven to understand it. I tend to find that the latter kind are interested in that sort of puzzle, and the lucky ones get that chance. And some of them even manage to overcome the inherently nomadic lifestyle of the recent Ph.D.
I don’t seem to be that lucky, but don’t hold that against the rest of the nuts.
I like the development of the loving relationship of Charlie Eppes (played by David Krumholtz) at “at CalSci” (i.e. Caltech but for lawyers worrying).
Professor Larry Fleinhardt is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at CalSci. Charlie’s former mentor and now best friend, he also consults frequently for the FBI. He is portrayed by Peter MacNicol. His relationships are stranger.
I’ve spoken with all the major actors in the series, and am amused that Alan Eppes, portrayed by Judd Hirsch, the former L.A. City planner, widower, and the father of both Charlie and Don Eppes is played by a man who in fact bas a bachelor’s degree in Physics.
One plot thread deals with Charlie Eppes writing a book, which becomes a surprise best seller, on mathematical analysis of friends and lovers.
It is especially wonderful that Amita Ramanujan is a mathematician at CalSci and FBI consultant, currently dating Charlie Eppes, is portrayed by Navi Rawat as very very bright AND very very sexy.
“The Big Bang Theory” is also nominally set at Caltech, but portrays the big brains as utterly unable to deal with erotic relationships.
There is something so intolerably hot about real mathematicians; perhaps it’s the mien of brute disinterest except when playing Go. Maybe it’s the refusal to wear jeans or shave, or the tendency to lope rather than walk, or the horrifically outdated glasses. What we should be talking about is how hot THAT is.
I draw the line at mathematicians who won’t shower.
Wow. Well, I don’t play Go, and I’m interested in just about everything to the point of distraction. If anything, I give the impression that I’m ignoring things because I’m locked in on something else at the moment. I’m wearing jeans and I’m clean-shaven. I’m pretty sure I walk, since my left ankle would probably shatter if I didn’t. And I don’t think rimless frames are too horrifically outdated.
Maybe I’m not a real mathematician, Leslie.
Why only the left ankle?
Both my feet are flat (it got my grandfather into the Corps of Engineers instead of infantry), but my left one is the one where the tendon running down the inside of my ankle to the bottom of my foot somehow.. let go a bit. It doesn’t hold as securely as it should, and my flat foot rolling onto it causes a minor twinge. I didn’t notice it much until someone pointed out when I was 13 that I let that foot splay out to the side (easier when you’ve got less tendon pulling) and basically dragged it behind me on each step. When I don’t wear something with good ankle support (like my jump boots) I try to walk towards the outside edge of my foot.
On the other hand, I can do fifth-position easily.
Also: looking back I realize that I may have sounded less than sincere two comments ago about finding mathematicians hot. I’m quite serious. I love the “math phenotype” if that makes any sense, complete with the scraggly beard and bad glasses. Whenever I see someone in a coffee shop who looks like this, and I see Maxwell’s equation/angular momenta in their notebooks, I have a definite desire to go over and say hi.
Well then you’d probably hate me. Even when I *do* grow a beard it comes in full and I keep it trimmed.
I guess I could make an exception for a classically-hot mathematician. He’d have to be pretty mathy though. 🙂
I doubt I’d even say “classically hot”. Not that it matters, unless your university is hiring. Even then, I’ve got awful luck when it comes to the job market, and you’re not exactly in a backwater of the math world.
I has been located! *flee*
Aww, don’t be like that. I was all careful not to give it away. Besides, for all I know you’re using your old grad student address…