Have you noticed that...

[Nuri]

... a significant majority of active sievers (well, at least 17* people out of 28) are from somewhere (i.e. 10 different countries) in Europe?


* Well, eight of the 28 users did not disclose their location, so it might be even more.


Anyways, I found it interesting, and just wanted to share.

[wblipp]

A much smaller sample, but I've noticed that ElevenSmooth (http://home.earthlink.net/~elevensmooth/), another mathematical distributed computing project, is heavily weighted with Europeans, also with a wide spread of countries. In pondering why these projects attract Europeans in high proportions, I'm afraid it may be that the abyssmal quality of much of American education, especially in math and sciences, leaves a much smaller proportion of Americans competent to understand the projects. Other times I think it may just be that television babies don't have sufficient attentilon span to work on these projects. Regardless of why, I think it's an interesting observation.

[hc_grove]

It's even more interesting to look at the active (defined as having reserved a range) p-1-factorers.

We're all from Europe, 2 out of 3 from Denmark.

[ceselb]

p-1 isn't really representative, as P4 doesn't work at these ranges on windows right now.

[Mystwalker]

Originally posted by ceselb
p-1 isn't really representative, as P4 doesn't work at these ranges on windows right now.

So one could say that Denmark has the fewest amount of P4 systems? :D
just kidding...

Well, I'd like to come up with another possible explanation for the high percentage of european participants in math. DC projects:

There often are no big and coloful animations. As I get it, europeans (to do eome generalizations ;)) tend to not take such things that important.

[Frodo42]

So one could say that Denmark has the fewest amount of P4 systems?
just kidding...
Nope one could say that Denmark has the most P4's using Linux :p which I think is a very positive thing.
Any conclusion based on 3 people isn't very representive ...

[Moo_the_cow]

:|ot|: (well sort of)
Just out of curiousity, does anyone have an explaination for the unusually high (usually >95%) percentage of male participants in DC projects?

[hc_grove]

Originally posted by Moo_the_cow

Just out of curiousity, does anyone have an explaination for the unusually high (usually >95%) percentage of male participants in DC projects?

First of all, I don't have any idea, whether you're right or not. As far as I remember I didn't have to specify my sex when creating an account with SoB, so a lot of the crunshers could be female, and it could just be a question about wanting to spend time in the forums.

As an explanation, I would say having access to lots of computer power is a quite nerdy thing, and most nerds are male too. - And that really doesn't say much.

[Moo_the_cow]

Originally posted by hc_grove
First of all, I don't have any idea, whether you're right or not.

I think the % of male participants is closer to 90%, and my earlier guess of 95% was probably an exaggeration. But 90% is still a lot.

Anyways, I observed that virtually all of the main participants in the GIMPS, riesel, proth search, SETI@home, and generalized fermat projects are male.

[Keroberts1]

I believe it might just be the natural tendacy for men to like math more. Hence participation in a math related project. If you got official stats from SETI at home you'd probably get much different results.

I'm going to look into it


WOW! 93 % of SETI@HOME users are men. That is weird, maybe the previous would have been the key but the majority of users also only run 1 computer, hence nothing makes them different than most people in any 1st world country anywhere.
Mayby its a kinda of male competitive spirit thing.