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Looks to me like, during the 2010–2019 decade, among chessplayers who play at least once a month in the general population, the M:F gender ratio (YouGov surveys) was between 3:2 and 3:1 depending on country. Among USCF tournament players 11:1. Among the world chess elite 50:1 to 100:1.So the women thin out more the higher level of chess you go to. But they already are underrepresented versus men even at the lowest level. So clearly either (a) women are for some reason less capable of strong chess than men; or (b) for some reason are less interested in playing (and more so the higher the level?). Or both.A lot of people would like to decide which: (a) or (b). But I do not see how to do that. Because the two seem inextricably entangled: Obviously, if you are more interested in playing, you are going to improve more than somebody who is not interested.=======More detailed discussion of how I got those numbers:========Christopher F Chabris & Mark E Glickman: Sex differences in intellectual performance: analysis of a large cohort of competitive chess players, Psychological Science 17,12 (Dec 2006) 1040–1046.pdf: http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/research/SexDiffsChess.pdf“Abstract: Only 1% of the world's chess grandmasters are women. This underrepresentation is unlikely to be caused by discrimination, because chess ratings objectively reflect competitive results. Using data on the ratings of more than 250,000 tournament players over 13 years, we investigated several potential explanations for the male domination of elite chess. We found that (a) the ratings of men are higher on average than those of women, but no more variable; (b) matched boys and girls improve and drop out at equal rates, but boys begin chess competition in greater numbers and at higher performance levels than girls; and (c) in locales where at least 50% of the new young players are girls, their initial ratings are not lower than those of boys. We conclude that the greater number of men at the highest levels in chess can be explained by the greater number of boys who enter chess at the lowest levels.”Update: Their “1% grandmasters” was from 2006 and as of 2019 I think is now 2% (List of chess grandmasters - Wikipedia).That paper is a good starting point. And so is this summary of a study of chessplayers by AGON (company the puts on the chess world championships) based on surveys they commissioned largely for market-research purposes in USA, UK, Germany, Russia, India: https://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS_2012/FIDE/120806_YouGovPressRelease.pdfThere are really 3 different questions:why are the top 100 players (FIDE world rankings) so male-dominated (currently 99 male, 1 female - Hou Yifan from China)? And the current US chess federation top 100 list includes 98 men & 2 women.forget the chess elite - what about the vast mass of recreational players who have no hope of entering (and usually are not trying to enter) the top 100? In 2004, the percentage of USCF-rated chess games including at least one woman contestant, was 9.7%. The USCF claims there are about 90K active tournament players in the USA of which in 2016 about 8.6% were female.About 40 million US people play chess (but not in tournaments), and 600 million worldwide. Who are they and how often do they play? The AGON surveys estimate about 70% of adults have played at least one chess game, and about 12–40% “currently play” chess depending on country (the 12% was UK, the 40% is from Russia, which were the least- and most-chessified countries surveyed). They tend to be more educated and read more news than non-chessplayers. Chess.com - Play Chess Online - Free Games currently has over 25 million registered members although it looks like only 1–2 million are active at any given time. The YouGov survey raw data, if I had it, might break them down by gender? Aha, think I found the data: USA YouGov2012 survey finding among USA adults, 6% of males and 3% of females “play chess at least once a month”: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/o36xklzzxg/YouGov-Survey-Chess-USA-170712.pdf Russia(Moscow) YouGov2012 survey finding 24% and 16%: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/d5xdiswuiv/YouGov-Survey-Chess-Moscow-141112.pdf Germany YouGov2012 survey finding 10% and 3%: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/mvv839ihfx/YouGov-Survey-Chess-Germany-100712.pdf

ZIP codes aren’t polygons, they’re delivery routes. Take a look at this map:The red streets all have the same ZIP code; the blue, purple, and green areas are each different ZIP codes as well. Notice how messy it is: the blue area is discontiguous, there’s a red street in the purple area, and the polygons overlap. Districts are supposed to be contiguous areas. This doesn’t cut it.Instead of trying to slice and dice the country with truck routes, the Census Bureau instead uses census tracts and census blocks to divide up the area of the United States. Those are geographic regions defined in every county of every state. For instance, here are the 2010 census tracts in central Lubbock County, TX, identified with red numbers:Within each tract, there’s a bunch of blocks—again, all contiguous regions. They’re not marked on this map because there are too many to count.Texas, at least, uses these blocks to define its districts. For instance, here’s the 2013 definition of state House District 84 from Article 2, Section 84 of Senate Bill 3, 83rd Legislature, 1st Called Session:SECTION 84. District 84 is composed of Lubbock County tracts 000202, 000301, 000302, 000402, 000403, 000404, 000405, 000500, 000603, 000605, 000607, 001000, 001200, 001300, 001400, 001601, 001602, 001702, 001705, 001708, 001709, 001801, 001803, 001804, 001901, 001904, 002204, 002300, 002400, 002500, 010402 and 010403; and that part of Lubbock County tract 000201 included in blocks 1011, 1012, 1013, 1014, 1015, 1016, 1017, 1018, 1019, 1020, 1021, 1022, 1023, 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1029, 1030, 1031, 1032, 1033, 1034, 1035, 1036, 1037, 1038, 1039, 1040, 1041, 1042, 1043, 1044, 1045, 1046, 1047, 1048, 1049, 1050, 1051, 1052, 1053, 1054, 1055, 1056, 1057, 1058, 1059, 1073, 1074, 1075, 1076, 1077, 1078, 1079, 1080, 1081, 1082, 1083, 1084, 1085, 1086, 1087, 1088, 1089, 1091, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1103, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036, 2037, 2038, 2039, 2040, 2041, 2042, 2043, 2044, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2049, 2050, 2051, 2052, 2053 and 2054; and that part of Lubbock County tract 000700 included in blocks 1012, 1013, 1014, 1023, 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1029, 1030, 1031, 1032, 1033, 1034, 1035, 1036, 1037, 1038, 1039, 1040, 1041, 1042, 1043, 1044, 1045, 1046, 1047, 1048, 1049, 1050, 1051, 1052, 1053, 1054, 1055, 1056, 1057, 1058, 1059, 1060, 1061, 1062, 1063, 1064, 1065, 1066, 1067, 1068, 1069, 1070, 1071, 1072, 1073, 1074, 1075, 1076, 1077, 1078, 1079, 1080, 1081, 1082, 1083, 1084, 1085, 1086, 1087, 1088, 1089, 1090, 1091, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1095, 1096, 1097, 1098, 1099, …You get the picture. That long list (which I included maybe a third of) produces this district:That’s House District 84. It looks vaguely reasonable because it’s composed of census tracts and blocks—in other words, actual polygons. ZIP codes aren’t polygons.Now, notice I never said this can’t be gerrymandered. In fact, Texas is well known for its partisan gerrymandering, and that gerrymander was done in the same way as this district was drawn: census tracts and blocks. That’s because there are so many census blocks that you can assign them creatively to different districts and still gerrymander however you want.But ZIP codes don’t solve that. There are still a lot of them—almost 5,000 allocated in Texas alone. Given that no state has more than fifty or so U.S. House members—or 400 state House members, as New Hampshire has—you could still gerrymander the state easily.So ZIP codes are a horrible way to draw districts because they don’t make geographical sense. And even if they did, they wouldn’t solve gerrymandering.

Hardcover: 1040 pagesPublisher: Addison Wesley; 2nd edition (September 10, 2006)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 0321486811ISBN-13: 978-0321486813Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition)