TheRatio

Approximately pi to 1, if you believe the LookBook. If all the men at Mudd stood in a circle, the women could line up across the diameter. But they probably wouldn't want to.

It gets better, it gets worse... I think it's actually more like e to 1 these days, but whatever...

The class of '04 is about sqrt(e) to one. If the trend can hold up much longer, the next plateau may hit sqrt(2) to one, so that if all the men were the legs of an isosceles right triangle...

Unfortunately the class of '08 is much closer to e than to sqrt(e). Still much better than pi though. If all the women were to line up and the men to try to make a circle around that they'd leave about a quarter of the circle unfinished. (assuming the density of a body of men equals the density of a body of women, and that there are no significant attractive forces, which is probably pretty faulty...) However, if all the women were to be placed in a bank account with 100% interest compounded continuously, then after a year, there would be one for every man.

The ratio in the class of '09 was about two to one. Unfortunately, the class of '10 appears to have the moderately abysmal ratio of about four to one. Sigh.

The ratio is something like 58-42 for Class of '11, which is better than sqrt(2). In fact, it is pretty close to 5^(1/5).

The ratio in the class of '13 is now 16 to 9. So if all the men were on the horizontal edge of a flat screen TV...

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Except from Straus's letter's to parents rationalizing the 5% increase in academic charges: "On a somewhat happier note, we were pleased to continue are recent success with gender diversity with 37% women in this fall's class. We're still far from our long-term goal of full gender parity...."

Excuse me?

Full gender parity?

Apperently, this is one of those REALLY LONG long-term goals.... -- JustinPava.

• They just mean that the males are odd, and the females get even.

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Actually, we've come a *really* long way in the ratio-improving direction in recent years: according to data I've seen, the 1997-1998 school year was the one in which TheRatio was closest to pi (at about 3.12) and these days it's significantly less than that (a little less than e last year, as it were, and it should be better this year, what with the much-acclaimed large number of female frosh and all). Eventually I'll probably plot stuff out (mmmm, Kaleidagraph) and, just for kicks, try to extrapolate out to when, if ever, current trends predict that "full gender parity" thing; it ought to be good for a giggle. -TracyvanCort

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While it's not campus-wide, sex parity was achieved with the Class of '14 which will have a 49-51 ratio. So if all the men and women lined up facing each other, one line would be just slightly longer than the other one.

• If you know what I mean

--- From https://www.hmc.edu/about-hmc/fast-facts/

[Accessed 11/22/2015] Gender ratio: 46 percent female, 54 percent male

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2018 Campus Demographics: 48.8% female. TheRatio is henceforth ~50/50.