Woman who “exceeded expectations” by earning an engineering degree

by philg

The Art of Investing: Lessons from History’s Greatest Traders is a Teaching Company course by John M. Longo, a Rutgers professor who got a Bachelor’s in 1991 (so he should be 50 years old), has one lecture given over to “four women who moved financial markets” (the other 23 lectures cover investors who, at least at one time, identified as “men”).

One thing that struck me was Professor Longo’s praise of Leda Braga, born in 1967, as having “exceeded expectations.” One cited example of this was earning a Ph.D. in engineering from Imperial College London. But Professor Longo does not cite any reason for anyone to doubt this woman’s abilities other than her identifying as a woman.

(The rest of the course suggests that, except for the Renaissance folks such as James Simon, “nobody knows anything.” The successful investment strategies are all over the map. It is unclear if the folks who’ve been successful are examples of survivorship bias. They took some bold risks and succeeded. Okay, but what about the 100 other folks who took bold risks at the same time? Investor track records are presented without any adjustment for risk. So a monkey who threw darts at the WSJ in 1990 and picked Microsoft and Apple as the sole constituents of a portfolio would be celebrated as a genius investor.)

Readers: Does it actually advance the cause of gender equality to express surprise that a woman is able to do something that tens of thousands of men do annually?

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8 thoughts on “Woman who “exceeded expectations” by earning an engineering degree”

  2. I’ve always thought women could do anything men could do in terms of intellectual pursuits especially, the question has always been what they wanted to do. My pediatrician was an early graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School but I never thought of her as “that woman doctor.” She was just really good at what she wanted to do.

  4. Regarding your second point…. I haven’t read it personally, but my vocalist friends who’ve read “Great Singers on Great Singing” by Hines gleefully point out that hardly any two great singers agree on…. well, much of anything in terms of technique or approach.

  5. Have you read “Fooled By Randomness” or any of Taleb’s other books? He makes some interesting points regarding “genius” investors.

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