[skraushaar]

I am one of these folks that claims natural math/development skills which were inherited from my natural parents. Here is my empirical evidence:

I was neither raised by or knew my biological family growing up (though I know them now). My mother is a developer, my supposed bio-dad is a developer, my late grandmother on my mother's side was a mathematician & psychologist, my grandfather on my mother's side was on the early teams at IBM, and my uncle whom is close to a doppelganger of me is a developer/linux admin. I knew none of these people growing up. My father and mother who raised me are respectively a restaurant manager and a hair stylist. Neither have any significant interest in the sciences or mathematics realms. Somehow I ended up in the family business without a shred of influence from them.

Take my story for what you want, but in this case the women were very much involved with the biological version.

[steveklabnik]

One individual is not 'empirical evidence.'

[raganwald]

I would say that any number of individuals "after the fact" are kind of weak as evidence. The very best empirical science is making a prediction of some new thing we've never seen before, and then testing the prediction.

So we don't dig up a bunch of bones and look for evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds, we predict that if we dig, we will find something that looks a little like a dinosaur and a little like a bird, and then we dig.

[gruseom]

Individuals and stories are part of good conversation. Skraushaar's comment was relevant and enjoyable.

Reflexive ideological dismissals, on the other hand, are just tedious.

[steveklabnik]

Absolutely. For conversational value, it's great. But in a discussion about empirical research, it's misleading at best.

[tptacek]

I agree. Nobody would have realized that this was just a single person's story if it hadn't been pointed out. Thank you; I was almost about to add a "biological mother's profession" and "biological father's profession" field to our recruiting questionnaire, and have been spared an embarrassment.

[cpuguy83]

It is HIS empirical evidence. It's his evidence based on his observation.

[bmalee]

It's a meaningless observation. One anecdote is not statistically relevant.

[_delirium]

Self-reports typically don't even count as one data point, because they're notoriously unreliable. Reports about one's childhood and motivations, doubly so. There's a reason psychology as a science is no longer based primarily on introspection, as it was in the 19th century.

Exceptions if people's self-conceptions are what is actually being studied; in that case collecting self-reports can be legitimate data-collection.

[bmalee]

> Take my story for what you want

An anecdote, you mean? I expect better from HN, though I'm not sure why.

[eignerchris_]

What you have described sir, is an anecdote.