The folks at NASSPE (National something for gender-segregated education) are suggesting that "girls hear two to four times as well as boys" (paraphrase). This is cited as one example of ways in which male and female students would benefit from separate classrooms (something about male teachers speaking loudly enough that girls perceive them as yelling, or crap like that). Now, they're citing a study that show a 10 dB difference in auditory threshold at 4 kHz. For those of you who haven't been reading audiograms since you were five, let me explain what this means. Decibels are logarithmic, much like pH, and so a sound that is (say) 60 dB is perceived as being about twice as loud as one that is 50 dB (sound pressure doubles every 6 dB, but that's not relevant here). I'm not sure where the "two to four" part comes from - granted, I haven't read the study, but hey, it's their cite. They want credibility, they can cite the whole statement, rather than just part.

But here's the thing: one, that doesn't mean that girls *perceive* sounds as being 2-4 times louder, just that the softest sounds they can hear are twice as quiet (on average) as the softest sounds that boys can hear. Two, that applies only to sounds at 4 kHz; I haven't seen any data on other frequencies (and they didn't make a more generic statement like "10-20 dB at frequencies from 250 Hz-8 kHz", which is the standard range measured). Not that said data doesn't exist, but if it does ... show me. Three, and this is a common problem with many "boys and girls learn differently" argument. The difference cited is a statistical one that is far smaller than individual variation. "Normal" hearing thresholds vary from 0-20 Hz. That already covers a 4x difference. And that is ignoring the huge number of individuals with hearing loss that puts them outside the range of normal, but is still undiagnosed.

Idjits.