Here's the answer; Dancing is an art. DDR grades your dancing skill. Programmers LOVE having everything distilled down into a numeral. Hence DDR judges what most would be considered an art and gives you a "number" or "grade" by which you can compare yourself to others.

Most nerds don't dance in real life, but love DDR. DDR doesn't require much originality, just pattern recognition and steady technical and physical improvement gets you a higher score. In real dancing, you need to be creative, original, and innovative if you want to stand out from the crowd.

That's my 2-cents.

Quote. For. Truth.

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I've noticed this too (I'm another of those programmers).
I would argue actually that it's an oddity that the number of math/programmer people in the dance game community is so high.
Granted my data is from pretty much only a concentrated group of programmer gamers from DigiPen, but the funny thing is that few people there actually play much DDR or rhythm games. The number of people that play games such as TF2 and LoL (or HoN as the elitists in that genre play) though is astounding. And if you mention Chrono Trigger in any crowded room you'll probably get a solid amount of cheering : )

My main reason for playing dance games is that I have a massive inherent lack of sports ability. Maybe that's the real reason. Maybe us programmers are just terrible at sports.

Well, P(A|B) and P(B|A) can be quite different; A being "plays rhythm games", B being "is a programmer".  The probability that I see as unusually high and want to discuss is that someone "is a programmer given that they play rhythm games", not "plays rhythm games given that they are a programmer". 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_of_the_inverse

I imagine the probability of the former is quite high, but I the probability of the latter I'd say is probably not even 0.01.

That would explain programmers' tendencies toward frisbee as well.

Honestly, it's probably a fairly complicated relationship with a wide range of causal relationships.  Keeping in mind that many players start in middle/high school, I can think of the following potential links:
- Many programmers cite video games as an early inspiration for learning about computers.
- Many gamers and many programmers are perfectionists and/or highly competitive.
- Many gamers and many programmers are fairly Japanophilic at some point in their life (if not currently).
- DDR allows for control over your environment: you can play at home or in the arcade, with or without others.  This doesn't apply to ITG as much, but most ITG players started with DDR.  I started playing in arcades to get used to arcade machines as I transitioned into the tournament community, otherwise I was content to play at home.
- Slight extension of the above: nerds often stay home and you can play exclusively at home.  Getting exercise at home is often tricky, because the primary options are utilitarian: pushups and other calisthenics, treadmills and other home gym equipment, workout tapes - it's all exercise for the sake of exercise, which isn't everyone's thing.
- Most players either started in the arcade or on a friend's home setup.  This means arcade gamers, a niche within the nerdier end of gaming, were the early adopters, and they went on to recruit friends with similar interests, and so on.
- DDR is, as noted, good for those who have trouble with conventional sports - it's been noted by a great many to barely feel like exercise, even though it can be pretty good exercise.  Out of all of my variously health issues, asthma has almost been a non-issue with regard to DDR/ITG (it took 13's to even get my lungs to tighten a little), even though jogging a mile usually meant using my inhaler around the same time I was no barring almost everything in DDR.
- As noted, music games are oriented around a set scoring system.  I wouldn't make the strong claim that there's an inherent preference for objective rankings, but it allows for competitive play with or without an opponent present.
- It's a hobby you sink money into.  Non-nerdy people might buy a home setup and play until their pad dies, whereas nerdy people have a greater tendency to accept the routine costs that come with maintaining a hobby.
- Compared to conventional sports, training consists less of drilling specific skills and more of just playing the game.  Drilling a specific skill just means tending to play certain kinds of songs more than normal.
- Programmers are necessarily the type willing to grind.  Science/engineering/math programs usually come with demanding workloads and strict requirements when compared to others (this is just a tendency, there are easier technical programs and hard non-technical programs - it's just that the normal structure of technical programs lends itself to a high workload on average).  It takes a certain type of motivation to put up with it.

Basically, it's easy to see why nerds - who tend towards programming, math, science, etc. - would be drawn to dance games more so than others.  There are also a lot of traits that make nerds shy away from dance games:
- Nerds tend to be lazy, DDR is exercise.
- Arcade machines are in public view, which means potential humiliation.  Nerds often learn to either shy away from all potential discomfort or learn to stop caring what others think, so approximately half would tend to immediately think it's not for them.
- Nerds are highly competitive, but the good players are really good.  It doesn't matter how modest or supportive a good player is, people with shaky confidence are easily spooked when someone is that much better.
- Nerds tend to have hobbies, meaning they may already be too busy to pick up a new, vastly different one.
- Some people - in general, including nerds - are quick to pass judgment on things, deciding it's clearly not for them, possibly without trying.
- Nerds often have severely asocial tendencies and the long-time players usually stick with it because of the community.
- Nothing is for everyone - dance games included - so interest may not be there even if an openness to playing once or twice is.

Basically, even though the game has appeal to the kinds of people who would go into a technical field, the kind of people who go into technical fields are not the type to automatically embrace everything that could have appeal to them.  Hence the current state where the majority of players are technically inclined, but only represent a niche within the greater set of technically-inclined people's hobbies.

One theory might be that dance games offers so much more than other video games.  While not many programmers may like rhythm games, many like video games in general.  Going off of my personal experience:

For one thing, it offers a socialization aspect.  Sure, there are plenty of opportunities for multiplayer gaming online in your average household these days, but yelling "OH!  NO SCOPED IN THE FACE" back and forth does not really constitute socialization.
I know that before I was a regular rhythm game player, I was super introverted like you'd expect the typical Aspie (I've been professionally diagnosed) to be.  But DDR showed me and probably others just how fun social interaction, especially with other people that have similar interests, can be.  I imagine that programmers as a whole are not the most social people to begin with, and that perhaps part of the attraction of the game was the socialization, and the ability to fit in somewhere.

Another thing is that it's implicitly exercise.  I know that when I was a kid, my parents would consistently bug me to stop playing video games and go exercise.  Now it's possible to do both at once; my parents have never bugged me about it since.  Hell, I do exercise on my own now, whether it's rhythm games or something else.

Exercise certainly does help physical fitness, but also helps mental fitness, which programmers definitely need.  And considering that programming is such a sedentary activity, helps us to achieve more balance in our lives; helps us to get the physical activity we don't get at jobs or college classes or in my case, preparing to get a job.

I almost want to start a separate thread on this.  The link between gamer and Japanophiliac is very obvious, but I've always been curious why programmers tend to be (or have been), unless it's indirectly being one due to the co-occurrence of video game fandom.

Going through Tony's list...

check, or in my cases, I wanted to learn to make my own video games.  While there's no way I could see myself in the gaming industry these days, making indie games still sounds like it could be a fun hobby, if only I could draw.

check, I'm definitely a perfectionist.
check; I think I may have just passed the Japanophiliac point of my life though.
That never was part of the draw for me, as I always preferred to play at arcades anyway; playing at home eliminates the socialization aspect.
I can exercise for the sake of exercise, but only by looking forward to the end result (feeling of accomplishment, endorphins).
check, although I don't really see how this relates to the connection with programmers.
check; I never was good at traditional sports (though I'm actually thinking of taking one up since I hear cross-training with dance games can yield a good result, and to have a hobby more than a niche group of people knows about).
check; I notice that the TGM/puzzle game community which had objective scoring/grades had many programmers too, so this could very much be a draw.
Does not apply so much to me.  Perhaps another connection though is that programmers tend make quite a bit of money, so it doesn't tend to be an issue.
I usually just play songs out of intrinsic motivation, so not so much for me.
check, and a very good point; perhaps most other types of people aren't willing to put up with a game that kicks your ass the first few (hundred) times you play it.  DDR can be one of those games; the aforementioned TGM is definitely another, and also I have noticed that many TGM players are also shmup players; another genre where the game has no trouble killing you in a hurry.

Given that most players started in middle/high school or college, that's not so likely a factor.  Regardless the exact reasoning, pricy hobbies are generally a nerdy thing, though - I would extend the term "hobby" to include collections as well for this line of discussion.  Look at trading card games (which is both a hobby and a resulting collection) or even gamers' purchasing habits - the majority of us here have likely held onto almost every game we've ever bought.  Pointing out that dance games are a money sink was more to make the connection to general tendencies to be okay with the cost of a hobby (assuming they can afford it to start), since they enjoy the hobby and that's what matters.

The factors I listed are all general tendencies so I wouldn't expect many to hit all of them.

Perhaps this is part of a bigger tendency of "nerds" to stick with hobbies more than others, and not be put off of a hobby easily because of factors like it being expensive or difficult.  Most others would probably just find a new hobby at the point they felt it had either of those qualities.  And I use the word "quality" loosely here.

I wasn't introduced to programming until about four years after I started playing Bemani. For me, personally, there's no direct connection. I feel more of a connection between my love for Bemani and my love for running as a sport; it's a game that includes concrete goals that I can set and then train to accomplish.

In general, though, it might just be that it's a video game. I doubt that there is a higher percentage of Bemani gamers who are programmers than gamers in general. Also, sentences are hard, so sorry if that last one didn't make very much sense.

For me, programming began in 1998 with V***** B****, but I really wouldn't call myself a true programmer at that point; my first Bemani play was in fall 1999 with DDR at GW, but regular Bemani play didn't start until 2001.  When I played 1.5 back in the day, I played a few sets because it looked sort of interesting and then was like "meh", but about a year later in late 2000 I played DDR USA at Family Fun Center and had a lot of fun with it; the music, announcer cheering/jeering you on (yes, I *liked* that feature back in the day), slick 3rd mix/USA interface, and possibly the factor that it was something that was just different and innovative were the huge conscious draws for me.

Maybe the factors that *keep* people playing after the novelty factor, and keep the game interesting and fun are the more "nerdy" aspects of it.  One thing I noticed was that it kind of is like a IRL RPG where you're the character, progressively gaining strength, endurance, speed, and accuracy as you play.

I died laughing just now as I read this initially as "Vagina Bitch"

I get it but thought I'd share  Was quite funny to me