Winnie Wrote a Math Book 638
SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. 'Math Doesn't Suck' is done in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a 'refliprocal', because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."
Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Funny)
Math is hard!
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Actually you have to treat them very differently. I can make off-color jokes with my male co-workers. I can make physical contact with my male co-workers. I can go to a bar after work with my male co-workers. If I were the type of guy to treat people like shit, I could do so, with my male underling co-workers.
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd. I've worked with women in my tech field for 22 years. I treat them with respect and have never had any trouble. Nobody in my area has any trouble with the women, except for one blatherskite who was fond of discussing their secondary sexual characteristics. He crashed and burned.
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Some Women fear being left alone with what might be an abusive chauvinist.
Some Men fear being left alone with what might be an abusive, lying, conniving, devious wench.
Either way, you shouldn't discredit his fear of abuse anymore than you should discount those of a woman. I know from experience that contact with the wrong woman can easily become a life changing event. In fact I've been suffering with an inability to commit for several years, based on fear alone. I couldn't imagine going through that kind
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I concur wholeheartedly. I have witnessed people go down hard because the organization chose to prevent the possibility of a lawsuit by placating a female by firing a male for the most banal, unsubstantiated fluff.
My personal protection mechanism is to interact only much as necessary for me to remain employed. It's sad to act this way but reality is harsh. I really like women, too. There is ju
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
The two female developers I work with periodically are quite competent, and neither has told me their life story.
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Must... resist... bad... joke... [sweat pouring down face]
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
It's almost degrading to women that people keep bringing this stuff up. Condescending might be the right word. Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
I get the same feeling everytime I see a story about how some person is the first X to do Y. I get an image of them being patted on the head and someone saying, 'Gee, you're a hero to X people every where, it only took all of recorded history for you Xers to get off your fat lazy assess and do Y, but golly, you finally did, great job. Now go find some other dubious achievement you Xers haven't got around too yet and be the first in that too.'.
Still, Winnie was hot and I always knew she had brains.
---
*I didn't need the credit and wanted to keep my grade point at the honors level. CS was put in with the Natural Sciences like interior decorating, who all seemed to graduate Summa Cum Laude, which blew out the GPA for everyone else.
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
In Engineering at a university down the road from Harvard, my only female engineering/math/physics teacher was for Statics. She was also one of the early lead engineers for the Big Dig (a marvel of engineering, despite its flaws).
The thing with Colin Powell is that you expect either rambling bluster a la most politicians (he's more of a statesman though), or a James Earl Jones bass voice. Instead, he has this nice tenor voice delivering complete sentences. It's a rarity in the human race, especially with government and military figures, to have a voice and demeanor that gives the appearance of thoughtfulness. It's why people would vote for him if he ran for public office.
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It's almost degrading to women that people keep bringing this stuff up. Condescending might be the right word.
No, what's condescending is including horoscopes and cute doodles of shoes and jewelry. WTF!?
Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
No, the unspoken thing is "in stark contrast to the president". His race has nothing to do with it. When your Comm
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement [scotsman.com]. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
There's nothing wrong with marketing towards certain kinds of women though. There's been plenty of math and philosophy courses filled with sport metaphors to market to jocks. Why not one build one around fashion? Anything that gets people learning is good, whether or not I'd personally appreciate it.
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It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
If GP is anything like me, he had no idea he's Scottish.
The point I think that was trying to be conveyed was a suggestion. How about this: how about we judge a person on the person and not the lineage from which they descend? How about we judge a person on the person and not the gender to which they belong?
Next thing you know they'll be targeting educational materials to fat people by using less word problems involving apples and more word problems involving Baconators.
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The point I think that was trying to be conveyed was a suggestion. How about this: how about we judge a person on the person and not the lineage from which they descend? How about we judge a person on the person and not the gender to which they belong?
Next thing you know they'll be targeting educational materials to fat people by using less word problems involving apples and more word problems involving Baconators.
Well, you see, that's how they maximize profits - by identifying groups of people and exploiting their desire and insecurities.
It just so happens that women have gotten the worst end of it. You aren't pretty? You need some makeup like a clown! Still aren't pretty? Here are some diet pills! Still not? Show off your anorexic figure with these new clothes! What, men still don't love you? Then you need Cosmopolitan to teach you how to properly service and manipulate them.
Marketing is EVIL and it destro
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still amazed at how people still push to help girls succeed. It makes me think it has become a larger political issue about advancing women's views, and not because they are actually struggling. All the recent evidence points to girls succeeding beyond boys, and yet, where are the pro-boy programs? You will always be able to point out a specific area of work that men outnumber women, or vice versa, but that doesn't mean we should rectify that "problem". There's a much larger issue where boys are being left behind.
Women have outnumbered men at colleges for ~25 years now. Women outnumber men 58% to 42%. [nytimes.com]
75 percent of girls aim for college degrees vs. 66 percent of boys [findarticles.com]
The study found that not only are girls in the nation's 100 largest school districts graduating at a ">72 percent rate versus 65 percent for their male counterparts [slashdot.org], but that the gender gap is even wider among minority students.
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That's not women. That's a certain subsection of the population and it comes in both male and female form. I should know. I teach computer skills for a public library. Some people are good with technical terms. Some people--well, for some reason, the correct terms really rattle them, so you need to describe what it is visually and then later start sneaking the words in so they pick them up and start using them without realizing it.
At least with phone
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Yes, if someone is new to the field, don't bombard them with specialized terminology, even if it is well-defined and widely used. Speak to be understood, and then introduce the proper terminology as appropriate. The "correct words" are the words *that accomplish your objective*.
I have to teach people, including older ones, how to use software all the time, and without fail I have them comfortably wor
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:4, Funny)
Math is hard!
Re:Barbie disagrees (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the quote is "Math class is tough," and only 1.5% of all Teen Talk Barbies said that phrase. If you find one now, it's worth quite a bit of money. (And I'll bet more than 1.5% of the population actually thinks that math class is tough.)
</barbienerd>
Math *is* hard (Score:5, Insightful)
The best math always is. It's hard, gives you a headache, you lose sleep trying to figure it out. But once you do you are astonished at how elegant it is and how it all fits together so beautifully. And it doesn't matter in the slightest what anatomy you have between your legs, or what your 23rd chromosome pair looks like.
I object to the word "mathematics" being debased to elementary-school arithmetic. But that's another matter.
...laura
Re:Math *is* hard (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes mathematics gives you a headache. Frequently you don't get it. Frequently you must spend weeks on a topic before getting it. Often it may elude you for years. Then you finally get it, and usually hard work and effort has absolutely nothing to do with that.
The sad fact is, people think mathematics is hard because most mathematicians are lousy at explaining it. It's not explained properly and as a result people struggle with it until they finally come across a resource or idea or epiphany that allows them to realize the in retrospect blindingly obvious idea that lay behind the whole topic. What to know why it seems so "elegant" and obvious in retrospect. It's because it is obvious, as long as you were taught it correctly.
Best example I can think of offhand is determinants? Remember those? I'll bet there's a lot of people here who went through the whole spiel with them over and over and all the while didn't have a clue what they were all about. Let me tell you what they are, or quote a better man than I on the subject. "The determinant of a matrix is an (oriented) volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are its columns." You see, that's what a determinant actually is, but most student are never taught that most essential fact. Once you get that, the rest is all just formulae around it. But most are just taught the formulae. Most of mathematics is taught like this. Form without essence. It's a tradgedy. The greater tragedy is people think all this incompetence is a result of mathematics being "hard". It's just hard to teach, not to learn.
Here's a link to a much longer rant [uni-muenster.de] which shows just how big a problem the teaching of mathematics has become in some quarters.
Yeah, I'll knock on her door, too (Score:4, Funny)
Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Funny)
"If the man of the house gets home from work at 5:30 and dinner takes 1.25 hours to prepare, at what time should you start making it?"
"If your makeup costs $40 and you put it on once a day, how much does it cost per application if the makeup runs out after 70 days?"
"If the cake recipe calls for the oven to be at 400 degree fahrenheit but the oven only has celsius....
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I detect a bit of irony in GP's post. One example assumes that a woman is a homemaker who should be cooking dinner for her man; two assumes that a woman should be wearing makeup; three assumes that women should, again, be cooking. That this is framed in the context of something which supposes to emancipate women from underachieving in math, science and engineering is what creates the irony.
Myself, I wouldn't say that being feminine in this highly traditional sense is an innately bad thing, but that other
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. It seems her target audience is the teen girl who'd be into magazines about makeup and boys. I think she's trying to show these girls that they can be into makeup and boys and still be good at math. I think she's blurring the roles by adding a component that is normally kept out those roles.
Clearly the book is not for everyone but I like the nontraditional approach.
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Insightful)
If cooking dinner makes you inferior that's issues that are in your head and have no real bearing on reality. Look at all the famous chefs, nobody thinks they are inferior for cooking!
On the other hand I think if I were to have kids, I would want them to be raised by a mother who is educated and knowledgeable. It can be extremely beneficial to introduce children to science at an early age, they seem to really take to it if presented properly. And we all know that public school alone just does not cut it for giving a kid the education they need to succeed. Parents that have the ability and will to home tutor their kids in addition to going to school are going to have kids who have a competitive edge when it comes time to enroll in college or get a job.
Also staying home does not mean you need to be stupid, just like having a paying job doesn't make you intelligent.
The Economist had an interesting article on women in the work place, and that companies are learning that women's careers tend to be non-linear, and that this non-linearity can be a barrier to upper management. And the ability for many of us to telecommute 1 or more days a week is having a dramatic impact on improving the wage inequality between men and women, because it is keeps women from having to choose between career and family.
Things are moving in a positive direction, but that said, books that encourage young girls to be interested in math, science, and technology are beneficial because as we move to a society where it is possible for both parents to work. We will find that it may become impossible for most single income families to live at an income level they are comfortable with. Women may have no choice but to join the work force and establish long term careers in addition to having a family. That's the dark side of all this progress and equality.
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, just take that stand and stick to it. What feminism *should* be about is simple equality under the law, because that's "the right thing to do." It's been hijacked by some heavy-duty radicals, but that doesn't have to reflect negatively on you. You can take care of your kids and still call yourself a feminist, and if anyone says, in shock, "omfg you believe every word of the SCUM manifesto??" You can calmly say, "no, I believe that men an
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:4, Interesting)
People don't think less of you by nearly as much as they would think less of a man who wanted that.
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with feminists' position on homemaking is that a lot of the bigger, more radically outspoken feminists are more supremacists than gender egalitarians. They ignore the stigma placed on the male if the male isn't a patriarch, or an alpha, or a "provider". If I didn't have a college degree or a job that paid well enough to support a wife and kids, I'd have zero social capitol, and *that* is a key problem in approaching a society that treats genders equally.
A man who makes home is almost unheard of and certainly not respected among a great deal of the people I know, and I think that's a shame- a god damn shame. I would even go so far as to call male homemaking a litmus test for the amount of progress we've made on gender equality. Putting women in positions of power is one thing (implying that women can "stray" from their "place under men"), but allowing a man to "lower" himself to homemaking or even the perception that a homemaker is "under" a worker/provider is the true determinant of equality of sex.
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, you mean this book is targeted at girls who read fashion magazines? So the context is predefined? Namely the context of talking to girls who like this sort of thing? Oh...well I guess we should just assume shes being condescending, or ignorant, instead of realizing that she is a girlie girl hottie with a frigginErds-Bacon number [wikipedia.org] who might have some personal experience and investment in getting more girls like her to become feminine intellectuals!
This book doesn't make the assumption that it emancipates anyone. It tries to use a damn effective vehicle for communicating material that is often not desirable to consume. If you think I'm wrong, how do you explain the high number of women who purchase fashion magazines who at the same time blame the media for the false image they have to live up to. Thats a magic trick in and of itself, getting people to pay to hate themselves, to be fed tailored insecurities.
Maybe Danica McKellar put some of her UCLA brains to work and found a vehicle that she could co opt to educate and empower these girls.
You know, you may not like it, but there is a class of women out there who are effectively super women. Beautiful, intellectual, empowered, employed in high paying and influential positions, and raising kids. Its just that most MEN, and I use that term referring to genetic makeup, can't handle the realities of being with them. Their pathetic mirror to female insecurity creates this never ending fountain of emasculated feelings. Or, even worse, the hubris laden egos of most technically proficient males can't cope with the fact that their mate can equal, or best them, in an aspect he uses to define himself in.
Thats why you people come up with terms like this:]
Myself, I wouldn't say that being feminine in this highly traditional sense is an innately bad thing, but that other role options should be presented and accepted by people at a young age so they can decide for themselves how to identify.
You NEED to feel at some point in a female's life cycle that they are vulnerable for no other reason than they are female. That a female couldn't possible see the forest for the trees and separate content from context. The worst part is, your closet superiority complex is what is giving you the biggest problem relating to people.
The reality of the matter is its called Marketing 101. Get someone to PURCHASE the book for their daughter, thinking its a good idea. I don't know about you, but many young people don't go out and purchase any raw math text books when they weren't required or directed to. I think someone with a Degree in Mathematics from UCLA could figure this out and perhaps work around it.
Just a thought. Or you can continue on with the asinine idea that every demographic variant needs to be presented with every option represented in every light for every possible socio-economic combination of factors in order to validate itself.
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1: Ideally, one should wait a half an hour to an hour after settling in to eat. Most people have rituals they go through upon getting home from work (petting the dog, sitting down and watching some television, having a martini), and after those are completed they will be amicable enough to properly enjoy dinner.
2: Surely this is an oversimplification of the problem. First, you need both day makeup and evening makeup (bolder colors to stand out more in lower light conditions), and you might only wear your
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd guess that your thermostat is miscalibrated, Dr. Maxwell.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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some alternate reality where everything has a greater degree of internal energy, requiring less heat to cook.
Time for some mental vomiting...
If _everything_ has more internal energy, that leads to several quandaries:
i) What's important in energy transfer of any type, but especially with degraded energy types like heat, is an energy *difference* between the hot and cold regions. If you've added a fixed amount of energy to every object, then the transfer rate would still be the same as before, leading to no change. (However, see pt. ii, below). This assumes something like Newton's law o
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Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Insightful)
-Doing taxes
-Understanding mortgages (not getting screwed by a baloon payment ARM)
-Not getting ripped off by sales prices and percentages
-Budgets (again, percentages and ratios)
-Understanding the world and the media (statistics)
-Etc
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just had an urge to rewrite this from the other perspective:
It's a funny post, but it also illustrates one of the core problems with recruiting boys into math and engineering: a lot of them aren't interested. My brothers don't care about getting into a really intensive job because they know they're going to get married and become homemakers. It's not that there's a problem if they do differently, it's just that they've chosen that path to happiness. How many boys like my brothers are skewing the results of math/engineering studies?
(If you're too culturally ingrained to picture a man as a homemaker, you can insert "permanent English grad student" in the above paragraph.)
Maybe your sisters aren't interested because they never thought it was cool to be? See, that's kind of what the book is trying to address. There are a number of people who believe that more women would be interested in math and science if they encountered more books like Danica McKellar's and fewer books like The Rules or some of the schlock I've had sent to me by relatives of friends. (Seriously, it takes a lot of nerve to send your 20-year-old nephew a book to give to his female friends which directs them that the only true Christian woman is the wife who unquestioningly follows her husband's orders and stays at home and realizes that when he isn't speaking to her, it's her fault. That was an eye-opening book for me. I felt for that woman's daughters, who had absolutely no interest in math and science or anthing aside from finding a husband. It might possibly have been related to their upbringing.)
And there are a lot of men who aren't interested in math or science either when you ask it like that, but if it has to do with something they do, it's more interesting.
Re:Random bits from the book... (Score:5, Funny)
A. 4:15.
B. $0.5714285714 per application, or $0.57.
C. 204 celsius = 400 fahrenheit.
I am all woman.
Chuck
More apropos to modern women: (Score:4, Funny)
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I know that this was meant to be funny, but it really isn't.
Although I would like to think we have evolved a bit, there are a few too many guys around here that view slashdot as their private tree-house, and are afraid that girls will give them cooties.
I was going to give this post a pass, but the misogyny in some of the comments in this thread is simply unacceptable.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if I had a daughter, I would want her to be able to choose the career she wants, rathe
Oh Boy... (Score:4, Funny)
Nice try, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice try, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
(btw, great attitude to take towards solid progressive thinking that will help women out)
Re:Nice try, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest they give it a try, see how badly it flops, then try something else. Like not having to make everything "hip" and "edgy" and "way cool cowabunga dudes with jittery neon triangles". Yes, I'm showing my age -- but I bet the producers of this material are too.
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Re:Nice try, but... (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I'm dying to know: what sport at your high school is so unspeakably vulgar that you have to censor the name?
And are any videos online?
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I don't know but it obviously involves getting a bunch of guys together and playing with their balls.
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On the Ninth Day, G-d created Baseball.
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Re:Nice try, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more of society as a whole reducing to the lowest common denominator. It's no longer trying to strive to be educated and to better oneself, but it's now to act dumb, not try hard, talk like a moron, and become famous somehow and get the easy money. Paris Hilton is what kids strive to be: not Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein or Jack Kennedy (or whoever your favorite statesman is).
Do kids want to dress well? No, they dress like bums. They get piercings and tattoos like bikers, strippers, drug dealers and other lowlifes. Do they try to refine their communications skills? Hell no! They talk like some ghetto uneducated slob.
It was the same when I was growing up. The kids who dressed well and worked at school were called "preppies". Of course now, most of those "preppies" are MDs, JDs, engineers, etc.... The others, are waiting tables.
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I've met goths with tats and piercings who are the most affable and pleasant people. I've met pressed, tucked, combed frat boys who leave me with the urge to burn down frat row, and for good measure every sorority to.
Clothing and looks in general don't tell you much. Attitudes and other things you mentioned do.
Re:Nice try, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nice try, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as hooking people a little more substantively, I think she hit it on the head in the interview when she mentioned that one of the fascinations that drew her into mathematics was the infinitely large and the infinitely small. I've started off a ton of lengthy conversations introducing basic set theory and stuff to non-mathematicians just by challenging them on things like what is infinity, how do we define infinity, how do we add infinity to other numbers, matching up cardinalities with the natural numbers... The Monty Hall problem is a great one for thinking about probabilities. Kids get fascinated by imaginary numbers just because it's the first "weird" thing everyone emphasizes, so it's easy to get them playing around with some algebra like that. A high schooler taking their first "proofs" geometry can enjoy doing some non-Euclidean stuff, up to the big reveal when you tell them they're working on the surface of a sphere or whatever hehe.
I was watching the Daily Show the other day when they interviewed the astrophysicist hosting Nova, and the guy had an infectious enthusiasm (to lift Jon Stewart's language directly hehe). If you've ever watched the Feynman lectures, it's the same sort of thing, at least for me. The more people out there from all walks of life enthusiastically promoting the accessible parts of math and science, the better.
Re:Nice try, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend of mine from Belgium was telling me that's how they do it over there. In a single high school you'll find about the same proportion of students who are athletes as in a school in the U.S., but they represent lots of different local (competing) teams.
Apparently, it goes a long way towards preventing formations of mob mentalities and everything that goes with it.
So e.g., there's no such thing as a school pep rally in support of one sports team and they don't even have anything like the divide between "jocks" and "nerds" (or at least, not to the extent seen in schools in the U.S.).
I don't see it happening in the U.S. anytime soon, but who knows? It could start small, in a place with semi-rational school administrators trying to free up budgets, for example. With the promise of tax reductions, many things can gain political support. (:
And what do horoscopes have to do with science? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Aries - certain deficiencies in your education and upbringing will lead you to the sadly mistaken belief that the location of celestial bodies can influence events in your life.
(paraphrased from memory, originally in "The Onion")
Re:And what do horoscopes have to do with science? (Score:4, Funny)
The stars say: "you must be new here".
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It means there's some funky lightbeams comming from Scorpio & we need to invade it or the terrorists win.
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Nah they should bring back the old Textbooks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually this is a good idea the problem is that today there are reports that boys are trailing girls academically. Part of the reason is if they make an All girls school or make programs that are designed to help girls they do so sometimes at the expense of the education of the boys. But if such programs or All boy public schools are made then there is a community cry. Boys and Girls think differently, they need to be taught differently.
Re:Nah they should bring back the old Textbooks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Boys will never do well as a group academically as long as academic performance is seen as a social stigma.
More importantly (Score:3, Informative)
Rock-paper-scissors will have to decide this, guys.
Am I the only one peeved... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or perhaps it was just a stupid decision.
Cyberchase (Score:2)
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Clearly so, but it could be worse: "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" is illustrative of subtraction, but somewhat tedious if one is not an actual red-eyed participant.
TTIWWP (Score:4, Funny)
I loved UCLA... (Score:2)
"OMG Ponies" is not just cute ... (Score:3, Insightful)
My first impression of the book review was - "Oh gawd, a math book went 'OMG Ponies !!111'".
But I've sort of realized that form follows emotion and in a world where Math is not consider cool (not in India though), something like this which stands away from the boring beige world of mathematics would get more eyeballs into the basic subject. Not that I'd consider some of it boring [xkcd.com], by any stretch of imagination. And who hasn't rewritten math problems into "real" problems [xkcd.com] ? (xkcd has become lame of late - I suspect after his visit to MIT).
But such wedges into the insular cracks of things could be nice - to let people burn through the "Thou Suckest" [dotgnu.info] phase of learning anything new. Especially when the field is full of elitist fifty year olds ("elite" is good, "elitist" is bad).
So if it makes a bunch of girls pick up math, good - just the same way Asterix&Obelix makes me want to learn French ... we all just need a reason, to make whatever we're doing cool (ah, the tyranny of cool).
"Attractive young women" (Score:3, Insightful)
So what, the ugly ones don't use math?
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Who would want to identify with that photo as the target audience, anyway? "Oh, I'm ugly, just like the woman in that photo. I should study harder in math!"
Re:"Attractive young women" (Score:5, Insightful)
You're looking at this backward. Girls are told they're supposed to aspire to beauty above all else. The idea here is to show them that you can have that without giving up intelligence.
A single voice isn't going to tell girls that they shouldn't want to be pretty. One well-spoken voice might convince a few that they can be pretty and smart.
I'd let her extend MY superfactorial! (Score:3, Funny)
Gap? What gap? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gap? What gap? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see. This was a while ago, but of the top ten in my graduating class, two were male. They both had science and math majors. Of the eight women, only four of us did. Both of the guys have gone on into science and math heavy fields (MD and engineer). Of the women, only two did (veterinarian and dentist). So there is a gap in achievement when you look at that for math and science.
Why do I think that is? Well, I graduated high school with majors in math, science, social studies, and French. In college, I ended up with a history major and minors in anthropology and religious studies, but I took a number of math and science and comp sci courses for fun. I still love math and science. Numbers still are magical to me, and playing around with them to see what they can do can waste hours... But looking back, I realize I ended up focusing on areas where my abilities were treated less like a fluke and more like actual talent. I had higher science and math GPAs and took more science classes than the guys in my high school class (and helped them with studying and homework) and they got the science and math awards. I got the English and Humanities awards. (English? Have you seen my grammar? Seriously, it got lost somewhere around second grade.) The same thing continued in college, with certain professors (not all) handing out puzzles in math classes where I was one of two girls and acting surprised when I worked them out. Like I hadn't aced the last four tests in the class while quietly passing notes to my friends and keeping the freshmen in front of us quiet when they started to get bored and act up.
So women can achieve all they want, but it doesn't necessarily mean they aren't going to face subtle discouragement along the way that eventually does end in a gap. I'm a librarian who works with computers, which I guess is my way of compromising and getting to handle a wide variety of topics while still playing with math and science a bit. I play with my little electrical kits at home and build my own computers and whatnot, and I'm happy with my life, but I also suspect that had I been male, I might have gone for math or science as a career instead of a hobby because I wouldn't have been constantly getting the overlooked treatment.
Or maybe not. Still, it's hard for me to discount 20-some years of subtle discouragement in some areas and encouragement in others as having no impact on my life choices.
Natalie Portman's neuroscience paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Developmental scientists have named the behavioral manifestation of this competence object permanence.
Convergent evidence indicates that frontal lobe maturation plays a critical role in the display of
object permanence, but methodological and ethical constrains have made it difficult to collect neurophysiological
evidence from awake, behaving infants. Near-infrared spectroscopy provides a noninvasive assessment
of changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin concentration within a prescribed
region. The evidence described in this report reveals that the emergence of object permanence is related to
an increase in hemoglobin concentration in frontal cortex.
* "I loved school so much that most of my classmates considered me a dork."
* "Smart women love smart men more than smart men love smart women."
* "I'm going to college. I don't care if it ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star. "
Being cool doesn't work either. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd have to admit though, that she does have one important ingredient in the textbook. That she demonstrates that you can be simultaneously pretty and intellectual (and includes other examples). If she could lose the cheesy teen-mag look, I'm sure we'd see some progress.
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That's why those fools should leave the educational lessons to Mr. T [youtube.com]!
Review of the book and an interview (Score:4, Informative)
oh, great... (Score:5, Insightful)
How insulting to girls.
Lets make a similar math book for all the boys who aren't interested in math. It should feature GI Joe's using math to kill each other, aliens, and anything gross or violent. For the older boys lets throw in some soft core porn to get their eyes on the page (males are after all more visual, right?).
Come on! This is rediculous. While I applaud her good intentions, I have to wonder why such a thing was not necessary for girls like her to be interested in math? I am all for making learning fun, and math books are about as dull and boring as it gets, but I see no reason why it has to be dumbed down and made gender specific.
My 9 year old girl is great at math, without this.
There are better ways to get kids to learn. Or, rather, to not turn them off to learning, since they start off wanting to learn and then we destroy that desire later on.
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Hey, when I was in the book store the other day I came across Kaplan-brand Warcraft graphic novels [amazon.com] with SAT vocab words and definitions inside.
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Shielding your kids from "girliness" doesn't do them any favors. Teach them that they can be girly AND smart, that they don't have to choose between them, and you'll never run the risk
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It's actually a completely independent program called "KCD", it consists of two rooms in an otherwise normal elementary school here in fullerton, CA (orangethorpe elementary). And yes we have had to fight for this, battling with the school district to get district transfers, and attending meetings to keep getting funding for the program. It is a quite successful program. I take one day of work off each week to attend the classroom
Who is the Target Audience? (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of these kinds of efforts look like they were produced by someone who is more concerned with being on record with supporting women going into science and math than actually having a real effect. That's why we end up with textbooks crammed with mini-biographies of Sophie Germain and Ada Lovelace that nobody will actually read and that anyone with enough brainpower to do basic algebra will recognize as tacit admissions that a woman mathematician is an odd duck indeed.
McKellar looks like her heart is in the right place - she's presumably wealthy and is a professional actress, and yet she still devoted serious time and energy to studying math. Presumably she wants others to share her enthusiasm for an interesting and potentially lucrative field of endeavor. But I very much doubt that she was "turned on" to math by a book like this. I imagine that her supportive family and the confidence boost that came from being a TV star helped overcome the anti-math stigma.
Of course, as much as the stereotypical mathematician is not feminine, he's not particularly masculine either, not an effeminate man precisely, probably more of a modern-day eunuch. Certainly no young men go into mathematics to impress their peers, so I think a more important question would be why young women are more influenced by "peer pressure" than young men.
Is it low self-esteem? Women think they can't get ahead except by being "cheerleader" types? Or high self-esteem? Women think they *can* become cheerleader types if they wear uncomfortable enough clothing and enough makeup, while nerdy guys figure they couldn't make the football team in a million years?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What? Plenty of good models out there...
And if just talking about looks and all, showing fit and lean, non-obese women is a good thing. We've got a horrible obesity problem out there, so, some skinnier role models are a good thing IMHO.
So, we now have 'thinkers' to combine with the 'lookers'...and pretty soon, we'll have perfect women if they follow their role models.
Women scare what percentage of /.ers shitless? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Women scare what percentage of /.ers shitless? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I hit a Pentium FDIV bug.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The concern is that some segments of the American population (women and some ethnic groups) might be discouraged from doing math. I've seen this first-hand. Several years ago, I spe
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For pete's sake, people, since when have mnemonics become the work of the dumbing-down devil? No, you can't learn all of math that way, but when it comes to remember the definition of one term it's fine. I still use SOHCAHTOA, I must be an idiot.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
By "author" they mean
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