No Gap Found In Math Abilities of Girls, Boys 701
sciencehabit writes "For anyone who still believes that boys are better at math than girls, a massive new study published today in Science shows there's no difference. 'Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.' But the researchers do note a disturbing trend towards omitting harder kinds of math questions from standardized tests."
Can it be time? (Score:3, Funny)
(even if anything does come from this, it'll probably take a decade or two, which makes me feel old already)
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Re:Can it be time? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I know somebody who's transgendered (MtF) and has been diagnosed with Asperger's... though to be fair, her current psychologist thinks that it was a misdiagnosis, and that the reason she was socially retarded was becau
Re:Can it be time? (Score:4, Interesting)
The hypothesis is that Asperger's syndrome and the autistic spectrum is just the extreme case of the male brain (literally: testosterone poisoning).
I have asperger's and so do three of my children. My daughter (with asd) is entering the 9th grade this year effectively three years ahead of where I was in math. It's frightening. She skipped the 3rd grade and looks younger than she is. She looks like a 12 year old entering high school. I've been preparing her for a couple years for the time (about now) when I won't be able to help her with math anymore. It's really shocking to me how smart she is.
I think the human race, at least in the developed world, is selecting for intelligence. Intelligent people have better health care and better resources making them more likely to reproduce and afford more children. I think this natural selection mixed with how our environment has changed is responsible for the increased incidence in asd.
We need to think long and hard about how we educate children and what we consider normal. The one-size-fits-all public education system is the worst possible thing you can do to an asd kid.
Re:Can it be time? (Score:5, Interesting)
You, sir, are outcho goddammed mind.
The intelligent people in developed countries are being outbred [wikipedia.org] by the people of lower intelligence [wikipedia.org].
I know it is not science, but sheesh, haven't you seen Idiocracy [imdb.com]?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
ok, but how inheritable is IQ? (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, sure, it seems quite reasonable that people of lower intelligence have more kids.
But it's probably been that way for a very long time. I'd imagine that some illiterate peasant bog-farmer had more kids than, say, Sir Isaac Newton, for example. (don't know if that's actually true, but you see where I'm going, right?)
What keeps us from already being in the grips of an Idiocracy type situation is that there's minimal link between your IQ and that of your parents. Yes, there is a link, but there's a lot of e
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Which doesn't make them very smart, does it?
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Likewise, I never learned to cook until I was in college.
Now I'm pretty good at it.
Re:Can it be time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you point to just one example of someone telling women they're "not supposed to be interested" in IT?
Because I'm calling bullshit on your comment.
Re:Can it be time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Boys were given boys toys and shied away from doing 'girl things.'
Well first of all, that wasn't what I asked. But since you brought it up, I'm sorry that some parents buy toys their children don't want, but for most children, studies show [google.com] that they do prefer those gender-specific toys, and that these aren't "perceived" roles, as you put it, but inborn preferences. Men and women are different because of our genes.
The question I asked, which nobody has answered yet, is if anyone can give an example of girls being told they not supposed to be interested in IT. I can give you an example of the opposite:
Think about what it means to be a geek. If you're a guy, the joke is that you'll be a virgin until you're 30, and you'll live in your mother's basement. What's it like for a self-identified geek male in highschool? You're a social outcast. Society tells you that you're a failure, and to be a real man, you need to do manly things and the most important thing for you to do is to get a girlfriend. Being a geek or a nerd as a male is a death sentence.
Now look at what it's like for a girl. Geek girls are awesome. Many girls self-identify as geeks even though they have no real knowledge or propensity for computers. It's just so great - it's considered so cool, that they actually lie about it. Anything that you want to do, as a girl, is encouraged.
So that's the world as I see it. Boys feel tremendous pressure to avoid being labeled a geek, being associated with computers, etc. But for girls, anything they do, and everything they do is just super. Wow, you go girl! Girl power! Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them, right? There are no examples of girls being told they're not supposed to be in the IT field because that's just ridiculous. That doesn't happen in the western world. A girl who wants to be in the IT industry is fawned over. She's so special, so awesome, we just love geek girls. But for a guy, it's a hard, lonely life.
And yet, even in this climate, more boys than girls choose the IT field. It is clear to me that this happens in spite of culture, not because of it.
Re:Can it be time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that the celebration of the girl geek is a fairly new social development. This certainly wasn't in place back when I was a teenager (I'm 30 now). Let's wait 20 years or so before we make any conclusions as to how this has affected the interest of girls in more scientific pursuits.
Additionally, I think that girls largely base their self-worth on the opinions of other girls, and girl-geekery, I suspect, is not celebrated largely within the female community just yet.
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(The file is called sex.pdf , don't be alarmed, totally sfw!)
In this one they used mobiles, not engines. There is another study out there that is with 12 m/os that does use engines, cars, etc that gets the same results. It's all in "The Essential Difference" by Simon Ba
What! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a boy, and I've met girls who I'm better at math than.
Therefore boys are better at math than girls.
Heh, stupid girls probably can't even follow simple basic logic like that ;-)
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one.
Ok then, so in most of the western world, boys are better than girls at maths...
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, but what they're trying to emphasize is that gender is not the discriminating factor. Rather, culture is. So your statement is kind of misleading in that it emphasizes gender as the discriminating factor, and subjugates "western world" into a circumstantial factor.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The title shouldn't be "Girls = Boys at Math", it should be "Boys better than Girls at maths, but for cultural reasons, not gender related reasons."
I imagine that this title would never be chosen because it's either not politically correct enough, or not attention grabbing, regardless of it's accuracy
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
My sister (we're twins) consistently kicked my ass at math and just about everything else, right up until we got to 10th grade or thereabouts. Then she turned into a vacuous fashion fiend with god-awful grades who liked hanging out with other vacuous fashion fiends.
I think peer pressure has a lot to do with how kids perform at things like math. Math is not cool, therefore if you want to be cool then you have to suck at math, or generally just suck at school.
I always got good grades, but I was also good at sports and generally avoided the "jock" scene and the do-nothing i'm-so-cool rich kid crowds. I'm kind of proud at having been able to achieve that balance.
Thankfully she grew out of it eventually, but not in time to do rather badly in high school. It's just as well she didn't need a scholarship to pay her way through college (where she did pretty good).
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Americans are better at counting than Brits, as Brits seem to think there is more than one math.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
It also says boys do 7% better in the maths portion of the SATs, but writes it off as a statistical illusion due to more girls doing the test (they don't know how averages work?).
I bet it wouldn't be a statistical illusion if the girls where the ones getting 7% better.
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What has happened is that a culture has formed among guys who don't do great in school that going to college is a waste of time. Women in general have less of this, and are more likely to try for college regardless of previous academic success. As a result, fewer guys take the SATs, but those that do represent tend to come from stronger academic backgrounds, raising the average for guys.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what happened is that achievement got redefined in a way which favors women.
Things like group work and lessening the impact of the critical thinking skills which used to be standard. Combined with in many places mixing the math courses up into a jumble so as to have "integrated math."
It might not be that way everywhere in the US, but the reason why girls have pretty much all of the high scores these days has more to do with changing the rules than anything to do with women.
I'm not suggesting that girls can't do math or that there's any reasonable conclusion to be drawn, but pretending that all the money being taken from educating boys to be used educating in a female friendly way has consequences.
At some point, there just needs to be a disparity. If women for whatever reason don't want to take engineering CSC or some highly technical course of study, I'm not sure why that needs to be "fixed."
Seriously, I might have misunderstood feminism, but I thought the point was to increase choices and achievement not force new equally restrictive constraints on women while also screwing over men to achieve it.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, I might have misunderstood feminism, but I thought the point was to increase choices and achievement not force new equally restrictive constraints on women while also screwing over men to achieve it.
> Seriously, I might have misunderstood feminism, but I thought the point was to increase choices and achievement while also screwing over men to achieve it.
There, fixed that for you. :)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
It also says boys do 7% better in the maths portion of the SATs, but writes it off as a statistical illusion due to more girls doing the test (they don't know how averages work?).
They wanted to do the statistics and provide figures. But the study was done by a group of 5 women - The math was too hard. =)
That's why a 7% gap with 1.5 million participants is just a "statistical illusion". If their confidence boundary with that many data points equates 7% with "Zip. Zilch. Nada.", their standard deviations must have been huge.
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They wanted to do the statistics and provide figures. But the study was done by a group of 5 women - The math was too hard. =)
That's why a 7% gap with 1.5 million participants is just a "statistical illusion". If their confidence boundary with that many data points equates 7% with "Zip. Zilch. Nada.", their standard deviations must have been huge.
Orrrrr, you could read the next sentence of the article: "You're dipping farther down into the distribution of female talent, which brings down the score," Hyde says.
What he's arguing - right or wrong is unknown, but we'd have to look at the data instead of just a summary - is that the group of girls taking the test goes from, say, the 40th percentile up, while the group of boys taking the test goes from, say, the 60th percentile up [numbers greatly exaggerated for clarity]. Because of more boys saying, "
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to TFA more girls than boys do the SAT, doesn't give whether more boys than girls did other tests, but the article implies girls outnumber boys. It also says boys do 7% better in the maths portion of the SATs, but writes it off as a statistical illusion due to more girls doing the test (they don't know how averages work?). I bet it wouldn't be a statistical illusion if the girls where the ones getting 7% better
Orrrrr, you could read the next sentence of the article: "You're dipping farther down into the distribution of female talent, which brings down the score," Hyde says.
What he's arguing - right or wrong is unknown, but we'd have to look at the data instead of just a summary - is that the group of girls taking the test goes from, say, the 40th percentile up, while the group of boys taking the test goes from, say, the 60th percentile up [numbers greatly exaggerated for clarity]. Because of more boys saying, "bah, I'm only at the 50th percentile, it's not worth taking it and doing poorly," fewer boys take the test and the average for boys is higher... This actually is a statistical illusion, if you believe his premise - that the smaller pool of boys taking the test is smaller because it doesn't include the lower-ranked students.
This premise does make some sense, too - due to gender-bias in our society, there are more blue-collar fields in which men can make a good living: carpentry, plumbing, electricians, auto mechanics, etc. Women are pressured away from those fields, so if they want a chance at a career, even if they have the same academic ability as the guy who gets a GED and goes on to be a successful plumber, they're going to try to go to college. No one hires a secretary, nursing or dental assistant, etc., without at least an associate's degree these days.
Re:What does it mean for boys to be better? (Score:5, Insightful)
My problem with this article is that it writes off a 7% difference as an illusion. And doesn't actually give any of the figures, just results (which I can't really trust without figures, especially after how the one figure they do include contradicts the article headline)
The Important Question.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Important Question.... (Score:5, Funny)
Thus, I hereby suggest hiring a transsexual robot to lead the next survey.
Re:The Important Question.... (Score:4, Funny)
No you insensitive clod, because if it was done by men the quantification would be way off!
Real Story is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Real Story is (Score:4, Interesting)
How does correcting an unfair imbalance equal hamstringing? More attention was paid to boys, and they did better. Now that teachers are giving more time to girls and teaching in a more gender neutral fashion, the scores are becoming more equal. If I give you something that I don't give to others, and then I take some of that away from you in order to more fairly distribute it, I am not hamstringing you.
Its sad, so many people have gotten used to having unfair advantage, they consider it their birthright. White males tend to be the worst whiners.
Re:Real Story is (Score:5, Interesting)
As mentioned on 60 minutes [cbsnews.com], "Girls outperform boys in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, and graduate school".
Does that sound very equal to you?
It goes somewhat against the grain of this report, but what this study seems to indicate is that, relative to their performance in other subject areas, girls aren't doing well in math.
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Of course, there's not enough information in TFA nor in the research.
If you give more of math to boys, and they develop better at it, do you know if you've challenged them and developed them to their maximum? If you take some away and redistribute it to the girls (or across racism/cultural/religious/socioeconomic/etc) then are you still challenging -any- of them to their maximum?
I'm white, and I'm whining because I don't want to see more dumb people.
Re:Real Story is (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in public school in the 80s and 90s none of my math teachers were men. Typically, a quarter to a half of our grade would be 'homework checks' or art posters where you draw a picture of issac newton and an apple. I was never in a class that you could even pass by just being able to understand and perform math.
So in my day girls had huge advantages in math classrooms, with sypathetic teachers and rote learning and grades based on following the rules -- and guys still did better in math. I can only image how hostile the classrooms are now. Judging by your id, back in your day maybe there was a bias for men but that has long since been overcorrected for.
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There is evidence that boys and girls learn better in different sorts of environments. Early one one claim was made that girls were too intimidated to participate in class because boys were loud and rambunctious, tending to interrupt, shouting out questions or answers. The "solution" was to force the boys to sit down and shut up so that the girls wouldn't be intimidated and therefore could learn better. the problem is that it now appears that this has been actively detrimental to boys' education because it
Re:Real Story is (Score:5, Insightful)
How about not formulating the teaching style based on what's between someone's legs and instead teaching to the individual. Splitting up kids and teaching boys and girls differently is just going reinforce the same cultural stereotypes that created the disparity in the first place. Aggressive girls and passive boys who don't live up to western heteronormative ideals are going to feel even more singled out.
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Good point, I was going to mention that. It's actually more complex, people have four different primary learning styles, and most schools only teach to one or two. It isn't just gender.
People can learn through hearing something, reading something, watching something, or doing something. Most schools only teach through lecture and books, with a relatively few demonstrations and lab activities for the other learning styles.
Re:Real Story is (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm sure if they spent all their time getting offended they wouldn't have done nearly as well.
Conflicting results? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait so:
result 1: While previously it had been believed that boys solved harder mathematics questions more adeptly, that trend has been reversed.
result 2: Our standardized test material contained no hard mathematics questions.
Does anyone see anything wrong with this? Their results may be true, but that doesn't mean the study was valid.
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Does seem like the study was designed to reach a predetermined conclusion, doesn't it?
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At least they half acknowledged that by lowering the overall standard the results were no longer valid, even if it was mentioned only in passing and not the focus of the article. Now, if it wasn't for the misleading headline and all that text...
I don't doubt that girls can be equally good at math as boys, but I've noticed that the interest is often just not there. And that's the real reason why men outnumber women in the math-intensive fields of science. Not because we're better at it, but because we're act
Yes, Real Results (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this study conclusively shows that:
there's no difference in outcomes based on gender.
Any other questions go unaddressed.
Personally, I'm interested in seeing further research based on the theories that there exist better teaching methods for both boys and girls, exploiting the respective differences in brain organization (I know, that kind of heresy gets you Larry Summers'ed.) We've trended towards LCD on those, from what I've heard folks in the field say. One researcher I heard recently was talking about how mental agility exercises used by the elderly can be adapted and customized to benefit younger individuals, even in specific subjects. Whether boys or girls would perform better on math, on average, with an optimized curriculum, I believe is an open question. And so what if a boy does better? There are a heck of a lot of things girls are better at, IMHO, and math isn't necessarily the pantheon of human knowledge. And, so what if a girl does better? Why do we care, again?
Re:Conflicting results? (Score:5, Insightful)
result 2: Our standardized test material contained no hard mathematics questions.
In a room with a low ceiling, a high percentage will jump the same height.
Re:Conflicting results? (Score:4, Funny)
Does anyone see anything wrong with this? Their results may be true, but that doesn't mean the study was valid.
But the study had a politically correct result! It must be valid! Blasphemer.
Explanation (Score:5, Funny)
The math in this study was done by girls.
Almost in MN (Score:5, Funny)
I was just commenting about this with a coworker this morning, and how the Minneapolis Star Tribune indicates Minnesota high school girls are still lagging behind boys. I said we just need to bump down the high school boys' performance a couple notches and we'll be good: no child left behind!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I said we just need to bump down the high school boys' performance a couple notches and we'll be good: no child left behind!
Shouldn't it be "No child out ahead?"
A girl answered a math problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been sort of disheartened by the quality of math instruction in the US lately, and it's got nothing to do with gender. It certainly seems like newer students lack a lot of the critical math skills that were drilled into my head years ago, based on my limited exposure to new people entering the job market/taking the occasional class here and there.
obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
Pregnancy Gap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pregnancy Gap (Score:5, Insightful)
Fallacy of the Irrelevant Conclusion [wikipedia.org]. Neither boys nor girls can ever become pregnant at age 10, but they can have mathematical ability which can be measured. Since these measurements are central to this debate, your analogy is inappropriate and misleading.
Further pregnancy, as a characteristic of the of the sexes, can in fact be said to define what "boy" and "girl" actually stand for, making your statement a tautology [wikipedia.org].
Though droll, your argument is invalid.
easy deduction: (Score:5, Funny)
white boys should breed with asian girls, creating an uberrace of math chomping supergenius kids
i for one welcome our eurasian einsteinchan overlords
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone who has dated a geek girl knows that misogyny is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem that girls geared toward science and math face from other girls who will be absolutely VICIOUS in putting them down.
All that proves is that girls have tribal behavior just like boys, and will ostracize anyone who is different. That says nothing about the *average* intrinsic abilities of men and women.
Personally, I don't understand why there is even any debate that men and women are different. Somehow we're supposed to believe that men and women are physically different in nearly every way -- except for the brain. Evolution clearly decided to make the brains identical for political reasons.
People need to lighten up. We're talking about averages. Women can have traditionally male traits, and men can have traditionally female traits.
On the other hand, consider this, just to introduce some controversy (:D) -- there is no case where the world's best female athlete can beat the world's best male athlete at any physical sport. Could this truth also apply to certain narrow cases of neurology? [either male or female].
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Somehow we're supposed to believe that men and women are physically different in nearly every way -- except for the brain.
If you believe men and women are physically different in nearly every way, you've missed out on a lot of biology, anatomy, and genetics.
On the other hand, consider this, just to introduce some controversy (:D) -- there is no case where the world's best female athlete can beat the world's best male athlete at any physical sport. Could this truth also apply to certain narrow cases of neurology? [either male or female].
Absolutely, since it's not a "truth" at all. Aside from all the physical sports that women can compete equally in - fencing, for instance - when you standardize by scale, disparities frequently disappear.
For example: Florence Griffith-Joyner is 5'6-1/2" and holds the women's world record for 100m at 10.49s. She ran 5.64 times her height every second. Leroy Burrell, the men
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Personally, I don't understand why there is even any debate that men and women are different. Somehow we're supposed to believe that men and women are physically different in nearly every way -- except for the brain. Evolution clearly decided to make the brains identical for political reasons.
How exactly do you arrive at "physically different in nearly every way?" Smaller with an outside-in penis and very minor differences in hormone balances really isn't even close to every way. Seems like a very distinct, very small minority of ways to me. We are all made of the same stuff, we all have the same body temperature, we all have the same shape, our muscles all work on the same principles of physics, we eat the same foods, inter-sex blood transfusions and even organ transplants are common enough,
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:4, Informative)
Not controversy, plain wrong
I don't know if you're just trying to be funny or not, but just in case, you'll note that Bobby Riggs was 55 years old and hardly the best male tennis player in the world, but gave Billie Jean King an actual competitive match. She only won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Of course, earlier Riggs had humiliated Margaret Court, age 30 and the best female player in the world, 6-2, 6-1.
Sometime in the 80s, Martina Navratilova was asked about this generally, and she was quoted as saying she would lose to the 100th ranked male player.
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That women--under the burden of this construct--also assist in perpetuating these divisions, is an argument IN SUPPORT of its existence and its ongoing effects; NOT of it being "made up" to "sell" "feminism".
Just how foot binding, arranged mariages, and bride-burning are all strongly enforced
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:5, Interesting)
I ahve an 8 year old daughter, and I see this behaviour in girls a little older then here.
I ahve been talking to a lot of my female coworkrs about girl behaviour.
So far I ahve this conclusion:
Girls are fucking mean.
They'll intentionally talk smack about some when they know they are listening but not part of the conversation.
what the hell is that about?
Girls will build someone up just to bring them down. Seriously, WTF?
As a guy we said what was on our mind and sometimes tossed some fists around. The it was done.
None of this planning to revenge some slight for days.
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously. Anyone who has dated a geek girl knows that misogyny is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem that girls geared toward science and math face from other girls who will be absolutely VICIOUS in putting them down.
Unless you're only talking about high school (where most kids are vicious, whether you're geeky or fat or wierd or anything else they don't like) other girls are NOT the biggest problem for geek girls. In college, I took mostly geeky classes, so I was either the only girl or the other girls were just as geeky as me, so I didn't see non-geeky girls who would put me down to often. Once I got out of school, it became even easier to avoid girls who would judge me for being geeky. But you know who I can't avoid? Geek guys. So, even if more girls are cruel than geek guys are sexist, the geek guys affect me much more than anti-geek girls ever could. Everytime I try to explain something technical to a guy and he decides I must not know what I'm talking about, it hurts me and can (and probably has) hurt my career. When a more experienced tech at my current job started to take me under his wing and mentor me, and then completely stopped talking to me after I stopped wearing makeup (yes, I'm serious), that sexism hurts me more than all the comments girls made behind my back in high school. Now I get to wonder if it's worth stooping to the pettiness and wearing makeup again so I can get back in the good graces of someone who could probably help me a lot here, or if it would be wrong to try to move up solely on the base of my appearance, and I get to wonder if all the other guys here are just as sexist but less blatant about it. That's far from the only example of sexism I've experienced, it's just the most recent. Hands down, sexist guys are much more of a problem for geeky girls than anti-geeky girls are.
No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Girls have more fear of math. They are not worse at it. The typical observation is that girls do not dare try it, while boys perform badly and do not mind. This is a cultural problem, not a capability issue. Same is, incidentially, true ofr technology: Girls are afraid to touch it, while boys break it.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Funny)
So the real headline should be (Score:5, Insightful)
Girls just as good as boys at today's easier math?
Frankly, I've never bought that old CW about girls being worse at math than boys... especially since I met and married my math-major wife in college, who has always been much better at math than I am. It may be true that boys are more _interested_ in math than girls, and thus pursue it and are successful at it more often, but that's a completely different thing from saying that girls are somehow innately "worse" at math.
I think xkcd sums it up nicely. (Score:3, Informative)
Remember what Barbie said: (Score:3, Funny)
Missed the point (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed. (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference is in motivation - they simply are not interested.
After all, I am sure that all of us could spend hours doing many of the things and jobs that women find so fascinating (fashion, cooking, PA, advertising, sales etc) perfectly competantly - but its true that we simply do not want to.
What are they measuring? (Score:4, Interesting)
Judging high-end mathematics aptitude by looking at low-end mathematics test scores is no way to run a study. Anyone can learn mathematics well enough to get a decent score on the SAT; it would be like using rudimentary literacy as the measure of Pulitzer prize potential. What next, flipping burgers at McDonald's will make you the next Iron Chef? No one seriously doubted that males and females learn mathematics with similar aptitude in any case, so this seems to be a combination strawman and low-rent dig at Larry Summers that misses the point more than anything.
The controversy, which is not very controversial, has to do with differences in genders to directly manipulate certain kinds of complex system models mentally. While it tends to manifest in some areas of applied mathematics, it does not reflect any ability to learn mathematics per se.
SEX DIFFERENCES IN MATHEMATICAL APTITUDE (Score:5, Interesting)
All BS (Score:3, Insightful)
We think that since we discovered what DNA is and have a caveman's understanding of how genes work, we can be an omniscient god and figure out each individuals pre-determined fate. I think that, especially in the science crowd, the Nature aspect is way overblown compared to the Nurture part of it.
You're certainly not gonna convince me it's nature by some craptastic standardized math test.
Easier test questions - no child left behind (Score:4, Insightful)
Add some financial incentive via state and federal funding and it's now become important to not only the teachers but the schools to turn out students that excel on those standardized tests.
Being creative people, the school administrators found that the best and easiest way to obtain those high scores on the tests was to make the tests easier. The companies providing the tests were happy to comply with the wishes of their best (and only) customers.
Combine this with high school classes where half or more of the final grade is based on attendance (!) and what kind of education do you think our children are really getting?
Until puberty (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I was in 5th grade, there were 2-3 girls in my computer class that were much better programmers than I. Much better.
Fast forward to today. They're housewives. I'm a Software Engineer. It's sad and disheartening. I wish there were more women in my field.
It's like puberty fried their brains completely. If it weren't for that I could easily envision them being much better at what I do than I am. But something happened in the intervening years. The only thing that makes any sense is puberty. Until that point the differences between boys and girls are superficial, but prior to that they were much better at it than I was.
I'd like to see the results of this experiment re-run on the same people when they're in their late 20s or early thirties.
What I've seen (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I've seen reported on the study, the authors were looking at averages being the same. That's what I've seen over the years as well. What I've also seen is the standard deviation for boys is greater. Boys are usually at the bottom, the middle and the top with the girls usually clustered in the center. Admittedly, my sample sizes are small and I'm looking at a self-selected group.
I've coached a Middle school math program called Mathcounts [mathcounts.org] for the past 12 years. I coach in a Mathcounts region just south of the Silicon Valley. The program is organized around annual competitions that are structured as a hierarchy: school/region/state/national. Winning at one step gains a student, or group of students, access to the next level of competition. We've managed to do well at the regional competition and have sent at least one kid to the state level 10 out of 12 years.
At the regional level, gender has never been an issue - we send as many girls as boys to state. At the state level, gender is most definitely an issue as the top 16 kids out of the 150 or so regional winners are overwhelmingly boys. You'll usually see a 2 to 1 ratio [mathcounts-ca.org] and sometimes the boy's will sweep the top 16. In the sample I cited, I counted 6 girls out the top 38 contestants. Remember, I'm talking about the top 1% of middle school children in California. Most of the top kids are Asian which means anybody from India to Japan.
A key difference I've seen between my Asian and non-Asian students has been their parents. If I have a strong Asian student, strong odds are that the kid's parents are first-generation immigrants. First-generation parents tend to emphasize excellence far more than parents who have been here awhile.
About Linux users and girls: (Score:3)
I disagree that Linux users don't have girlfriends. In fact it looks like your average Linux user is in his 30s, married, has one or two kids and complains that his kids are horribly behaved, and therefore is miserable.
Re:I don't understand this gender difference swing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I volunteer to be part of this experiment. Infact, I will give it my all!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we are all equally capable at math and cultural factors hold us back rather than propel us forward (example, technology). If anything, our ability to rely on technology is holding us back - as an example, its a culture shock for a lot of freshman college students to not use calculators.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Insightful)
So in your mind the geek community is exclusively male...? I think I see the problem here...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's predominantly male.
Obviously, you think that men are the only people who would be interested in fairness in this issue? Sounds like you've got a lot to learn.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Interesting)
Never in my life have I encountered a serious situation where the system favors girls or women over me. Not in school, not in business, not in anything beyond women getting to order first in restaurants. While girls have very slightly higher average scores in grade school and a slight majority when it comes to overall university attendance, the "advantage" is both very small and in my opinion caused by the fact that most girl-focused subcultures are more compatible with academics than are those focused around boys.
I think that any blame in this imbalance has to fall on anti-intellectualism among boys.
Yeah, real equal. Women average better than men in most school subjects and more women than men go to university. There are loads of female dominated jobs and academic subjects, yet no affirmative action for us. When women want to work a 25 hr week in a career that's "rewarding", the feminists complain that women average lower salaries.
That's feminism: When men are doing better at something "Men and women are equals, the men must have had an unfair advantage!". When women are doing better, "Men and women have different brains and are good at different things!"
When will the geek community use their intelligence and realise when that they're being shafted?
Re:I, for one (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that any blame in this imbalance has to fall on anti-intellectualism among boys.
I wholeheartedly agree. Look at the difference in culture here. Girls have feminism. All their lives they're told that they're wonderful and special and have this innate power and value that comes from being a woman. Look at all the role models that women have in popular culture. In every movie and TV show, and especially in advertisements, women are always smart, always strong, always winners.
What are boys told? They are innately bad. Members of their sex are responsible for all the world's ills. Boys fall back on their instincts - they value themselves in terms of sexual conquests. They fall back on their instincts to achieve those. And the instincts serve them well all through high school, and they manage to feel okay. It's ok to cut school, ok to put all your time and attention into some stupid car (for example) because that gets you sex, and that makes you worth something.
Basically it's like you said, anti-intellectualism.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Insightful)
Never in my life have I encountered a serious situation where the system favors girls or women over me. Not in school, not in business, not in anything beyond women getting to order first in restaurants.
I recall at the end of high school, when I was looking at scholarships to fund my higher education, that there were plenty of scholarships available that had a gender or racial requirement, making me ineligible. That is a situation where women had a real advantage over me. One of the universities I was applying for also had a quota for both races and genders, which meant women with lower test scores were admitted aver men with higher test scores. Again, that clearly favored women over me.
Now it is entirely possible that other social factors provided males an advantage over women, like math teachers who wrote recommendations that subconsciously took into account their prejudices about gender. Still, if you didn't see anything that did not clearly favor women, either times have changed or you were independently wealthy.
I'd also note that while participating in hiring a technical writer for a tech start-up I worked at, we hired on a woman who was clearly less qualified than one of the male candidates. This might be because all the other writers were women, but I also overheard comments from a higher up manager about our company "needing more women" as we were mostly men simply because the field we worked in is mostly dominated by men. We actually went out of our way several times to hire women when possible, but most of them ended up being less than competent and were eventually let go. Whatever the case, women were given preferential treatment in several cases.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe when you've been on the receiving end of oppression for 10,000 years, maybe when you live in a society that isn't geared toward promoting the dominance of your sex, maybe when you weren't raised in an environment of almost absolute privilege, you get to complain. But on the whole, the fact that you might be complaining that women are smarter than you and dominate a few areas of the job market, while still lagging significantly behind in most others, is just fucking pathetic.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have data to back up that claim?
When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.
Note that most comparisons do *not* do this (eg: they frequently average salaries for men and women across the entire workforce), because they are trying to support an agenda.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Informative)
When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.
I don't think you are correct. I remember reading a study a year ago that compared men and women's salaries for the same jobs and levels of education and experience and the results were women paid 15% less overall (25% less when one only looked at the private sector).
I don't recall who the study was by and Google does not turn it up right away. Do you have a source for your claim?
I'd also like to note that even if there is reliable data showing men and women make the same amount for the same job (with the same qualifications, experience, hours, etc.) that does not necessarily indicate equality as it allows for it to be harder for women to get high paying jobs. For example, if you look at all the people who are CFO's for fortune 500 companies and determine that the men and women make about the same, but 90% of those CFO's are men, that could very easily be an indication that it is harder for women to get those jobs because of discrimination. Alternately, it could indicate that for social reasons women are less likely to go into a career track that would lead them to such a position. The point being, same pay for the same job is not conclusive evidence of no gender discrimination.
NEW BUSINESS PLAN (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Hire ONLY FEMALES
3. Give them a 5% increase in standard industry wage
4. Undercut all those FOOLS that have male employees
5. Skip step 6
6. ??????????
7. PROFIT!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This article [iwf.org] claims that A study of the gender wage gap conducted by economist June O' Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that women earn 98 percent of what men do when controlled for experience, education, and number of years on the job..
Of course, women are now graduating college at higher rates than men [thelantern.com]. There was a recent study mentioned in the New York Times [nytimes.com] which claims that in US urban areas, women 21-30 earned more on average than men (as high as 120% in Dallas), altho
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.
So one woman CEO at one company in the U.S. solves the world's sex discrimination problems?
Note that most comparisons do *not* do this (eg: they frequently average salaries for men and women across the entire workforce), because they are trying to support an agenda.
Assuming men and women have equal opportunities, such an average i