Open debate: Girls and Math

[mindstalk]

Today has reports of a study that not only do girls do as well as boys in math on average, but in some countries they do as well at the extremes, or have as much variability, contra the "males are more variable, with more geniuses and more morons" hypothesis. I shared this with friends on AIM, got different reactions, and figured I'd open a space for them to talk to each other, along with anyone else interested. Let me know if friends-locking this post would make it safer to talk openly.

The researchers speculate about cultural effects such as prejudice in teachers and guidance counselors; a friend thinks women keep each other down, by punishing exotic behavior.

I have little direct opinion or facts of my own to contribute, though my parents raised me with a belief that girls get told they're bad at math. A Texas girl at Caltech told me of her mother teaching her to play dumb to catch guys. A couple of female students at IU whom I tutored in "finite math" claimed they'd done okay in math until 5th grade (age 10); I think one mentioned discouragement from the teacher.) Me, I find "I'm bad at math" to be a big turn-off, especially if pitched as an inherent failing, rather than as a lack of practice a la my own minimal art skills. My default assumption is egalitarian, but "males are more variable" seems pretty plausibly on reproductive logic grounds; if you can manipulate a risk-reward tradeoff in one's offspring, it makes sense to roll the dice more for your sons than for your daughters. Though we're not a harem species, so that's somewhat bounded.

Tangentially, googling finds this article alleging Finnish girls get better math scores (grades?) but don't know it as well.

* "only eight of 180 tenured professors at the nation's top five mathematics departments, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, were women"
* "Math prepares you to do just about anything"

Comments

hip teen girls' math books

[montyy0.livejournal.com]

an attempt to remedy one take on this:

http://www.mathdoesntsuck.com/

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Girls do better in math here as well, I believe. Nation-wideish.

I can say that in the Math-C (Calculus) class I teach there's 60% females and 40% males. The top tier are seven females and three males. In the Social Science math class I teach there's one male and twelve females reaching the top grade, but that class is 85% females to start with.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

...I'd also add to the Male Genius Variance Hypothesis that I see no evidence of that in class.

The best math students, those who show the most intuitive grasp of difficult problems, are in both my classes females. In fact, if I'd have to pick my five best students (in the manner of Capable of Doing Real Hard Math) they'd all be female. That's expected, sort of, because I mostly teach females as the classes are female-majority. (It isn't just in math. The best students in Geography and Science tend to be females too. If anything the males are doing worse than their proportion would have them do.)

I suspect it simply is a bias of social tradition and gender roles, in a more equal society the females will produce just as many math geniuses and morons as males do. If the traits for math are partially genetic 22 out of 23 pairs are rolled basically the same for males and females and if society is relatively gender-neutral I wouldn't expect anything else.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

X chromosome provides an easy way for some traits to be higher variance, of course; not sure if you could pull it off otherwise, with less buffering or faster growth in development. And autism and Asperger's are allegedly male-heavy.

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

There's been some recent research suggesting that autism is simply under-diagnosed in women rather than affecting men disproportionately.

As for the OP, I have only anecdata to offer, but I suspect that in the US, beginning at the high school level, math skills are at least partially correlated to course/career choice. I have no natural love for math, but I managed As and high Bs as long as I was required to be there. As the work got more difficult, I paid less attention to it in favor of the classes I liked. I swung a B in trigonometry my junior year of high school and never even bothered to take calculus. I'm sure I'd have taken more math and continued to do tolerably well at it if I'd had any intention of majoring (or working) in a field that required me to do so.

(Sorry to hop in, by the way--followed you from fpb's journal.)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Debatable. If we're talking codominant traits women might have larger variance simply from having more genetic material.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Any idea why Calc is female-loaded? What are the male students doing with their lives?

"Social science" sounds like it might be a female-heavy subject, but I don't know.

I'd have shared your last math-teacher post around, if it weren't locked; 'twas interesting.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

The trend in higher ed (in the US) is female-loaded in general, I think? You've probably seen this since it's old news: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html

[pompe.livejournal.com]

We don't have optionals in a way as I think you do in the US.

Students choose programmes which means they always take certain courses. Math is a straight path A - E, five courses, plus two special bonus ones which are fully optional. Social Science Programme only take A - B*, but most choose C as an optional and a few also choose D (but that's rare). Natural Science Programme is A - D, so then of course every student has to do C & D as well (that includes calculus).

These programmes are what I guess you might classify as "College Preparatory", all students are basically expected to go to university. (Example: Any student doing regular Social Science Programme are expected to do Math A+B, General Science A+B, History A+B, Swedish A+B+C, English A+B, Modern Language A, Religion A+B, Civics A+B and so on.)

And as these theoretical focus programmes (Social and Natural) are female-dominated (whereas many practical programmes are male-dominated), that means more females do advanced math. I mean, my school probably has 70% female students, if not more. I'd guess the Natural Science students are about 60/40 female/male and the Social Science are 80/20.

*I'm not sure about American math, but what I've seen of GED math questions make that kind of math basically on fairly basic Math A course level.

[februaryfour]

I've been thinking (not all that much, but the thought crossed my mind a few times) of going to school to learn to _teach_ math.

[lyceum-arabica.livejournal.com]

if girls do lose interest in math around age 10, that's interesting. Studies have shown there *is* a gender gap in math when it comes to specific basic skills... boys tend to do better at long arithmatic, girls tend to do better at algebra.... of course, the way the US system is set up, if you *don't* sort out how to do well at long arithmatic when you're 10, you're taken out of the skilled math track, and theb you don't see algebra for another 4-5 years. Which seems a bit absurd... there's no reason we couldn't be teaching algbra, geometry and discrete math to everyone in 3rd grade... all you need to know is how to add to do the basics.