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176 Comments
- MalarkeyPN, on 06/02/2009, -10/+83While we're on this topic, why is no one concerned about the fact that boys consistently lag behind girls in reading skills? Are we to reject the notion that boys are innately better at math than girls, but accept that girls are innately better readers than boys?
And another thing! Why are 55% of college students female? Isn't it about time we started giving a ***** about boys too? - Tanktunker, on 06/02/2009, -10/+59If the roast will cook at 200 degrees in 3 hours, how long will it take to cook at 250 degrees?
- CptBuck, on 06/02/2009, -0/+43FTA "While speaking at an event, Summers stated that males are intrinsically smarter than females in science and engineering."
He said no such thing. Summers suggested that there was evidence that for males there was more statistical variation in math/science/engineering aptitude. In other words, let's imagine that there are 3 men and 3 women. Current evidence suggests that their average math/science/engineering abilities would all be equal, let's call that number 5. All three women, however, would score 5s. The men, on the other hand, would score a 0, a 5, and a 10. Those differences, and nothing cultural, or intrinsically "better" about males account for the higher ratio of men in high level math/science/engineering.
Freakonomics blog has an excellent article on this. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/l ... - hackerbiatch, on 06/02/2009, -6/+47Don't ask me. I'm just a girl. *Giggles*
- Bloodwine, on 06/02/2009, -1/+33My wife is a math professor, but I will say that as a whole, women do not gravitate towards math, engineering, and the hard sciences. Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about, because it seems silly that there are people who are so obsessed with making sure there is some sort of rainbow diversity representation in every single field.
Just let people do what they enjoy. I don't think there is a huge prejudice against women in these fields, it's just that they aren't what women generally fancy, and it's silly to go out of your way to market a field to those not really excited about it. That's a good way to ensure they change their fields mid-career and leave you with a gaping hole. - EvilDr.X, on 06/02/2009, -0/+30The computer science(90% male) building at my university doubles as the nursing(90% female) building, in what I'm convinced is some sort of wonderful, philanthropic social engineering project.
- IKORKYI, on 06/02/2009, -2/+31"equal opportunity," "affirmative action," and "workplace diversity" do not make the playing field fair...they just tip it in the other direction.
is there really an inherant prejudice against minorities and women? I haven't seen it. I've seen men get promoted instead of women and i've seen black students fail out of college - but it wasn't due to some invisible racism/sexism of their fellow employees...it was their own shortcomings. In fact, i've seen irrefutable evidence that professors grade minority and female students in mechanical engineering at university of delaware less harshly than their more prevalent white males. As a white male, it made me angry - but i'm now better for it. UD failed those women and minorities by not pushing them as hard as the pushed me. However, affirmative action has worked for me...It was also easier for me to get into grad school because graudate programs were drooling for more white males and less international/female students... i wish i knew i was here on my own merit instead of *maybe* getting here because i have a white, American penis.
we're grouping all the people that don't deserve "it" with the people who do deserve "it" who normally wouldn't get "it" -and that's dangerous.
you don't go about fixing it by having an unbalanced decision making process for acceptance/hiring. you go about fixing it by getting better teachers in failing public schools and having motivated female teachers inspiring young women. you have to earn it to own it. - DLit, on 06/02/2009, -2/+27SHES A WITCH!
- inactive, on 06/02/2009, -12/+36In other news, blacks suck at basketball: It's culture that's skewed.
- pstroll, on 06/02/2009, -2/+23The computer science building at my university was 90% male (we weren't sure about the other 10%). The building was also sufficiently segregated from the rest of the campus (moat + high wall) so that the rest of the student body wouldn't have to gaze upon the hideous monsters that dwelt within.
- halohunter, on 06/02/2009, -1/+18How about nursing? Every guy that does nursing because he likes the sound of it is ridiculed and pronounced gay. I think its like 99% female at my uni.
- JinxCrow, on 06/02/2009, -1/+15Well. We treat babies differently according to their gender. They've done studies (via observation) of what people do when handed a boy or a girl.
Girls are spoken to more, so I assume that's why we would excel in communication-related activities.
Boys are usually given toys and left to play.
The way we treat girls seems to create a dependence upon each other, the boys seem to be treated as rather independent beings. - Nerotique, on 06/02/2009, -0/+14Actually, the accepted statistic is 60% of college students are female. 55% are graduating, which means that less than 40% of the average college population will be filled with males that will graduate. But yeah, I totally agree. When WILL we start giving a ***** about boys?
- resueht, on 06/02/2009, -0/+13Maybe if you're in Algebra, but most of my math classes now are all very conceptual. The girl I helped in Calc 2 ended up helping me in Calc 3.
- acknotSW, on 06/02/2009, -0/+13More of a themodynamics/heat transfer question then a math question; although you would need some dif eq to solve it and in that regard, you havn't provided enough information.
- Pake, on 06/02/2009, -3/+16They completely ignored how the material is being taught in this study. For the past 10 to 20 years in the US, the teaching style in schools have shifted to favor girls more than boys, especially in math and science where a huge emphasis was put on helping girls and just leaving boys alone with the assumption that they'll just get it. In the end, anyone can "get" anything, it just matters how they learn it, how they were taught it, and how much they worked at it.
- randomstuff42, on 06/02/2009, -1/+14REAP! REAP!!!!!
- seroevo, on 06/02/2009, -2/+14This is a good example of skewing data.
What that article doesn't mention is that the International Math Olympiad is optional and not required, even if you're enrolled in math classes throughout high school.
Basically, the article is comparing the results of girls who interested in math versus guys who are interested in math, where the entire sample are people into and good at math. It's not comparing the genders as a whole, because there isn't data for the people who didn't take the test.
Off the bat though you get this passive aggressive fallacy:
"Just as boys tend to gravitate to toy trucks and girls usually prefer dolls, the gender differences in math performance have more to do with culture than aptitude." - happytrees, on 06/02/2009, -3/+15***** that, the only thing that could make college better is more girls. and if the ratio is 70/30, maybe even the computer science majors will get some play.
- ganymede2010, on 06/02/2009, -1/+13I don't know about you all but when I was in School chic's always had better grades. They never forgot to turn in their homework, their handwriting was superior, and they were nice enough to let me copy their work.
- inactive, on 06/02/2009, -1/+12winnar!
- JinxCrow, on 06/02/2009, -1/+12Like the Barbie said : "Math is hard!"
- zomgwaffles, on 06/02/2009, -2/+12that's going to be a really dry roast if you cook it for 3 hours.
- kihadat, on 06/02/2009, -2/+12Yes, most black people suck at basketball. Most people, in fact, suck at basketball.
- pimpofpixels, on 06/02/2009, -4/+14The catch is that there're just as many women as men on this planet. If it's a cultural problem then it's the women too who have defined that culture.
- bradmw2, on 06/02/2009, -1/+10Men are way better than women at emotions and relationships, we're not ***** nuts.
- lorddazzer, on 06/02/2009, -0/+8SHE TURNED ME INTO A NEWT!
- sanskrtam, on 06/02/2009, -5/+13My mom and my sister are math nerds. Mom is a math major and sis is a statistic freak.
And I'm a male who can't do math... but do very well in classical literature, linguistics, and anthropology.
It's all about family culture for me. - jessemoya, on 06/02/2009, -2/+10"I haven't seen it" can result from a lot of things. I don't know you or where you're from, but I do know this is said in situations were people are turning a blind eye.
I'm not a white male, but I am a male, and I know that it's difficult to fully understand all the ways that each of us are privileged in this society. It's much easier to see the ways in which we are not. - neelshiv, on 06/02/2009, -2/+10Some experts say nature, and some experts say nurture. I took an assload of psych classes, and we all came to the conclusion that it was a combination of the two.
Of course, by eliminating pure nature and pure nurture, you inadvertently admit that nature will always be an issue, while nurture can be eliminated. Of course, none of this is known for sure. - neelshiv, on 06/02/2009, -0/+7against?
- morepowerr, on 06/02/2009, -7/+14Over 70% of all collage grades are female. In a country where the economy is based on consumers. Female have 83% of the buying power. 98% of the sexual power. And 100% of the reproduction power.
With women crying reap on every guy they ever *****. And sexual harassment on every man that even looks at them. Male's can't go out of the house unless to go to work or go to war. - ell0bo, on 06/02/2009, -0/+7Not at 200, 350 for about 45 minutes (hour if you don't like blood) is standard. Now I know thermal infusion into meat isn't linear, so I'm going to guess at 2/3 heat, 3 hours isn't all that bad actually. Although if I'm cooking something that long, I'll toss it in the crock pot that cooks about 200 degrees and usually you can have it cook for 4 hours (depends how much water you put in).
Engineering is applied science, cooking is applied chemistry! - passedoutghost, on 06/02/2009, -0/+7Less than 3 hours.
- macshaggy, on 06/02/2009, -3/+10Everytime I hear a girl bemoan Math and states that they can't do it I want to scream. I have two nieces and they are doing better than I am in Calculus. In fact one of them has been tutoring me over the Internet. Gender bias is stupid. Just like the idea that there are separate races. Separate ethnicities but we are all human. Girls and boys can have the same success in school if teachers stop biasing both sexes by their gender.
- christoast, on 06/02/2009, -4/+11http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_anxiety
Mathematics and women:
Related to this is gender and mathematics as younger female scholars are thought to develop anxiety towards mathematics and sciences when they become more interested in social relations in their teen years. It is thought that women experience more anxiety in mathematics as a group than men and this has also been suggested in regards computer programming. See for instance [Copper, Joel, & Weaver D, Kimberlee. Gender and Computers: "Understanding the Digital Divide"] who explore computing and gender and especially have done experiments relating gender and anxiety
LOL! - appleofdischord, on 06/02/2009, -0/+6Obviously you were not one of them. Otherwise you'd know that 8 is an insufficient sample size to generalize to a population as large as the United States, for example.
- dlan4327, on 06/02/2009, -0/+6You lied to all of us!
hackerbiatch
A male from New Zealand (Aotearoa) who joined Digg on May 1st, 2007 - Snooper1989, on 06/02/2009, -0/+6I got better...
- appleofdischord, on 06/02/2009, -0/+6This is a general trend in IQ as well. Although your simplification is a bit misleading. Men and women can be just as smart or stupid. There are more men at either extremes then there are women.
- Animan351, on 06/02/2009, -1/+7Your research will only be true if you are impartial to the outcome or there's absolutely no way to interpret the results in your favor.
I'm not at all saying that women aren't as good at math as men are because I don't know myself. But this study was headed by a woman who very much wanted to show that women are just as good,and like any study, if the researcher has a bias it will effect the outcome. Some one else wanting to do a study to show that men are better at math would wind up finding just that as well.
- arleym, on 06/02/2009, -0/+5My wife (nuclear engineer) used to take her Dad's text books to the cottage for "summer fun" (he's a calculus prof).
I remember BEDMAS. That's it. - morepowerr, on 06/02/2009, -1/+6Most news sites in the US say it is closer to 70% female graduating in US. And of them less 5% of the males are from white working class background.
- MalarkeyPN, on 06/02/2009, -0/+5One other possible reason the women were the "calculators" apart from innate gender differences: the men were carrying the guns. :p
- badenglishihave, on 06/02/2009, -1/+6You make a great point.
Case in point: at my school I had an engineering professor who had an article on his door that suggested we shouldn't push women into engineering just to increase the amount of female engineers, instead just letting women pursue a career that interests them.
A female engineering friend of mine (the only one in my EE graduating class of 21 students) took offense to the article. However, once she got out in the work world she discovered she didn't like engineering. She had originally just wanted to be a hairdresser.
Does this mean all women don't want to be engineers? No, it just means that we should let people pursue what they want. We need to stop forcing people to "diversify" for the sake of diversification. - ByteMeAHole, on 06/02/2009, -1/+6Few people realize that a "Calculator" was originally a person employed to perform calculations; addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They were primarily employed to calculate trajectory tables for weapons during the war, and invariably they were women. The reason was that women were more meticulous, so as a result there were fewer errors in the tables, and accuracy meant fewer fatalities due to errors. Those are the simple facts. Women are more observant than men - again a repeatable test, verified over and over. (This is on average, since specific cases follow a standard statistical variance, so individually things are more muddied.)
Men tend to excel in the more abstract levels of mathematics, and physics. This is why on a numbers basis at the Bachelor level in college, women tend to out-perform men in many of these fields, but at the PhD level, men far exceed the number of women that graduate and win Nobel prizes. All of the various programs designed to benefit women fail - the reason is simply because men and women are different - thank the gods. Men excel in spatial manipulation and projections - this has been verified repeatedly and isn't effected by society - it just is... Hormones have wired us differently - the wise person plays to their strengths, rather than their weaknesses and doesn't worry about "what they should be good at".
While people can stick their head in the sand and wish that things weren't as they are it doesn't make it so. - TheHayze, on 06/02/2009, -2/+7If this is all true, then i'd had preferred more women in my programming and math classes in College. Would have made it much more interesting.
- lekahe, on 06/02/2009, -10/+15I agree! Girls are not encouraged in math!
I lived in an environment where the ability of girls was never questioned and I had real fun beating the boys in math classes :)
In Finland on high school level boys usually choose the "long math" courses whether they are good in it or not and the girls choose the "short math". What a waste! - jessemoya, on 06/02/2009, -2/+6It's not that people are obsessed with diversifying every field so much as allowing for equal access to those who want to do, just as you said, what they enjoy. Why should it be harder for a woman to pursue a career in mathematics? Because other people think she is inherently less capable based on what amounts to superstition?
The reason people are making such a big deal of things like this is so that we can get past it as a culture. Hopefully it won't be such a big deal for future generations if we do things right in our generation. - rockstar1o9, on 06/02/2009, -5/+9Girls Get Meth?
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