
Math Looks the Same in the Brains of Boys and Girls, Study Finds - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/11/08/777187543/math-looks-the-same-in-the-brains-of-boys-and-girls-study-finds
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spodek
> _Finally, a standardized test of mathematics ability found no difference
> between boys and girls._

> _So why are fields like mathematics and computer science so dominated by
> men?_

At that age, boys' and girls' hips, shoulders, and height show little
difference either. Should we wonder why men and women show differences in
basketball and tennis?

I'm not saying female and male brains grow differently after that age. I have
no idea. I'm saying that their data doesn't change anything about answering
why fields differ.

~~~
tzs
> I'm not saying female and male brains grow differently after that age. I
> have no idea.

The do develop differently after that age. The transition from a child brain
to the emotionally and cognitively more mature adult brain starts a few years
earlier in girls than in boys.

It starts at around 10 to 12 in girls, and around 15 to 20 in boys [1].

I suspect that this can lead to difference in what fields boys and girls end
up in for two reasons:

1\. It may be that the best way to teach a kid depends on where the kid is on
their child->adult brain transition. Trying to teach teen boys and girls in
the same classes, with the same material, at the same pace might mean that
half the class is being taught in a way that is geared toward people whose
brain does not work like theirs does.

2\. One of the big things you get better at and more interested in as your
brain becomes more adult is dealing with larger and more complicated social
networks. Just around the time that you are getting close to high school, and
you've finally got enough background to start getting to the good stuff in
STEM subjects--the girls are also getting to where social networks are a big
deal to them and they put effort into growing and maintaining their network.
That's still a few years away for the boys, who are still happy to spend hours
alone in front of a computer. By the time they get interested in people a few
years later, they are now firmly on their path to going into STEM.

I have a suspicion that we could largely close the gender gaps in STEM fields
by changing middle school and high school so that boys and girls are in
separate classes with separate curricula geared toward their different child->
adult brain development trajectories.

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-
news/105291...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-
news/10529134/Girls-really-do-mature-quicker-than-boys-scientists-find.html)

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xeeeeeeeeeeenu
So according to the article (the paper isn't linked anywhere, so I have to
rely on the reporting), the study found that men and women are using the same
parts of brain when they do math. That's a _completely_ unsurprising result.
Was anyone ever claiming that it is not the case?

However, I don't understand how the brain activity patterns can prove (or
disprove) that women and men have 100% equal ability to do math. I just don't
see the connection between those two things.

~~~
cmiles74
If you are coming from the point of view that males are better at math then
females, then the next thing to wonder is "why"? This study attempted to find
some factual backing for the most popular explanation: that there is a
biological difference between the brains of male and female people that causes
males to be better at math.

This study didn't find any such difference, in the study both gender's brains
worked in the same way. They studied children in an attempt to factor out some
other influences (i.e. societal).

~~~
rfhjt
Not so quickly. They didn't find any obvious differences in some basic coarse
metrics. That's like stating that the thermal image of AMD and Intel
processors is about the same and thus their abilities are the same. The only
thing this study proves us that the differences are more subtle than what they
could measure.

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mikorym
While I appreciate the objective behind the study, it's kind of disappointing
that it is even done.

"Serious" mathematicians are hopefully like "serious" coders, they read the
math and when they happen to meet the person they are like "Oh, hi
black/indian/asian/white/A man/woman/X not that I want to chit chat but what
does this line here mean exactly..." The analogy does break down due to the
sheer number of mathematicians being men, which is probably why some people
need these kind of headlines in the first place (to challenge their bias).

I personally believe that all mathematicians have poignantly different ways of
going about their work, so my real issue with studies is that personally, I
wouldn't like being a test subject.

~~~
seppel
Hardy said the famous "all mathematicians are isomorphic" which means there
basically only one way of doing math. And I tend to agree.

~~~
mikorym
I think math is separated into two parts—the scientific and the language—and
the scientific part is where I think mathematicians show a lot of variation.
The language has to be standard, otherwise it could be ambiguous or even
incorrect.

For example, back when we were doing our MSc degrees, my one colleague would
start his day reading Mac Lane's old and new testaments [1]. I would start my
day usually obsessing about the same things—what time is and its relation to
space and orientation, whether everything can be expressed in a self-dual way,
learning or improving language skills, writing music and playing soccer.
Whenever I read mathematics I find it somewhat stressful and I've realised
that I should write more than read. The "stress" part is maybe actually just
the fact that in general I often don't like skimming things—not even story
books. I also have Mac Lane's books, but I try to focus on one thing at a
time.

Whether you replace every group by its permutation group as a habit or not,
they may be isomorphic, but they are constructed differently—as are
mathematicians.

[1] This was his joking way to refer to _Algebra_ (old testament) and
_Categories for the Working Mathematician_ (new tastament).

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misterman0
Good news everyone,this site has a 1996 mode you can activate in order to get
to their content without becoming their product. No pics through,so maybe more
like a 1993 mode.

~~~
tasogare
It also has a 1984 mode: "Cantlon suspects the answer involves the societal
messages girls and young women get"

This kind of conspiracy theory being backed up by medias and politicians
really become tiring. It’s easy to blame "society" for everything without ever
identifying a potential mechanism, formulating a testable (and possibly
refutable) hypothesis which is the basic job of a scientist. And of course
this kind of claims are never accompanied by a single concrete exemple...
which would be easy to find if there was even a small basis of reality behind
them.

~~~
cygx
_And of course this kind of claims are never accompanied by a single concrete
exemple_

How about a 10 percentage point difference in the share of women among STEM
graduates between the Netherlands and Denmark?

Unless you're suggesting there's some sort of biological factor involved that
makes Danish women more suited to go into STEM, society's the remaining
culprit, even if the exact mechanisms have yet to be identified...

~~~
rfhjt
And this is not impossible. The obvious example is the north vs south Korean.
The same people, but different nutrition, different lifestyles. Now the NK
people are obviously smaller and I'd bet, have a much lower IQ (the lack of
food doesn't help with math activities!) I'm certain that there are many
subtle differences in how people live in Netherlands and Denmark.

~~~
cygx
How do you expect this to work: To get a gender imblance, only one of the
sexes would have to suffer these adverse effects due to, say, nutrition. That
would likely still be caused by social factors...

~~~
rfhjt
Because makes and females have different nutrition, different habits and fir
example use different drugs. It may be something silly like different contents
of birth control pills. It's not a secret that small changes in amount of
consumed zink, calcium or iodine make big impact on body and mental abilities.

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YeGoblynQueenne
The study had a tiny sample size (104 kids? There's 7.7 billion people total),
it asked kids to do arithmetic while lying in a brain scanner and found it
can't distinguish between the two sexes in the results of the experiments. Or
in other words, a weak study turned up no significant result. That's not news.

The meat and potatoes of the article are in this passage, which has true
explanatory power (and seems to be based on actual experimental results):

 _But Geary says an international study he did with Gijsbert Stoet at the
University of Essex suggests a different explanation.

Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science,
mathematics and reading, they found that in two-thirds of all countries,
female students performed at least as well as males in science.

Yet paradoxically, females in wealthier countries with more gender equality,
including the U.S., were less likely than females in other countries to get
degrees in fields like math and computer science.

Geary thinks the reason may be that women in these countries are under less
pressure to choose a field that promises an economic payback and have more
freedom to pursue what interests them most.

Also, males may be more likely to choose science because they are less likely
than females to have strong reading, writing and language skills, Geary says._

If in most countries girls do as well as boys in science we can lay to rest
any ideas about genetic advantages. If women and men behave differently with
regards to maths and science in different parts of the world we can safely
assume the differences are cultural.

The international study mentioned above is the one that npr should be
reporting. Not this garbage study looking at kids' brains on Sesame Street.

~~~
Izkata
> If in most countries girls do as well as boys in science we can lay to rest
> any ideas about genetic advantages.

Yep.

> If women and men behave differently with regards to maths and science in
> different parts of the world we can safely assume the differences are
> cultural.

No, we cannot safely assume that. That's not even what the part you quoted
says.

Probably the single most common argument about why the split occurs in wealthy
countries is around _interest_ , not _ability_. And that can indeed be
genetically driven.

To me it looks like the "gender paradox" has a trivially simple solution: Men
are more interested in math and math-like fields than women (and women more
interested than men in people-focused fields, just look at ones like nursing
or teaching), this is at least partially genetically driven, and ability has
nothing to do with it. This is part of the reasoning in what you quoted:

> Geary thinks the reason may be that women in these countries are under less
> pressure to choose a field that promises an economic payback and have more
> freedom to pursue what interests them most.

~~~
perl4ever
In the abstract...

An alternative hypothesis for why group X (and not Y) dominates field Z, is
that members of group Y who are good at Z usually are also good at other
things, which they usually prefer, while group X disproportionately contains
people that are _only_ good at Z. So it's possible that most Z's are X even
though they are on average less able _and_ without unfair discrimination.

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lacker
It is hard to believe any study discussed in the news, when the opposite
result would not have made the news, unless it has a p-value below 1/(the
number of news articles about studies).

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paulcole
James Damore in shambles.

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JulianMorrison
This leaves me completely unsurprised. Every time sexists come out with "brain
differences", we find they are culture differences.

Girls leave STEM because they face creepiness, misogyny and unequal treatment
from students and faculty.

~~~
dmichulke
Care to explain e.g. the difference in size with men having larger brains on
average? (between 8% and 13% larger)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_difference...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_differences)

~~~
gcthomas
Brain size doesn't correlate very well with intelligence amongst humans, while
average brain differences between men and women are both nuanced and not
universal.

~~~
dmichulke
I know but that doesn't answer the question how culture makes male brains
bigger which is the statement of OP

~~~
gcthomas
Men have bigger brains most likely because they have bigger bodies. Bigger
bodies need bigger brains to control them. But there are differences in the
relative proportions of grey vs white matter for example, so in this case size
most likely doesn't matter.

