

Large study shows females are equal to males in math skills - gabrielroth
http://www.news.wisc.edu/18508

======
Kaya
Unfortunately the article does not mention the standard deviation of the
distribution of mathematical ability after controlling for other factors. As
mentioned here: <http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm>, Larry Summers
got in a lot of trouble at Harvard for making this assertion:

"It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight,
propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific
ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in
means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation,
and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with
respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined."

Is that assertion backed up by evidence? And, if true, is making this
distinction useful in informing public policy and shaping our culture? In a
fight between naturalistic and moral fallacies, which wins?

~~~
amalcon
The article doesn't say a darn thing about methodology. For all we know, they
could have done anything from comparing means to measuring the overlap of
various confidence intervals to arcane statistical methods that predict the
accuracy of classification based on the data.

Darn paywalls around scientific journals. I really wish more would go the
route of <http://www.plos.org/>

------
adbge
I think it's generally accepted that if you take a sampling of average men and
average women, they will both perform at similar levels in regards to
mathematics.

However, I believe the differences between men and women in mathematical
thinking, should they exist, will only be apparent when it comes to dealing
with the levels of math that deal with abstractions upon abstractions and so
on.

In my personal experience, I've noticed that 90%+ of (American) women are just
not interested in formal systems, be it predicate logic, computer science,
pure mathematics, etc. I'm inclined to believe women are just wired to prefer
more practical disciplines, but I think a compelling argument can be made for
either view. I suspect the answer probably lies somewhere in between.

~~~
_delirium
I think it's quite possible there are imbalances in the tails of
distributions, but it still means that the middle could plausibly be more
balanced. I'd personally not worry that much about gender balance among Fields
Medal winners, and more about gender balance among engineering graduates from
the local Big State U. The men there are probably above average in math
ability, but few are world-class mathematicians; most are probably in
something like the 70th-90th percentiles for math ability, a region which
doesn't seem (from what data is available) to have large inherent gender
imbalances.

~~~
ramchip
I agree with the grandparent post, because I think it's misleading to lump all
of mathematics together. I'm very bad at mental calculations and basic
arithmetic, and I couldn't memorize integration formulas if my life depended
on it, so I've never had very high grades in math, at least until I hit
university. Yet I have a relatively easy time picking up the theory behind SAT
solvers, Fourier transforms, or solving complex integrals.

I think some people are better at concrete things like geometry or arithmetic,
some people are better at logic, some people are good with operators and
algebra... but one does not imply the others, and engineers may have an above-
average capability for abstraction or logic that does not translate to much
higher results in a high-school level exam.

The study here is said to have studied people "from grade school to college
and beyond", so I suspect the "math ability" they tested really has little to
do with the math ability required for science and engineering.

Here's another (slightly caustic) blog post which appears to be about the same
study: [http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-
in-m...](http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-math-
not.html)

 _It is enough to read a brief review in Science to see that the headlines
don't follow from the paper at all. The review explains the main reason of the
results: they have detected no signal because the tests were too simple. They
didn't really test "g" or the ability to think mathematically but rather
attainment._

~~~
araneae
More anecdotal evidence!

Last night, I jokingly asked my SO what 30/4 was. They said 8.25. Seriously.
And they're an academic that does math for a living.

I never got past single variable calculus, but I can do most 2 digit math in
my head, accurately.

~~~
xyzzyz
I study maths and if you asked me what 30/4 was, I'd respond, "it is 30/4,
obviously".

Math is not about calculating. I rarely perform calculations on numbers
greater than 20, and I do not even remember when was the last time I performed
a long division. What is this "2 digit math" you are talking about?

~~~
araneae
I'm sorry, I should have typed "thirty divided by four," which is what I
actually said, instead of 30/4, but I was lazy. And yes, math is absolutely
not about calculating. I was supporting the previous poster's point that they
suck at calculating, and that math and calculating are very different things.
I hate math. I am completely comfortable with calculating. WTF with the
downvotes.

------
marcusbooster
Autism rates are 3 times more likely in males than females, which I see as an
extreme symptom of a more general trait. This is what I chalk up the math and
science gender gap to, though I have absolutely no scientific data to back
that up.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Has anyone ever seen an articles with a Professor's of Women's Studies or
holder of a doctorate in Women's Health arguing that rates of autism in men
and women should be the same and claiming that they're only different because
of a misogynist agenda?

> _The idea that both genders have equal math abilities is widely accepted
> among social scientists_

Really? Seriously? Sounds like "social scientists" prefer spin to statistics.

>If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little
worse than the men, that hurts performance. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This sounds like a specific form of a general psychological result that would
hold true for men too. If so then this article is beyond disingenuous it is a
flat lie. That aside in order for the result to have a bearing on real world
test scores it would require someone to be telling women just before their
maths test that they're going to fail. Who's doing that, it would be pretty
easy to spot in a school and certainly in my country a teacher doing that
would lose their jobs.

> _These changes will encourage women to pursue occupations that require lots
> of math._

Why? Why would measuring maths ability change the preferred career of anyone?

~~~
tempest67
/* >If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little
worse than the men, that hurts performance. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This sounds like a specific form of a general psychological result that would
hold true for men too. If so then this article is beyond disingenuous it is a
flat lie. That aside in order for the result to have a bearing on real world
test scores it would require someone to be telling women just before their
maths test that they're going to fail. Who's doing that, it would be pretty
easy to spot in a school and certainly in my country a teacher doing that
would lose their jobs. */

It does hold true for men -- specifically, men of African-American and
Hispanic descent, when reminded that minorities generally do worse on math
exams before the exam is given.

The proposition that nobody is telling women they're going to do worse on math
tests, however, is simplistic. It isn't that some mean old guy is telling them
they suck (although one of my female physics professors mentioned, out of the
classroom, that she had been thrown out of a physics class at Georgia Tech in
the early 1970's for "taking a man's spot" -- you're right that this sort of
thing is much less common these days, at least in the West). It's that the
whole culture is suffused with the attitude that women's mathematical
abilities are suspect -- witness threads like these, which appear over and
over on the interwebs, discussing whether or not women are as capable as men
at math.

Measuring maths ability scientifically and publishing the results, rather than
relying on folk-science and anecdote, could help encourage women to trust
their own desires and abilities mathematically -- even when faced with a
predominantly male culture and continual doubt being cast on their abilities
to function at the highest levels.

I know this to be true because I am now a lone female coder in a group of
(really great, smart, delightful) guys, loving my work on a complex,
challenging system. And I remember that I dropped out of the very first coding
class I took after a few weeks because I was completely intimidated by the
swaggering guy classmates who threw around terms I wasn't yet familiar with --
I felt out of place and was full of self-doubt. It was only after maturing and
understanding the social dynamics that I retook the class and ended up with
one of the top 5 grades, out of several hundred students. Yet, at first, I had
been certain I was incapable -- not because any guys were mean to me (not one
was anything but helpful), but because I doubted myself, and felt alone and
weird.

And surely this isn't gender-specific, and surely many geeky coders can
relate, and have probably had similar experiences in different areas of life.
This isn't a woman-man thing only -- it's a specific expression of a general
human tendency to reflect cultural attitudes about their lives in the images
they create of themselves.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _It does hold true for men -- specifically, men of African-American and
> Hispanic descent, when reminded that minorities generally do worse on math
> exams before the exam is given._

I think I've read a general result along the lines of "you have characteristic
X, people with that characteristic perform worse" and that this skews the
result. You're poor, you're female, you're disabled, but I couldn't really be
bothered digging around for the papers.

Simplistic? Yes, but as I recalled the research was for the situation where
they were told quite shortly before the test about their expected sub-par
performance so I was relating it to the research.

>Yet, at first, I had been certain I was incapable -- not because any guys
were mean to me (not one was anything but helpful), but because I doubted
myself, and felt alone and weird.

Overcoming self-doubt and social issues is part of being in a particular field
though - if jargon rich fields put you (ie "one") off then there are many
fields you would struggle in. If you need someone to believe in you before you
can do well in a maths test then IMO you're not going to do well when you've
only got yourself to rely on to get something done.

>Measuring maths ability scientifically and publishing the results, rather
than relying on folk-science and anecdote, could help encourage women to trust
their own desires and abilities mathematically

Go on. What do you mean by maths ability - it's a pretty diverse subject after
all. I've seen people do excellently via rote learning whilst for me it was my
strength because I could pretty much start with a few "axioms" and work on
from there when memory failed - clearly very different abilities that appeared
(at undergrad level) to be closely equivalent.

------
ckuehne
The journal article as pdf
<http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-1-103.pdf>

------
metageek
I wish the article said what _kind_ of math they tested for. There's a world
of difference between being good at multiplication and being good at proving
P≠NP.

------
helmut_hed
God, really, I hope this turns out to be right. If our brains are
fundamentally different, we (men and women) are doomed to never really
understand each other, which I find totally depressing.

------
korch
Like a wise person once said: _Interest is aptitude_

All of the nature/nurture constructs built around males to interest them in
the _autistic endeavors_ like math, physics, computer science are very
different for females. It's not that woman can't do math, rather it's that
they choose not to. I like that researchers are drifting away from attempts at
neurological gender difference explanations, and towards a gestalt of social
conditioning.

~~~
nsfmc
By what metrics are STEM fields _autistic endeavors?_ I've never heard that
before, so i find it a pretty interesting assertion.

------
mayutana
I personally do not feel that there is a correlation between sex and maths
skills. Its the stereotypes that result in girls not actively pursuing maths
related courses. If provided the right education and motivation, anyone can be
good at any subject. In India, for example, where the students have no choice
but to learn predefined syllabus, girls do pretty well in Maths.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_I personally do not feel that there is a correlation_

I'm sorry that I'm about to sound rude, but...

For this kind of question it really doesn't matter what any of us _feel_. Our
values, morals, aesthetics, etc. simply have no bearing on the truth of the
matter. And none of us has sufficient data points (rigorous, untainted, and
unprejudiced) to form a model that has any validity. We really only have two
choices: (1) say "I don't care", and ignore the debate; or (2) read the study,
then criticize methodological flaws if any, else deal with the results.

~~~
mayutana
There is a third choice: "I care, but please bring a better case-study". As
stated above, the gist of my argument is that all are born equal, it is the
society and the stereotypes that shape them.

~~~
CWuestefeld
That's not a third choice. If you can show that the methodology of the study
fails to account for this, then you've got a case, which I accounted for. But
when it simply doesn't match your "feeling", well, I'm sorry, but that just
doesn't matter.

