6 ms·

Large study shows females are equal to males in math skills

29 points by gabrielroth 16y ago

Kaya 16y ago
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 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 16y ago
  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/ http://www.plos.org/
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  I, too, was under the impression that this was pretty well accepted, at least as far as mathematical skills relating to the ability to handle spatial models. Rephrasing your quotation, if you draw out the curves so that ability is on the X axis, and number of individuals having that ability is on the Y axis, then the curve for females will be taller and narrower than that for men. That means that if you've got in mind a brilliant geometer, that person is more likely male than female. On the other hand, if you've got in mind an extremely bad geometer, that person is also more likely male than female. Discussion of this that I've read have hypothesized that we've evolved this way because humans back a zillion years tended to have the males go out hunting while women took care of babies and domestic chores; and tracking and stalking prey demanded more of a person's spatial skills.
adbge 16y ago
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.
- mayutana 16y ago
  In many cases, the choices are made at a very young age or by other people (relatives) and this leads to stereotypes playing a huge role.
- _delirium 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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-math-not.html http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-m... 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.
mayutana 16y ago
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.
- borisk 16y ago
  Looking at the winners of this year Indian National Mathematical Olympiad ( http://www.isical.ac.in/~rmo/inmo10_list.pdf http://www.isical.ac.in/~rmo/inmo10_list.pdf ) there are 2 girls and 33 boys.
  - TheSOB88 16y ago
    Still, that's such a high level that societal expectations probably come into play there as well. How socially equality is India?
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.
    - 16y ago
metageek 16y ago
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.
marcusbooster 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    /* >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.
ckuehne 16y ago
The journal article as pdf http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-1-103.pdf http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-1-103.pdf
korch 16y ago
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 16y ago
  By what metrics are STEM fields autistic endeavors? I've never heard that before, so i find it a pretty interesting assertion.
helmut_hed 16y ago
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.

29 points by gabrielroth 16y ago

Kaya 16y ago

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 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 16y ago
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/ http://www.plos.org/
CWuestefeld 16y ago
I, too, was under the impression that this was pretty well accepted, at least as far as mathematical skills relating to the ability to handle spatial models. Rephrasing your quotation, if you draw out the curves so that ability is on the X axis, and number of individuals having that ability is on the Y axis, then the curve for females will be taller and narrower than that for men. That means that if you've got in mind a brilliant geometer, that person is more likely male than female. On the other hand, if you've got in mind an extremely bad geometer, that person is also more likely male than female. Discussion of this that I've read have hypothesized that we've evolved this way because humans back a zillion years tended to have the males go out hunting while women took care of babies and domestic chores; and tracking and stalking prey demanded more of a person's spatial skills.

adbge 16y ago

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.

mayutana 16y ago
In many cases, the choices are made at a very young age or by other people (relatives) and this leads to stereotypes playing a huge role.
_delirium 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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-math-not.html http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-m... 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.

mayutana 16y ago

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.

borisk 16y ago
Looking at the winners of this year Indian National Mathematical Olympiad ( http://www.isical.ac.in/~rmo/inmo10_list.pdf http://www.isical.ac.in/~rmo/inmo10_list.pdf ) there are 2 girls and 33 boys.
- TheSOB88 16y ago
  Still, that's such a high level that societal expectations probably come into play there as well. How socially equality is India?
CWuestefeld 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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.
  - 16y ago

metageek 16y ago

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.

marcusbooster 16y ago

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 16y ago
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 16y ago
  /* >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.

ckuehne 16y ago

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

korch 16y ago

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 16y ago
By what metrics are STEM fields autistic endeavors? I've never heard that before, so i find it a pretty interesting assertion.

helmut_hed 16y ago

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.