5 ms·

Did you consider the possibility that maybe people in general (and in this case, women) are capable of making their own decisions and maybe most women genuinely

Did you consider the possibility that maybe people in general (and in this case, women) are capable of making their own decisions and maybe most women genuinely are not interested in pursuing a career in mathematics for reasons other than coercion by society/tradition/etc...

DaniFong 18y ago
To be fair, most men aren't pursuing careers in mathematics either. The population of professional mathematicians is a puny subset of the population at large. Even a tiny effects of cumulative cultural mores, when working on people subject to a threshold so far out they're so far out on the bell curve, can have an exponentially disproportionate effect. Many of the women physicists I've become friends with spoke fondly of the first time they encountered a female scientist, either on screen, in print, or in person. They said it was the first time they realized that one could be a woman, and a scientist. It sounds absurd, but remember, this happened when they were kids. No imagine it happened just two years later. A few year's head start on knowing what you want to be can make the difference on what becomes your professional identity, and what you explore and do, ie: your training. I was only speaking last night about this with my friend, who just graduated with a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton, and is now a postdoc at Berkeley. She placed the turning point on when she heard about Jane Goodall, who wasn't just 'in' science, but revolutionizing it. I encountered science (and a notion of utilitarianism) through Marie Curie, what she discovered, what a revolution she sparked, and how it lead to her death. It was difficult emotionally, but I decided that to discover something so valuable, and so important, paying with one's life would have been worth it.
- DabAsteroid 18y ago
  my friend, who just graduated with a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton, and is now a postdoc at Berkeley. She http://www.google.com/search?q=princeton+affirmative+action+gender http://www.google.com/search?q=princeton+affirmative+action+... http://www.google.com/search?q=berkeley+affirmative+action+gender http://www.google.com/search?q=berkeley+affirmative+action+g... Please post your friend's relevant scores (SAT, GRE, etc.).
  - ReverendBayes 18y ago
    Because there is no way a woman could be that smart, is there? Oh... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant She must have the longest ring finger on the planet, yeah, that's it.
    - mistermann 18y ago
      You're jumping to a conclusion. I think its fair to say that the the point the anti-"we are all equal" camp is trying to make is that men have higer representation on the ends of the bell curve. People at both ends (the truly brilliant and truly unable) of the bell curve are largely skewed towards men. Not entirely, but highly disproportionately. This is a perfectly viable explanation for the lack of female leaders in most any field. And freedom of academic choice and opportunities for several decades now, at least in the west, hasn't seemed to change the result, which would seem to reinforce this theory, whereas it would seem to discount the environment argument, in my opinion. I don't think any of us have asserted that women can't be brilliant and compete head to head with men, but if you are looking at any field of expertise, with equal numbers of male and female participants, the top one to five percent of people will almost always be disproportionately men, consistently across fields, over time, and it seems to continue despite changing social and cultural norms. I think the comment above calls into question the merit of your friends achievement, which will always be the result of affirmative action programs. It is well documented that affirmative action often (but not always) results in lesser skilled candidates from preferred disadvantaged classes (race, gender, etc) earning admission or appointments.
      - ReverendBayes 18y ago
        I think the comment above calls into question the merit of your friends achievement, which will always be the result of affirmative action programs. How can you say that? Do you know her or what she is capable of? It seems pure idiocy to me to suggest that every woman graduating from a premier science program is never achieving it through merit. As far as bell curves and distributions, who the hell knows? People tried to predict housing prices and stock portfolios on gaussians, and they seem to work until they don't. You cannot project your platonic ideal of how you think the world works because it seems to and then handwave on outliers.
d0mine 18y ago
You've excluded external factors (society/tradition/etc...). What's left? - Some sort of intrinsic motivation (meaning in-born). So you are basically saying that women are genetically less than men predisposed to math (and to explain actual data (male/female ratio in math) you must assume they are much much less predisposed. It is more likely that society/tradition/etc... do matter after all. My point taken to an extreme is: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, it is their social existence which determines consciousness." - Karl Marx

DaniFong 18y ago

To be fair, most men aren't pursuing careers in mathematics either. The population of professional mathematicians is a puny subset of the population at large. Even a tiny effects of cumulative cultural mores, when working on people subject to a threshold so far out they're so far out on the bell curve, can have an exponentially disproportionate effect. Many of the women physicists I've become friends with spoke fondly of the first time they encountered a female scientist, either on screen, in print, or in person. They said it was the first time they realized that one could be a woman, and a scientist. It sounds absurd, but remember, this happened when they were kids. No imagine it happened just two years later. A few year's head start on knowing what you want to be can make the difference on what becomes your professional identity, and what you explore and do, ie: your training. I was only speaking last night about this with my friend, who just graduated with a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton, and is now a postdoc at Berkeley. She placed the turning point on when she heard about Jane Goodall, who wasn't just 'in' science, but revolutionizing it. I encountered science (and a notion of utilitarianism) through Marie Curie, what she discovered, what a revolution she sparked, and how it lead to her death. It was difficult emotionally, but I decided that to discover something so valuable, and so important, paying with one's life would have been worth it.

DabAsteroid 18y ago
my friend, who just graduated with a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton, and is now a postdoc at Berkeley. She http://www.google.com/search?q=princeton+affirmative+action+gender http://www.google.com/search?q=princeton+affirmative+action+... http://www.google.com/search?q=berkeley+affirmative+action+gender http://www.google.com/search?q=berkeley+affirmative+action+g... Please post your friend's relevant scores (SAT, GRE, etc.).
- ReverendBayes 18y ago
  Because there is no way a woman could be that smart, is there? Oh... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant She must have the longest ring finger on the planet, yeah, that's it.
  - mistermann 18y ago
    You're jumping to a conclusion. I think its fair to say that the the point the anti-"we are all equal" camp is trying to make is that men have higer representation on the ends of the bell curve. People at both ends (the truly brilliant and truly unable) of the bell curve are largely skewed towards men. Not entirely, but highly disproportionately. This is a perfectly viable explanation for the lack of female leaders in most any field. And freedom of academic choice and opportunities for several decades now, at least in the west, hasn't seemed to change the result, which would seem to reinforce this theory, whereas it would seem to discount the environment argument, in my opinion. I don't think any of us have asserted that women can't be brilliant and compete head to head with men, but if you are looking at any field of expertise, with equal numbers of male and female participants, the top one to five percent of people will almost always be disproportionately men, consistently across fields, over time, and it seems to continue despite changing social and cultural norms. I think the comment above calls into question the merit of your friends achievement, which will always be the result of affirmative action programs. It is well documented that affirmative action often (but not always) results in lesser skilled candidates from preferred disadvantaged classes (race, gender, etc) earning admission or appointments.
    - ReverendBayes 18y ago
      I think the comment above calls into question the merit of your friends achievement, which will always be the result of affirmative action programs. How can you say that? Do you know her or what she is capable of? It seems pure idiocy to me to suggest that every woman graduating from a premier science program is never achieving it through merit. As far as bell curves and distributions, who the hell knows? People tried to predict housing prices and stock portfolios on gaussians, and they seem to work until they don't. You cannot project your platonic ideal of how you think the world works because it seems to and then handwave on outliers.

d0mine 18y ago

You've excluded external factors (society/tradition/etc...). What's left? - Some sort of intrinsic motivation (meaning in-born). So you are basically saying that women are genetically less than men predisposed to math (and to explain actual data (male/female ratio in math) you must assume they are much much less predisposed. It is more likely that society/tradition/etc... do matter after all. My point taken to an extreme is: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, it is their social existence which determines consciousness." - Karl Marx