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By Susan C. Price
[Questions are followed by answers and then, inevitably by ADVICE...you DID expect that...didn’t you?]
Why are men better at math than women? –Penny
They are not. Who told you that? (I was always good at math and on the math team in high school, and most recently, worked as a bookkeeper.)
Most young girls are better at reading than boys, and maybe the boys focus on the numbers to even the playing field? Ok, I acknowledge that some women do not feel comfortable with math, and I really don’t know why. Found some intriguing and confusing answers regarding this topic on the Internet (biological basis and truth about gender).
It is my view that women can relate to numbers as well as men and it just somehow becomes a negative “thing” for many women in their early educational years. Once anyone gets the feeling that they have trouble with numbers, I think they avoid the topic, and consequently fall further behind. And, for an older generation, it was often assumed that men would handle the money, be in charge. A BIG MISTAKE, that.
I sometimes get the opportunity to teach basic finances and/or budgeting. I remind folks that they all know that 2 + 2 is…4...and that ALL money and finance issues are simply that equation…with more zeroes.
[We would really like more questions to answer, so send ’em in….]
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Copyright © 2013 by Susan C. Price
| Please comment |
Another wrinkle in this "better than" discussion is that both men and women have a wide range of variation when it comes to math ability, with some men way down on the scale, with little ability, and others way up the scale. with great ability. The same for women.
ReplyDeleteEach group's statistical curve of math ability is roughly bell-shaped, with the less skilled on the left, the more skilled on the right. Picture that in your imagination. The two curves probably don't exactly overlap. The average point on one of the curves is to the right of the average point on the other. Is it the men's curve, or the women's?
Picture the two curves, almost overlapping. You can see from the picture in your imagination that there are many men who are to the right of many women on the horizontal axis—they are better at math than those women, and also better than the men who are to the left on the axis. But, similarly, many WOMEN are to the right of many MEN—they are better at math than those men, and also better than the women who are to the left on the axis.
I don't think it significant that a MAN just pointed this out; many women could have pointed it out as well....
There is a fascinating exception to this: at the level of elite mathematicians, women are extremely rare. These are the people who actually do research in pure mathematics. There are such women (Olga Todd comes to mind) but they are greatly outnumbered by men. This is interesting because mathematical talent at that level doesn't seem to be a factor of general intelligence, but an exotic talent such as that needed by an opera star or a world-class chess player. I know many scientists of both genders who are excellent mathematicians in the ordinary way, but almost none of them have the capacity for this sort of work. I'd like to dismiss this as a function of women's environment and upbringing, but several people who have investigated it claim that they can't account for the extreme difference in this way.
DeleteOr maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it. I seem to recall that Harvard fired Derek Bok for daring to mention the subject. Politically incorrect, it seems. For a particularly annoying book on this sort of PCness, see Pinker's "The Blank Slate."
Chuck, my wife has put me on to a September 2 article in the New York Times about the "Mystery of the Missing Women in Science" (by Natalie Angier) that casts doubt on difference in inherent mental ability's being the reason for the "missing women"....
DeletePlease read the article (I know you will want to) and let me know whether you feel at all rebutted.
I'm rebutted on one score, at least: Harvard fired Larry Summers, not Derek Bok, over the "women in math" kerfuffle.
DeleteAs for the rest of it, I've never doubted that women are able to do mathematics at the ordinary level that - say - I myself do it, or that the general run of good scientists and engineers do it. I said so above. The puzzle refers not to the "top one in ten thousand" that Angier and her sources discuss, but to those at - say - the one in ten million level. These are the ones that the unfortunate Dr. Summers was talking about.
As I said above, there are a very small number of people who have an ability at mathematics that is qualitatively different from that of we ordinary users of math. Such people are often intellectually unusual in other ways, as well. And they include very few women indeed. I have known only one personally, and read of perhaps ten others. Several research mathematicians of liberal bent have written at length about this, and come to no real conclusions. (Sorry, no references handy. The most useful one I recall was an article in Physics Today about a decade ago.)
I haven't got a dog in this fight, personally. My ideological preference is to assume that there is no difference between the genders in intellectual capacity. And I'm jealous. At age 24 I crashed and burned trying to learn Group Theory. The basic principles were straightforward, but try as I might I couldn't develop the intuition needed to solve the problems.
So is the gender difference real, or a product of socialization? DamnifIknow.
Thanks for your further reflections on this, Chuck. I guess one question would be whether a few potential one-in-ten-million women have been prevented from going into math or science by whatever social or other reasons are operative in keeping the women's numbers down generally relative to men, not that anyone could ever answer such a question. But we would like to think that such one-in-ten-million women as there might be would somehow be impervious to encumbrances like that.
DeleteOr is the total number of math geniuses so small that their being all men is simply one of probability? I mean, occasionally a fair coin is flipped heads ten or fifteen times in a row....
I wondered what your reference to Derek Bok was all about!
My own scientific wild-ass guess is that social factors ARE the explanation. Wish I could lay my hands on the articles that claimed otherwise.
DeleteThe history of female mathematicians is fascinating. Several of them entered the profession against the bitter opposition of their families. Their need would not be denied.
The number of major research mathematicians is probably on the order of 100. (Another scientific wild-ass guess.) The odds of getting all men by chance is around 1 in 10 to the 30th power. Good luck.
Derek Bok was once president of Hahvad, I believe. I misremembered that he, not Larry Summers, was the one crucified over this question. He, when president of Harvard, once made so bold as to suggest that male dominance among elite mathematicians was so complete as to suggest genetic causes. The resulting howls of outrage from the Harvard community ultimately brought him down.
I couldn't find a way to fact-check myself without losing all my typing. So, a correction.
DeleteSummers WAS talking about ordinary scientists and engineers, not elite mathematicians. His right to make the argument was eloquently defended by Pinker, inter alia.
It also turns out that he did a turn at the World Bank, where he publicly claimed that there are no practical limits to the earth's carrying capacity.
He was also instrumental in creating the derivatives market, with notorious consequences.
Sounds like a loose cannon to me.
Chuck, for daring to bring facts into the discussion, I will be very curious to see if you are "fired" or in some other way brought to task for rather obviously daring to use more than one finger in typing your reply.
ReplyDeletePaul, see my comment above, under Chuck's, about Natalie Angier's article in the New York Times ("Mystery of the Missing Women in Science").
DeleteOver my head everyone. All I know about women is about the same as what little I know about cards: Two 7s always beat one 10. I will leave it to the math geniuses to figure out why that equation works.
ReplyDelete