Comments on: Girls = boys in math scores

By: Alton Finwick

Alton Finwick — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:05:50 +0000

The male variance in math ability is greater than female variance, even if the mean values are close. There are more male dummies and more male geniuses than female of either.

Top levels of math and math-requiring fields will continue to be dominated by males, for excellent reasons having to do with hormonal influences on brain development and function.

The UWM researcher who submitted this study apparently cares more about appearances than realities.

By: momof4

momof4 — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:49:24 +0000

How is math major being defined? My understanding has always been that there is a great difference between majoring in math (or any other academic subject) in the College of Education and in the College of Arts and Sciences. When I was in college, in the late 60s, Secondary education majors were required to take exactly HALF of the credits in their academic major and minor than were required of students in Arts and Sciences.

By: Charles R. Williams

Charles R. Williams — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:45:52 +0000

A very high percentage of math majors are interested in secondary education. A high percentage of students interested in secondary education are women.

By: gbl3rd

gbl3rd — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:30:22 +0000

Andromeda,

My recollection from the 70s is the same as yours. Women steered clear of Physics and Engineering, but not Math, Chemistry or Biology. The female Chemistry majors all seemed to be premed.

By: lefty

lefty — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:18:00 +0000

The verbal factor arises not just in the word problems that dominate so many of these state tests, but also in the common practice of not granting full credit to unexplained answers. Faced with the annoyance having to explain answers to easy questions (given the extremely low bar that many of these state tests set), perhaps girls are more cooperative than boys?

I don’t my brother, an accomplished mathematician with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, would have cooperated at all: he would then have gotten only half credit for each problem, and, I’m guessing, would have scored way below average.

By: Andromeda

Andromeda — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:06:35 +0000

I saw that “women now earn 48% of bachelor’s degrees in math” in the Boston Globe this morning too, and…when I was a math major, I was told that math has long had surprising amounts of gender parity. (It’s the other technical fields that are very heavily slanted.) I don’t have the historical data to back that up, but it makes me wonder if that’s the sort of statistic that some journalist uncritically accepted, without having the historical data either.

Hey, I have google! http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/databrf/sdb97326.htm This suggests that it’s been pretty close for the last twenty years, anyway. There are places with striking gender imbalances, but they’re kind of predictable (eg women have slightly outnumbered men in bio for a while, but good luck finding a female physicist or CS major — very much the same as the ratios I saw as an undergrad at Harvey Mudd).

By: Sister Howitzer

Sister Howitzer — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:47:11 +0000

I am unable to access the entire article. Maybe someone can tell me whether the scores have equalized because the girls’ scores went up, or the boys’ went down.