Greg Laden brings us the happy and welcome news that for the first time, girls swept the prestigious Siemens science competition, winning both the individual and team grand prizes.
That’s awesome. It may be hard for some people to see that girls still lag behind boys in science and math, but it happens, and there is no inherent reason they should. The system is at fault here… but we’re making progress.
Any society that relegates half its populace to the dust bin in any endeavor deserves to fail. I am really heartened to see progress being made in America.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Did anyone see “Math Doesn’t Suck”, written by Winnie from The Wonder Years (I can’t remember her real name)? I’ve read some pretty good reviews on it. I’ve thought about buying a copy now, for when my niece gets older, in case she decides math and science are “too hard”. God forbid THAT should happen – since she’s got a pretty nerdy aunt (that would be me) who’s already told her about men going to the moon.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I am heartened to see this news as well! But there remains much work to be done, and I fully intend to do my small part once I earn my M.Ed. and get employed within a school system as a science educator.
In reference to Gnat’s comment, I’m very tired of hearing female colleagues and friends say “I hate math” or “I’m no good at math” when they are quite capable of doing math successfully. I hope that Danica McKellar’s book makes those great strides of giving girls confidence in their mathematical skills. Such confidence is one positive way we can bring women into science careers. Though I have no children of my own, I plan to purchase “Math Doesn’t Suck” to learn more about McKellar’s techniques.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I feel ignorant asking this question: in what way does the system cause girls to lag in math and science?
I remember both girls & guys having a lax attitude toward math and science when I was in high school. Then again, education in general didn’t seem to be on many of the students minds there.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Great for the girls, but it doesn’t surprise me. Girls seem to outperorm boys quite consistently now, to the point where there is concern about the boys. In trying to level the field for girls we may have inadvertently knocked down the boys.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Now we just need to get some of these girls into engineering programs
(my class of ~120 computer engineering undergrads has exactly six girls).
December 5th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
You’all might be interested what just came in from the SciAm ticker an hour or so ago:
http://science-community.sciam.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300005419
I thought I totally knew there was something like this in principle going on, and still going on at that, but the sheer scope of performance influence still managed to knock my socks off.
^_^J.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
You’all might be interested in what just came in from the SciAm ticker an hour or so ago:
http://science-community.sciam.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300005419
I thought I totally knew there was something like this in principle going on, and still going on at that, but the sheer scope of performance influence still managed to knock my socks off.
^_^J.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
If by “system” you mean “culture” I am totally with you. I’m IN the system right now, and if anything it is hugely advantageous to be a girl. I am sure the best competitors won, but it seems a bit weird to honor them for what they are, rather than what they accomplished. Hopefully the day will soon come when we don’t feel it necessary to point out the gender of the participants.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
GIRLZ RULE, BOYZ DROOL!!!!
(Y’all know I’m just joshin’, right?)
December 5th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
… and by the way that kind of headline’s getting some flak from ScienceWoman, and I think she right. (But she’s being a killjoy nevertheless!
)
^_^J.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
@Grand Lunar
I’m busily expounding my graduate school education classes all over this blog today.
To answer your question, the system, overall, causes girls to lag when teachers treat girls differently than boys, often in subtle ways, that causes girls to lose confidence in their abilities, and eventually give up on math and science. (This is an overall trend – there are of course exceptions, and of course other factors working). Basically, many teachers are still working under past sexist assumptions that women are not as smart as men, usually unconsciously, and this affects how they treat their students.
“Girls are still considered lacking when they perform well and boys are still taken to possess something even when they perform poorly.” -Walkerdine
I had to present for my class on an indepth study of girls in mathematics. The book is “Counting Girls Out: Girls and Mathematics” by Valerie Walkerdine. I wouldn’t recommend reading it, unless you’re used to reading research reports – its very dense and full of data.
The study looked, over years and years in multiple schools and in multiple age groups, for evidence that girls are worse at math than boys. They started early, and found that girls were as good or better than boys, and they kept progressing up through the age groups. They found that in late junior high or into high school, girls scores didn’t really go down, or went down slightly, but they began choosing not to study more advanced math and science, and to focus on language arts. In high school, more boys take trig, chemistry, physics, etc, and more girls take english, creative writing, etc. It wasn’t the girls scores so much as their confidence in their abilities, that was changing. The drop in confidence preceeded the drop in scores.
So the study looked into ways teachers treated girls and boys in the classroom, and found that in many subtle ways, girls were being devalued in math classes, subtly told that their contributions were not as valuable as those of boys (for example, if a girl provided an alternate way of doing a problem, a teacher might brush them off, but if a boy offered one, the teacher would encourage exploring it). It’s slowly changing (this study was mostly from the ’80s), but a lot of these attitudes and beliefs are very ingrained and unconscious. Girls are good, and behave, and “boys will be boys.” There’s a lot of stuff wrapped up in it.
Studies have also shown that kids in single-sex schools, boys and girls (but esp. girls) do better in math and science than those in co-ed schools. When a class is all girls, the teacher doesn’t unconsciously get sucked into the “boys and girls are different” mindset.
It’s much more complicated than this, but that’s the basics.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Hate to rain on the politically correct parade, but does anybody ever consider that a substantial reason that women are under-represented in the “hard” sciences and engineering compared to their prevalence in the population at large is . . . they just don’t want to do those kinds of jobs? It’s easy to claim “teacher bias”, “societal bias”, etc., but the real world tends to be much more complicated and messy. See Pinker, “The Blank Slate”, for some good discussion on this. Bias and discrimination should be rooted out, but don’t be surprised if that doesn’t eliminate the sex discrepancy.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
It is less so today than years ago. My mother ( now quasi-retired) was specifically told not to bother with math and science because she is a girl, take home-ec instead.
And it IS cultural, not a system thing. The system is biased (in a good way) to help alleviate this, but culture is hard to change.
“Math is hard, lets go shopping” – Barbie.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
All I know is, in my undergrad computer science classes, the guy:girl ratio was about 10:1. I switched to Biology, the ratio became 1:2, and in graduate school, 1:6. Nice odds. Hooray for progress.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
This is good news for the winners. But I remember
back in the stone ages of reading that there is a
physical difference between the brains of boys and girls.
Seems that girls are right brained, good for arts, and
the boys are left brained, good for math and science.
I may be wrong about the sides, but I do recall the
story.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
My girlfriend is definitely more intelligent than me when it comes to mathematics. She was studying for biotech in Uni when it occured to her that it would mean her career would be labwork and other “boring” stuff. She switched to English so she could write children’s books.
I’m not a scientist, but if I were to approach this problem I would start by recognising some key facts. These girls WON a prize. Winning is beating people, out-competing etc. As a scientist BA, would you consider the idea that perhaps women are (statistically speaking) less likely to be competitive? Or less likely to out-compete a male? The amount of research you’d have to do into nature vs nurture alone is enormous. Simply assigning blame to society, and in doing so, implying it is the male’s fault, is pretty stupid. There might be genes we can blame. There might be policies, there might be cultural attitudes…
The problem might not even be a problem. Maybe instead its a symptom or a clue. Like, “girls dont wanna compete, trying to utilise their brains the same way we do the males wont work as effectively”.
I dunno. Like I said, me + science..never happened. But as an outsider it seems like science has at least some degree of aggression thanks to competition for grants, trying to prove other people are wrong etc.
Isn’t it kind of male-centric view to think they wanna excel at all the fields we dominate? Let the women sort it out. We’ll make sure men don’t hold em down, but its not our job to dictate what a woman is or should be.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I’m currently in my first year of college, majoring in meteorology, but I have sophomore ranking because of AP credits from high school. In the advanced math and science classes I saw the disparity between guys and girls – in my AP Physics C Mech. class, there were 12 people, and only 3 girls. The guys spent the whole time telling sexist jokes about how dumb girls are, while we sat there and worked quietly, and the teacher did nothing to stop them, even occasionally laughed along with them. Come AP exam time, I was the only girl to take the exam (including one poor home-schooled kid who had no idea what was going on with the people around them), not because the other two couldn’t do it, but rather both were going to schools that would not accept the exam for credit. Before the exam started, I got to listen to the whole rendition, where are all of the girls? What, did the math get too hard for them? … and so on. I think that the system is working on getting everyone to be equal, but society doesn’t let us; guys will always be better than girls in math and science if that is what we teach our girls starting out very young. If we give the girls dolls and make up to play pretty pretty princess and the boys get knex and legos without letting them decide which they would prefer, then we are already giving children the impression of to what they should strive – girls for beauty and guys to build things and get into the sciences.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Although I of course can’t be certain, I strongly suspect that Christa Cochran does not have children. As parents of two children, one of each sex, my spouse and I started off with all of the conventional wisdom down pat: provide the building toys and the dolls equally to each child, carefully do not reinforce the societal sex roles, etc. We learned what countless parents learn: the boys play with the building toys and the girls play with the dolls; the boys go around making shooting sounds even if the parents have been extraordinarily careful to NOT give them weapon toys, the girls play house even if they don’t have dolls. I’m exaggerating a bit of course, but not very darned much. Whether we like it or not, substantial portions of the societal sex roles are “nature”, not “nurture”, and saying that girls tend to not go into the sciences because “we give [them] dolls” while “the boys get knex and legos” is naive in the extreme.
And, of course, none of this implies in the slightest that women shouldn’t go into the sciences if they want to. And, as I said earlier, we must root out bias and discrimination. But we should stop blaming society (made up of real women and real men) if the end results don’t match some artificial ideal that doesn’t take into account the individual preferences of real women and real men.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Hate to rain on the politically correct parade, but does anybody ever consider that a substantial reason that women are under-represented in the “hard†sciences and engineering compared to their prevalence in the population at large is . . . they just don’t want to do those kinds of jobs?
I consider it all the time. The few women I know in these fields seem to do as well as any man in terms of salary etc. but there are very few women in the these fields.
I don’t buy the “women don’t want to study to be engineers because male engineering students make asses of themselves” argument. That’s a very weak premise. If that’s the best excuse a woman, or anyone else for that matter, can come up with for not entering a field of study then frankly, they’re not worthy to be in that field of study in the first place.
Which leads back to the original question of “is it that they just don’t want to do those kinds of jobs?”
I think it’s much more cultural. In North America, girls are taught from a very young age that brains don’t matter if you’re female. They’re taught by the media that a nice rack, some make up, and highly sexual attitude will get you farther than an education and a job surrounded by geeky men with pocket protectors. They’re taught form trumps substance. That’s what has to change to get women into hard sciences. The sloping-forehead-mono-eyebrow-Neanderthal male engineering student will fade into history when the class gender ratio gets closer to 50/50.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:53 am
BA
Hope I am not being too personal, when you get this out of the spam filter, but out of interest how does Little Astronomer fare at science and Maths compared to her peers? Could home support be an answer?
December 6th, 2007 at 1:56 am
BA
Just in case I phrased my last post badly, I suspect that Little Astronomer would be ahead of her peers in Scinece of Math because you would be topping up what the school can provide, and if that is the case, that would be a good example.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Third posting so far
Here in the UK we have WISE or “Women in Science and Engineering” http://www.wisecampaign.org.uk
For you guys across the pond you have this
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/preparingtravel/women_at_nasa.html
December 6th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Very cool.
I’m sure there’s a complicated tale behind it.
I look forward to the day when this sort of thing isn’t news.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I found these articles really interesting: It shows that Canada is doing great with its students and that while girls and boys show different strengths within science they are equally good at it here. I’m Canadian so it makes me pretty proud to see we rank third in the world.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/282569
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071204/pisa_test_071204/20071205?hub=SciTech
Yay Canada.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:52 am
There was an interview with a psychologist here in MN who wrote a book called “Boys Adrift” about how girls are out-performing boys in school in nearly every subject right now. I agreed mostly with that premise, but ended up disagreeing with nearly everything else he said
Even 10+ years ago, when I was in school, girls worked harder, got more scholarships, and even the physics and calculus classes I took were almost half-girls. I understand the trend is continuing. I’m not exactly going to speculate why (not here, anyway), but I also understand women outnumber men in colleges nearly 2:1 now, and 4:1 or so in graduate programs. Hard science and math might be the exceptions, but I doubt for much longer. It’s worth looking into why, but I don’t recommend anybody panic just yet, and we should all try not to over-react to what we find.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Women consistently outperform men in academia, and have for many years.
As of the last time I checked, men still greatly outnumbered women in engineering programs, but the women always got higher marks and were more likely to complete a program. Also, women significantly outnumbered men in higher education overall.
A woman is more likely than a man to recieve any kind of degree, and the more stratified that degree becomes, the more this is true. Women simply tend overwhelmingly to prefer (whether because of societal pressure or some innate tendency particular to women) liberal arts programs.
Any inequity in higher education would seem to discriminate FOR women, and many such inequities (sex-specific scholarships and recruitment programmes spring instantly to mind) do in fact exist.
Sure, this is the first time women have swept that particular competition, but when was the last time /men/ did? In the last decade, how many women won /one/ of the awards, as opposed to how many men did? What about the previous decade?
Now that women have swept the competition, perhaps we should start worrying that MEN are being excluded from math and science education.
After all, there are no programs devoted to encouraging young boys to persue engineering disciplines, and a strong and growing trend in our culture tells boys that they are supposed to be uninterested in academic persuits.
You don’t /need/ higher education, society says. You’re a Man, which also means you’re probably not smart enough anyway. Real Men don’t go to college unless they have a sports scholarship, and men who devote themselves to their studies (especially in math & science) will never be happy and have a greatly reduced chance of successful reproduction.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
It is worth noting that it has not been significantly demonstrated that there is no innate cause for general behavioral differences between men and women, nor that social causes account for all of these differences.
A skeptic should therefore be very wary of the claim that societal sex discrimination is the sole cause of any lingering variation in the general behavior of the two groups.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
“In the advanced math and science classes I saw the disparity between guys and girls – in my AP Physics C Mech. class, there were 12 people, and only 3 girls. The guys spent the whole time telling sexist jokes about how dumb girls are,”
While unfortunate, your anecdotal experience does not demonstrate a general trend. After all, I can oppose my own anecdotal experience. I have never heard a sexist joke or remark in a class covering an engineering-related discipline.
In all my time in academic life, my classes have generally been fairly (though not deliberately) gender-balanced and I have spent some semesters in the gender minority.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
KMR said: “As parents of two children, one of each sex, my spouse and I started off with all of the conventional wisdom down pat: provide the building toys and the dolls equally to each child, carefully do not reinforce the societal sex roles, etc.”
There is a lot that influences gender roles besides the toys you give your children. There’s the packaging on those toys (dolls come in pink and purple boxes with pictures of made-up girls on them, Legos and blocks come in red and blue boxes with pictures of excited boys on them), the TV and movies they watch, their peers at school (Kindergarteners all know that pink is for girls and boys don’t play with dolls), commercials, billboards, etc. The toys you offer your kids are a drop in the bucket compared to the influences that bombard them on a daily basis!
I was not a quiet girl who sat still and did her work. Every single time I laughed too loud or got out of my seat or talked out of turn, I was called out. The boys who did the same were ignored because that’s just what boys do. When I was able to get my work done and sit quietly, I got no encouragement or praise… but when the boy next to me was able to sit still for five minutes, he was showered with adoration. When I get upset, I’m an emotional wreck. When a male gets upset, he is being assertive.
On the other hand, though I hate to have others see me cry, I can cry in public without teasing. Nobody thinks it’s funny to see me get kicked in the crotch, and if somebody were to slap me across the face it would be seen as criminal. I can talk to strange children in the park or teach first grade, and nobody suspects me of being a pedophile. It’s okay for me to call in to work if my child is home sick, or to leave early if I need to pick him or her up.
There are differences on both sides, that have nothing to do with being physiologically male or female. To be completely honest, it’s unfair in both respects – everyone should be anxious to change how our society views gender, and yet very few actually notice how unequal the sexes really are.
December 6th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Granted that their societal roles are different, are the sexes really unequal? If so, which has the edge? Why is that?
It’s amazing the number of questions on this particular subject which are answered only with dogmatic assumptions.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Any of you who wonder why women don’t go so far in the sciences need desperately to read Female Science Professor: http://science-professor.blogspot.com/
The author has been treated inappropriately by colleagues, things like being ignored or interrupted at meetings, being asked about her kids and husband instead of her ideas, etc etc.
…And I don’t buy into the Boy Panic. The basic premise of it is that when girls do well in school, it’s a national emergency. Thanks. Maybe girls do well in school because they know how hard they have to work to get ahead and don’t blame others for their failings?
Girls outperform boys academically in Qatar, Algeria and Kuwait, countries where women are absolutely not coddled by the wicked forces of political correctness. Maybe we’re just smart.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Take a look at the finalists:
http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition/2007_winners.htm
All the winners (and large majority of the finalists) did their work in biology/medical sciences, not math or engineering. There is one girl, a part of a girl-boy team, who did a chemical project, but the rest of the girls – biology only. So these aren’t exactly stereotype-defying results. Girls still don’t do math.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
“Any of you who wonder why women don’t go so far in the sciences need desperately to read Female Science Professor: http://science-professor.blogspot.com/”
As an aside, who says women don’t go far in the sciences? Your Female Science Professor is a highly-paid and tenured professor in the physical sciences at a research university! She’s gone about as far as it’s possible to go in the sciences!
“The author has been treated inappropriately by colleagues, things like being ignored or interrupted at meetings, being asked about her kids and husband instead of her ideas, etc etc.”
On the other hand, her experiences aren’t especially pertinent. After all, she’s one of the rare women who went all the way in the physical sciences. Analysing her experiences won’t shed any light on the decision-making process of all the women who didn’t (and thus aren’t her.)
“…And I don’t buy into the Boy Panic. The basic premise of it is that when girls do well in school, it’s a national emergency.”
Which Boy Panic is this?
“Thanks. Maybe girls do well in school because they know how hard they have to work to get ahead and don’t blame others for their failings?”
Women don’t blame others for their failings? And men do? And this has something to do with academic success? If women had to work harder than men to succeed, wouldn’t it generally follow that their performance would be inferior?
Seriously, what kind of logic is this?
“Girls outperform boys academically in Qatar, Algeria and Kuwait, countries where women are absolutely not coddled by the wicked forces of political correctness. Maybe we’re just smart.”
Everyone’s smart. What you’re proposing is that women are smarter than men. This may well be true, but it would seem to require some proof.
On the other hand, if women /are/ smarter than men, we hardly have to work to make academia easier for them than it is for men, now do we?
December 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
This may sound too simplistic, but it really doesn’t matter to me if women are under-represented in the sciences any more than it bothers me that men are under-represented in nursing or cosmetology. As long as there is opportunity to follow one’s interests without being discriminated against because of sex, then I have no problem. The focus here seems to be on why men and women may have different interests and correcting it so that we have equal and common interests between the sexes. That endeavor to me seems a waste of effort. There are so many factors that impinge on and color a persons point of view that could never be controlled. I think we should just encourage people to do the best at whatever field of endeavor for which they happen to have a passion and let them know that their abilities are not limited simply because they are a man or a woman.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
In the latest issue of SCI Am Mind, there is an article that claims that women have poorer spatial skills than men because of ESTROGEN, and that women’s spacial skills decline with high estrogen in the menstrual cycle.
This is crap. As a female mathematician (Differential Geometer) I have never noticed such an effect, nor has any woman mathematician that I have discussed this with. What about you, readers?
The woman who wrote the article has done several studies to claim this–bad studies on very small groups. She also cites some results of a study on transexuals based on a male to female group of 15. This study uses ANOVA–and it is not valid to use it on such a small sample size of a totally unknown distribution.
Any girl who reads this article—claiming a basic component of femininity
–estrogen–lowers her spacial ability is being set up for the “performance effect”. I wonder how the subjects of this author’s study responded to the very definition of the study?
Penny
p.s. Does J. Polgar –the 8th rated chess player in the world have deficient spacial skills?
p.s. The same article claims that androgens lower verbal skills. Tell that to
….Shakespeare!
December 6th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Articles like the one I mentioned also often make hay over the fact that
more boys than girls have high end SAT math skills. It used to be 13 to one, now it is 3 to one.
But, with nearly seven billion people on earth–there are surely Millions of women at the high end.
So–even ignoring bias in the SAT–( note that at all levels up to and including graduate schools–females outperform males in math classes)–what kind of crap is this?
p.s. I was a girl—and plenty feminine ( lots of estrogen)–a girly girl, in
fact–and I got a PERFECT score on both the SAT math and the Math Level II–and I was only 14 at the time, and I didn’t sleep the night before, and I had no prep classes either.
p.s. I am glad that these girls won this competition. I would have liked to have done so, but I was already in university at 15, having skipped finishing high school from sheer boredom with the math classes. I didn’t enter.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I wrote:
But, with nearly seven billion people on earth–there are surely Millions of women at the high end
And I meant–at the high of skill–most don’t take the SAT, of course.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I had one science teacher who told me:
Women can’t be top theoretical or mathematical physicists. There are no examples.
I told him:
Worked ok for Lise Meitner, Marie Curie, Ida N., Y. Choquet Bruhat,
Maria Mayer.
Sad to see such bias still exists in schools.
Plus Ca Change…
December 6th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
AL wrote:
There is one girl, a part of a girl-boy team, who did a chemical project, but the rest of the girls – biology only. So these aren’t exactly stereotype-defying results. Girls still don’t do math.//
Tell that to such people as Karen Uhlenbeck, and Ingrid Daubechies
–mathematicians who have won the Macarthur “genius” award.
Sexist PIG!
p.s. It merely reflects the current emphasis on Biology against physics.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Before you go about making accusations of sexism, penny, you should
probably take care to consider exactly what you’re responding to.
Al wasn’t actually saying that women don’t do math, but rather that this
evidence did not contradict that claim.
“I had one science teacher who told me:
Women can’t be top theoretical or mathematical physicists. There are no
examples.”
It is always sad to see anyone so badly misinformed (as you point out,
there are numerous examples) and logically deficient (a lack of examples
does not exclude the possibility of examples,) but it’s only a single
example, which is statistically meaningless.
Again, I oppose my own anecdote. I have never encountered such a person,
whether teacher or student, in all my time (a good sixteen years or so) in
the US education system.
“Articles like the one I mentioned also often make hay over the fact that
more boys than girls have high end SAT math skills.”
One expects that this may have to do with the already-noted difference in presence between the two groups. With a roughly 3:1 ratio of women to men enrolled in higher math programs, you might expect a 3:1 ratio of high-end SAT scores in math.
“It used to be 13 to one, now it is 3 to one.”
Hah. Look at that. Amazing.
“But, with nearly seven billion people on earth–there are surely Millions
of women at the high end.”
Supposing that a 3:1 ratio exists in the field worldwide and there are at least six million men at the high end (the minimum for the word “Millions” being two million,) this would be true, but also trivial.
“So–even ignoring bias in the SAT–( note that at all levels up to and
including graduate schools–females outperform males in math classes)–what kind of crap is this?”
How could any gender bias exist in the mathematical portion of the SAT?
Perhaps women simply aren’t as good generally at /taking tests/ (note that this is supported by generally lower female scores on all standardized tests.) This might produce inferior test scores even in the presence of superior female mathematical ability and in the absence of any bias in the test.
“p.s. I was a girl—and plenty feminine ( lots of estrogen)–a girly girl, in
fact–”
Is there a known correlation between estrogen levels and “girliness” that
I’m somehow missing?
Were your levels of estrogen regularly measured at the time? If not, how
can you know what they were high?
Also, since you did well at math, you were by definition not a girly girl,
in exactly the way that you wouldn’t be if you’d been a football star.
“I got a PERFECT score on both the SAT math and the Math Level II–and I
was only 14 at the time, and I didn’t sleep the night before, and I had no
prep classes either.”
I had a physical anthropology teacher, a primatologist by training, who
had a certain fondness for bell curves. Whenever a student would bring up
an anecdotal example (usually from their own life) which differed from
norms, he would quietly walk to the blackboard, draw a bell curve, and
make a mark somewhere at the extremus.
I’m glad you did so well, but you’re way off the center of that particular
bell curve.
“In the latest issue of SCI Am Mind, there is an article that claims that
women have poorer spatial skills than men because of ESTROGEN, and that
women’s spacial skills decline with high estrogen in the menstrual cycle.”
As a point of order, testosterone levels have also been linked to
deficiencies in spatial skills.
Not being familiar with the study, I can say nothing concerning its
methods or conclusions. I am not (nor should I be) inclined to consider
you as an authority on the matter.
For example, were there any men in the study? Did it actually make a claim
regarding men versus women or only specific to women?
“This is crap. As a female mathematician (Differential Geometer) I have
never noticed such an effect, nor has any woman mathematician that I have
discussed this with. What about you, readers?”
Anecdotal evidence is inferior to even small studies. Asking and answering
this question proves nothing.
“The woman who wrote the article has done several studies to claim
this–bad studies on very small groups. She also cites some results of a
study on transexuals based on a male to female group of 15. This study
uses ANOVA–and it is not valid to use it on such a small sample size of a
totally unknown distribution.
Which only means that it proves nothing but suggests something. Clearly,
larger and better-controlled studies would be necessary in order to come
to a better-supported conclusion.
“p.s. Does J. Polgar –the 8th rated chess player in the world have
deficient spacial skills?”
Your explanation of the study’s conclusions does not support such a claim.
Even if women had generally lower spatial skills than men, this would not preclude anecdotal exceptions. Further, one’s general spatial skills are certainly not the sole factor in one’s FIDE ranking.
J. Polgar is currently the 20th rated chess player in the world, and it
stands to reason that her spatial skills might be deficient compared to
the nineteen men who outrank her. Or perhaps the FIDE ranking is biased.
/me rolls his eyes.
“p.s. The same article claims that androgens lower verbal skills. Tell
that to
….Shakespeare!”
Shakespeare’s levels of androgens at any point in his life are unknown, as is his baseline verbal ability. Hell, even the man’s identity is significantly in dispute.
You are significantly misapplying the study’s conclusions in a misguided attempt at debunking it. In order to significantly counter a study, you need another study, at least as good, with differing conclusions.
I know a girl who can solve differential equations better drunk than the average person can sober. This does not mean that alcohol does not significantly impair the abilities of people to differentiate.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Ken said:
> Simply assigning blame to society, and in doing so, implying it is the male’s fault, is pretty stupid.
Uh, since when are males all of society?
> There might be policies, there might be cultural attitudes…
Exactly – society.
Evolving Squid said:
> The sloping-forehead-mono-eyebrow-Neanderthal male engineering student will fade into history when the class gender ratio gets closer to 50/50.
Where are you getting your stereotypes? I have never seen engineers equated with Neanderthals before. Usually that’s the football players.
From my experience, this appears to be happening. As the workplace becomes more integrated in the technical skills, and as management gets balanced out, the newer, younger people have fewer issues perceiving women in technical or leadership roles. YMMV.
JediBear said:
> After all, there are no programs devoted to encouraging young boys to persue engineering disciplines,…
Not exactly true. Science and Engineering organizations are trying to create programs aimed at both girls and boys. There has been a special emphasis on girls because there is a perceived lack of interest from girls and a desire to ensure a level playing field. But there are also programs being implemented to apply to both girls and boys. For instance, AIAA holds an annual Mars Rover competition for 6th – 9th graders. LEGO sponsors a robotics competition using LEGO for similarly aged students. The FIRST competition is a national robotics competition for high school groups.
> As an aside, who says women don’t go far in the sciences? Your Female Science Professor is a highly-paid and tenured professor in the physical sciences at a research university! She’s gone about as far as it’s possible to go in the sciences!
Wait, now you are using one anecdote to refute a general trend.
> On the other hand, her experiences aren’t especially pertinent. After all, she’s one of the rare women who went all the way in the physical sciences. Analysing her experiences won’t shed any light on the decision-making process of all the women who didn’t (and thus aren’t her.)
On the other hand, if her experiences are taken to be typical, they can shed light on pressures experienced by women who were interested in science careers and affected their decisions. Each individual woman had her own experiences and her own decision making process, but common themes of experience are worth considering.
> Which Boy Panic is this?
The one you mirrored when you jokingly said “Now that women have swept the competition, perhaps we should start worrying that MEN are being excluded from math and science education.” There are people seriously concerned about male academic “underperformance”. Witness this comment by The Dread Polack: “There was an interview with a psychologist here in MN who wrote a book called “Boys Adrift†about how girls are out-performing boys in school in nearly every subject right now. ”
> If women had to work harder than men to succeed, wouldn’t it generally follow that their performance would be inferior?
Women tend to have to work harder for equivalent recognition of success. At least that is the premise.
VisionEngineer said:
> This may sound too simplistic, but it really doesn’t matter to me if women are under-represented in the sciences any more than it bothers me that men are under-represented in nursing or cosmetology. As long as there is opportunity to follow one’s interests without being discriminated against because of sex, then I have no problem. The focus here seems to be on why men and women may have different interests and correcting it so that we have equal and common interests between the sexes.
The problem is identifying if there are biases and discrimination because of sex. The imbalance in numbers raises the question of whether there is an issue or not. How do we tell? If we assume that men and women are equally capable, then the imbalance in performance suggests societal factors. Maybe there are inherent genderal interest factors, but that is something requiring study.
JediBear said:
> Also, since you did well at math, you were by definition not a girly girl,
in exactly the way that you wouldn’t be if you’d been a football star.
How so? What is not feminine about math? Physical rough and tumble is one thing, mental prowess another. Are you falling for the stereotype that women don’t do math? That women can’t be smart? Are you using the term “girly girl” differently than penny?
December 7th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Sat bias:
It is very easy to bias a math test. First, the SAT is fairly short test, shorter yet–because some proportion of the questions are not actually used for the grade, but used to create the next year’s test–based on the result.
This means that the high end is determined by very few questions. All it takes is to make the context of those questions more familar to boys than girls–sports score questions work–because many girls–even now, are not interested in sports scores and have limited familarity with sports situations and terms.
One can do the same thing by asking boys questions about dress darts, french braiding, clairified butter etc.
The fact that girls outperform boys in actual advanced math classes–classes that measure abstract thinking and geometric spacial skills, is far more significant that the scores at the high end of a single test.
Moreover, any mathematical statistician will tell you that the far tails of a bell distribution are statistically unreliable and have NO significance for prediction.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Icelandic Girls outperform Icelandic Boys on their version of a similar test.
So, it is clearly cultural.
Similarly, Inuit girls far outperform US boys on spacial tests ( Inuit boys do slightly better than the girls.) This seems to be because of the necessity of navigation without landmarks in the far north ice. Their boys get even more practice.
So, clearly, if US boys do better on certain spacial tests, it ISN’T the estrogen or the genes. It’s culture!
December 7th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Al said: ” I prefer even small studies to anecdotal evidence”.
When the small study is based on a statistical test that is proved statistically invalid for a sample of that size, that is plain foolish. Such
studies are WORTHLESS.
I also find it interesting that when I cite the existence of recognized world level female mathematicians ( with names), it is called by Al “anecdotal”.
That is a complete misunderstanding of what that term means.
Generally, one should ignore small samples in stats. Unless, one knows that the distribution is actually a gaussian one–then one can use a t-test.
But, that applies to a situation where one has already studied a large sample and shown using hypothesis testing that it has a normal distribution–for example in quality control situations–for which the t-test was created.
Most statistical variables are NOT gaussian. The central limit theorem does NOT say that most variables are gaussian. What it says is that if you actually have independent random variables ( certainly NOT the case in intelligence studies) then, if you have many of them, the random variable numerical average of these variables is ( in the limit) gaussian.
Other functions of the these variables ( for example: their product) are NOT provably gaussian. And independent variables are anyway fairly rare in the real world.
Of course, when you use software that automatically assumes a gaussian plot ( or the “normal paper” of the olden days), you get gaussian plots.
Thus, when studying a :
SMALL SAMPLE of UNKNOWN DISTRIBUTION
at an EXTREME TAIL
you are wasting your time.
” The c-coefficent is .8, which is close to 1, so these variables are linearly
related.”–my undergrad psych Prof –with a pHD in psychometrics.
” Actually, the theorem says that if the variables are linearly related, then the c-coefficent is exactly 1.” ” You are guilty of approximate converse reasoning.”—Penny
( I can give a simple example of variables related by the equation of a CIRCULAR ARC–with data set that has c-coefficent exactly 1. Standard in math major stats classes.)
“It’s almost statistically significent”–psych Prof
” You mean, it means NOTHING”–Penny
December 8th, 2007 at 3:38 am
Irishman-
“Not exactly true. Science and Engineering organizations are trying to create programs aimed at both girls and boys. ”
Actually, that would make it exactly true. A program aimed at boys AND girls is aimed not at boys but at children generally.
There are programs aimed at girls. There are not programs aimed at boys, nor are they expected.
“Wait, now you are using one anecdote to refute a general trend.”
Not so. I did not speak to a general trend, but to an absolute statement. An anecdote can be used to refute such a statement, as only one example is needed to render the statement false.
“On the other hand, if her experiences are taken to be typical,”
My point was precisely that her experience cannot be taken to be typical.
“The one you mirrored when you jokingly said “Now that women have swept the competition, perhaps we should start worrying that MEN are being excluded from math and science education.†There are people seriously concerned about male academic “underperformanceâ€. ”
My point was illustrating an alarming double-standard. If boys are outperforming girls, it’s often seen as bad. If girls are outperforming boys, it’s often seen as good. I don’t care about the relative performance of any two arbitrary groups (boys vs girls, rich vs poor, black vs white, blue-eyed vs brown-eyed, names starting with A-M vs names starting with N-Z,) in anything. but if we would consider female academic underperformance to be a bad thing, we MUST also consider male academic underperformance to be a bad thing on the same basis. It’s not panic, it’s just not sex-biased.
“Women tend to have to work harder for equivalent recognition of success. At least that is the premise. ”
My point was that that premise is not borne out by the evidence and cannot therefore be considered true. If girls did have to work harder to succeed, they would suceed less often. Since the second is manifestly untrue, the first cannot be considered to be true.
“How so? What is not feminine about math?”
What’s not feminine about football?
“Physical rough and tumble is one thing, mental prowess another.”
The belief that women can’t be “rough and tough” is every bit as wrongheaded as the suggestion that they can’t be intelligent. Even considering differences in normal physical structure, nothing prevents girls from excelling at football.
” Are you falling for the stereotype that women don’t do math? That women can’t be smart? Are you using the term “girly girl†differently than penny?”
The term “girly” implies and is defined by the stereotype of what a girl should be. In this stereotype, women don’t do math (or physics, or politics) and don’t play football (or climb trees. Or get in fights.) Doing either would be failing to adhere to the stereotype and make one “not girly.”
Also, Penny suggested a connection to estrogen supply, which was actually the point of contention, and which I still contend remains unproven.
penny-
“It is very easy to bias a math test. First, the SAT is fairly short test, shorter yet–because some proportion of the questions are not actually used for the grade, but used to create the next year’s test–based on the result.”
Which is meaningless, unless we presume that there exists some gender difference between men and women in the ability to deal with a short exam.
“This means that the high end is determined by very few questions. All it takes is to make the context of those questions more familar to boys than girls–sports score questions work–because many girls–even now, are not interested in sports scores and have limited familarity with sports situations and terms.”
Not that it matters (see next two paragraphs) but how many such questions did you contend with in your SAT?
This would not create a bias against girls, but only against those (whether male or female) who were meaningfully ignorant of the sport in question. The female stereotype, not the test, would be creating any such bias. Even so, such questions could be, should be, and are avoided. After all, they would be testing general (not mathematical) knowledge, which isn’t the point of the test.
Unless you’re suggesting that some sexual dimorphism makes it harder for girls than boys to understand football scoring.
“One can do the same thing by asking boys questions about dress darts, french braiding, clairified butter etc.”
Just curious, do these have unique mathematical properties? Sports scores do.
“The fact that girls outperform boys in actual advanced math classes–classes that measure abstract thinking and geometric spacial skills, is far more significant that the scores at the high end of a single test.”
In determining WHAT, exactly? What’s the point you’re now trying to make? I ask because I’m lost. (Perhaps, being a man, I’m simply not as smart as you…)
Also, it should be noted that one’s actual marks in a class are usually deliberately somewhat independent from one’s level of skill in the subject of the class.
“Moreover, any mathematical statistician will tell you that the far tails of a bell distribution are statistically unreliable and have NO significance for prediction.”
Again, your point is…?
Did the study in question at some point rely on the predictive value of the far tails of a bell distribution?
If you’re talking about the Infamous Taff Bell Curve, well, that was kinda the POINT of the thing.
“Icelandic Girls outperform Icelandic Boys on their version of a similar test.
So, it is clearly cultural.”
Well, no. There are numerous other differences between America and Iceland (population, climate, policy, etc.,) any of which might ultimately explain the difference. Cultural differences are certainly a favored explanation, but the matter is by no means proven.
Also, WHAT is cultural? Female underperformance on standardized tests? Can you show me where I claimed it wasn’t?
“Al said: †I prefer even small studies to anecdotal evidenceâ€.”
Misattribution and misquoting in one go. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Actually, I (JediBear, not Al) said “Anecdotal evidence is inferior to even small studies,” which is true, since anecdotal evidence is statistically meaningless, and are therefore the minimum value which a study may approach.
Poor Al never used the word “anecdotal,” and did not comment on the study in question.
“I also find it interesting that when I cite the existence of recognized world level female mathematicians ( with names), it is called by Al “anecdotalâ€.
That is a complete misunderstanding of what that term means.”
Again, misattribution and this time a complete failure to understand the claim in question. I claimed that your experience with the sadly misinformed and logically deficient teacher was anecdotal and therefore statistically meaningless. It is. The success of the women in question is also anecdotal, but sufficient as such to refute his claim, with which I do not agree.
“What it says is that if you actually have independent random variables ( certainly NOT the case in intelligence studies)”
Isn’t it? If not, why not?
December 8th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Jedibear,
Sorry to misattribute your comments to Al.
There were four sports score questions on my SAT. Luckily, I had
a boyfriend who was sports nuts and I understood the questions.
A year earlier, I would have NOT, as I loathed sports in all forms.
I didn’t claim the estrogen connection was proved. In fact, I claimed the opposite. It was the Sciam Article that claimed it.
Small studies using invalid statistical methods are just as worthless as any anecdote.
“Anecdote” refers to a story. That is, medical doctors in clinical practice who would say: ” I had a patient ( no name or data given) who responded to this treatment. It doesn’t refer to the completely documented fact that certain women mathematicians have won Macarthur
fellowships for their first rate math research. Look up the word
“anecdote” in a dictionary.
You completely misunderstood my point about “short exam”. The point
is that a nearly perfect score on short exam can be ruined by a VERY SMALL NUMBER of wrong answers, so that the situation is very sensitive to bias.
You also misunderstood my points about questions based on sewing dresses etc. That is: Familiarity with terms matters.
My point about tails of distributions was lost on you, I see. Even if something is actually a gaussian bell, it is well known that the tails are not RELIABLE statistical estimates. That is why, for example MENSA, uses a two sigma cutoff–data beyond two sigma are not reliable. The
data for SAT scores used to claim male superiority at the high end are
in fact beyond two sigma. Hence, NOT STATISTICALLY RELIABLE.
The rest of your twists and illogic and your sarcasm are so great that I just give up.
I don’t have enough androgen to fight on.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Jedibear,
One last thing.
Look up the definition of “independent random variables”. Very few real world random variables are independent.
OFF THIS THREAD
December 8th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Jedibear,
I forgot one thing: By “girly girl” I meant physicially feminine.
Although, the same people who claim estrogen and androgen affect math ability have also cited papers that claim that high androgen girls are
more interested in rough and tumble sports, and other ”
boy” activities. These claims are also based on very small studies of
girls with MEDICAL syndromes such as adrenal dyfunction.
OK, I am now really off this THREAD.
December 8th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
“By “girly girl†I meant physicially feminine.”
That clarifies the nature of your claim somewhat. Usually, the term “girly girl” does not refer to the expression of secondary female sex characteristics.
Thus my confusion. There IS a known link between secondary female sex characteristics and estrogen levels.
“These claims are also based on very small studies of
girls with MEDICAL syndromes ”
Which are necessary to produce such a condition (low-estrogen girls, low-androgen boys) in humans, since it’s not an acceptable practice in current behavioral studies to take otherwise normal children and remove their gonads.
“Look up the definition of “independent random variablesâ€. Very few real world random variables are independent.”
I am familiar with the term. I looked it up, and it meant exactly what I thought it did. That being the case, you’re still begging the question.
“There were four sports score questions on my SAT. ”
Out of a total of…?
Hm. That’s remarkable. Of course, it’s not exactly meaningful. Anecdotes, incomplete data, and all that.
“I didn’t claim the estrogen connection was proved.”
You claimed there was a connection between estrogen levels and being a “girly girl.” Of course, you were using the latter term incorrectly, and the claim is therefore actually (and trivially) true. I’m still going to claim that your estrogen levels and baseline performance are not sufficiently established to lend any level of legiitimacy to your anecdote.
“Small studies using invalid statistical methods are just as worthless as any anecdote.”
Not quite true. Small studies using invalid statisitical methods (a claim which is still passing here without evidence) are at minimum just as worthwhile as any anecdote. Like an anecdote, they can still suggest something that is worthy of further study.
More importantly, a study being invalid doesn’t make it wrong, and no number of anecdotes opposed to it can be taken to be right, which was more or less my point.
““Anecdote†refers to a story. ”
Without regard to the truthfulness or accuracy of that story. A single incident, without context, is an anecdote and therefore statistically and scientifically meaningless.
Now, I did make an incorrect claim. An anecdote is not sufficient to provide a counterexample, only necessary. It would be better to say that a single well-documented example (such as yours of women at the top of their mathematical field) is sufficient to refute an absolute claim to the contrary.
I’m a little confused, however, as to how we even got to be discussing this. The anecdote I claimed was meaningless was your story of your sexist science teacher. There are no names or facts. The matter as presented cannot even be investigated regarding its truthfulness. Therefore, as a skeptic, I should treat it in exactly the way I would if you claimed that you had a science teacher who could fly.
“You completely misunderstood my point about “short examâ€. The point is that a nearly perfect score on short exam can be ruined by a VERY SMALL NUMBER of wrong answers, so that the situation is very sensitive to bias. ”
I didn’t misunderstand your point. It wasn’t sufficiently explained, and I left with NO understanding of what you were driving at.
As it is, your point did not address my question. While it may suggest a sensitivity to bias, it does not demonstrate the possibility of sex bias.
“You also misunderstood my points about questions based on sewing dresses etc. That is: Familiarity with terms matters.”
In math, familiarity with terms only matters when they have a numerical import. Thus my question.
Seriously, how would you design a math question to bias it against even the male stereotype, to say nothing of a gender-normalized boy?
“My point about tails of distributions was lost on you, I see.”
It wasn’t exactly lost on me, I just had no idea where you were going with it. Now that it’s explained a little better, I can see your point. On the other hand, I’m still not sure how it relates to any of my points. Care to explain?
On the other hand, I’m not a statistician, and I’ll admit that you’re starting to get a bit over my head.
“The rest of your twists and illogic and your sarcasm are so great that I just give up. ”
Illogic? Where have I been illogical? Can you point out a fallacy, even one?
Sarcasm, I’ll admit to. I’m a sarcastic bastard. Ask anyone.
“I don’t have enough androgen to fight on.”
There you go making a behavioral claim based on sex hormones again.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
JediBear, I follow a lot of your points, especially the ones related to the unsupported claims. Thus, I typically respond to the remarks that I question or disagree with.
I said:
>> “Not exactly true. Science and Engineering organizations are trying to create programs aimed at both girls and boys. ”
JediBear said:
> Actually, that would make it exactly true. A program aimed at boys AND girls is aimed not at boys but at children generally.
Oh, so you meant “programs aimed at boys exclusively”. But I am confused. Why would boys need programs aimed at them exclusively? Of course, one could also argue that traditional programs tend to be male focused anyway, which is one reason why girls need programs intentionally tailored to interest them.
>>“Wait, now you are using one anecdote to refute a general trend.”
> Not so. I did not speak to a general trend, but to an absolute statement. An anecdote can be used to refute such a statement, as only one example is needed to render the statement false.
Your original remark was, “As an aside, who says women don’t go far in the sciences?” It is a recognized trend that science and engineering fields are male dominated by the numbers. In fact, the original comment by Siduri was, “Any of you who wonder why women don’t go so far in the sciences…” That comment is addressed to a trend, not any individual cases. Ergo, your response is to refute a trend by a single case.
>> “On the other hand, if her experiences are taken to be typical,”
> My point was precisely that her experience cannot be taken to be typical.
Which experiences cannot be taken as typical? Her experiences of success in the science field, or her experiences confronting attitudes of bias and expectation? While she is a unique individual, and any particular events are unique to her, it is certainly reasonable to conclude that if she received a high percentage of attitudes addressed to her being a woman, that other women might confront that attitude as well.
> My point was illustrating an alarming double-standard. If boys are outperforming girls, it’s often seen as bad. If girls are outperforming boys, it’s often seen as good. … but if we would consider female academic underperformance to be a bad thing, we MUST also consider male academic underperformance to be a bad thing on the same basis. It’s not panic, it’s just not sex-biased.
I agree that academic underperformance from any particular group is equally bad. I guess the issue is how to tell when a particular group is underperforming.
>> “Women tend to have to work harder for equivalent recognition of success. At least that is the premise. ”
> My point was that that premise is not borne out by the evidence and cannot therefore be considered true. If girls did have to work harder to succeed, they would suceed less often. Since the second is manifestly untrue, the first cannot be considered to be true.
I think you will find people arguing that the lack of females in the sciences is an indicator of less success. How is success measured?
> What’s not feminine about football?
Large bodies slamming into each other at high speeds with lots of force.
> The term “girly” implies and is defined by the stereotype of what a girl should be. In this stereotype, women don’t do math (or physics, or politics) and don’t play football (or climb trees. Or get in fights.) Doing either would be failing to adhere to the stereotype and make one “not girly.”
Okay, I guess that fits how you’re using the term. I think penny was using the term to mean “wears dresses and likes pink and purple and plays with dolls and wears makeup and jewelry”.
> This would not create a bias against girls, but only against those (whether male or female) who were meaningfully ignorant of the sport in question. The female stereotype, not the test, would be creating any such bias.
It is true the bias would be against people not familiar with the sport. Because of cultural trends where females are less interested in sports than males, this becomes a de facto bias against females. It’s not an intentional bias against women (or against anyone, for that matter), but it has the result of being a bias against women because of cultural patterns.
penny said:
> “One can do the same thing by asking boys questions about dress darts, french braiding, clairified butter etc.”
JediBear said:
> Just curious, do these have unique mathematical properties? Sports scores do.
Whether or not there are unique mathematical properties, there is an advantage to familiarity with the topic. It makes it easier to conceptualize, and shortcuts understanding when you already are familiar with the mathematical relationships and calculations. If you already regularly sum football scoring and track points, it is much easier to pick up, say, totalling the score of two TD’s, a field goal, and a 2point conversion. Someone familiar will be more comfortable running through the numbers than someone who has never heard of football, even if all the point awards are spelled out. I don’t know about dress darts and clairified butter, but french braiding talks about patterns of overlaying strands of hair. A similar topic might be knitting, where different patterns are formed by different counts on the knots.
Penny said:
> “Icelandic Girls outperform Icelandic Boys on their version of a similar test.
So, it is clearly cultural.”
JediBear said:
> Well, no. There are numerous other differences between America and Iceland (population, climate, policy, etc.,) any of which might ultimately explain the difference. Cultural differences are certainly a favored explanation, but the matter is by no means proven.
Uh, how do population, climate, and policy have effects on test performance other than cultural effects?
October 25th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Actually science/math lab work is excruciatingly dull, it is only the committed and determined who can get through, certainly not always the brightest. Like many individuals I’ve met, some people think that acquiring degrees is a sign of great intelligence . One doesn’t need an IQ of 160 or above to accomplish this . I as a female, have an IQ if 162 and have dropped out of college twice, does that mean I’m less intelligent than studious women who complete their courses with honors of course not. Some females like myself don’t find sciences/math hard but studying them aat university is unfortunately very very boring.