Girls' math skills now equal to boys', study finds

[GenHoth]

And my comparative human development class was almost all female, so what? We have different tastes.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: moshquerade
Should we say that boys are getting dumber or girls are getting smarter?

Maybe both? :Q

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: moshquerade

Originally posted by: Gothgar

Originally posted by: moshquerade

Originally posted by: amdhunter
Girls have two boobs.

Impressive math skills you have there. 😛

try this on for a math question, how many boobs would 6 women have???!!!!???!!!1111

it depends. are they married?

😀

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
this has been known for a while afaik. In fact, across the board girls outperform boys on all tests/standardized testing It's still a perpetuated gender stereotype and is just part of why there are so few women in science/engineering

After the ASVAB tests, I overheard whoever it is from the Army (or whoever administers those tests) telling the students that "if you're a girl, you're at a disadvantage if you decide to go into math or science. I thought "WTF??!!" So, I approached her afterwards about it. According to her, the statistics don't lie - if males and females have roughly the same test scores going into college, the males do better. I couldn't believe such a sexist statement, especially since it came from a female... my guidance counselor cut me off, saying "I think she knows what she's talking about - she's the expert on this information." (or something like that.)

1. I sincerely doubt it's true.
2. If it is true; anyone have some sort of proof (or heard something like this before??)

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: moshquerade

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
this has been known for a while afaik. In fact, across the board girls outperform boys on all tests/standardized testing It's still a perpetuated gender stereotype and is just part of why there are so few women in science/engineering

for how long has it been known?

When I was growing up, the advanced classes were always packed with girls. The top 10 GPA wise was about half and half though.
Then we go to college, and most of the smart girls fall into one of the 4 categories:
the arts (music, etc)
a Mrs.
education of some sort (possibly math education)
one of the softer sciences (psychology, biology, etc)

Whereas most of the smart guys are engineering or the harder sciences (physics, chemistry, computer science, or straight up math).

There's also a significant change in attitude going into college. Girls who thought they knew it all seem to progress more towards the idea "oh, that's beyond me, I'm just a girl, I like to party! woo!" whereas the guys trend more towards "Damn my life sucks. No one else can understand this stuff like we can, and it makes me a social outcast to be so involved with it. Whatever, let's just get drunk."
It's a shame to see smart girls essentially just give up when they get to college.

 

[RESmonkey]

For the record, the best at Calculus in my school was me and another boy, followed by a few more boys, and then finally 1 girl.

So, yeah, some girls are getting better or something.
Isn't it true that men have more grey matter in their brain or something, that makes them better at useful things like math and physics, while girls have more of something else, that makes them better at humanities?

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: Imp

Originally posted by: Leros

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
*checks work and school* yep... engineering and science is still 99% male.

My engineering classes are 15-20% female and that number is growing every year. The girls tend to be in the higher spectrum of the class too.

I didn't count, but I think about a quarter of my engineering class were femmes. Most had the better grades I think.

Depends on the major as well, ChemE, CE, etc. seem to have quite a few females, whereas EE/CompE is still a pretty big sausage fest. 😛

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: RESmonkey
For the record, the best at Calculus in my school was me and another boy, followed by a few more boys, and then finally 1 girl.

So, yeah, some girls are getting better or something.
Isn't it true that men have more grey matter in their brain or something, that makes them better at useful things like math and physics, while girls have more of something else, that makes them better at humanities?

If we're using anecdotal evidence, last year I didn't make answer keys - I just used one of my student's tests as an answer key. She was a girl. On the occasions when I did make answer keys, if there was a discrepancy, I looked for the error on mine first before hers.

 

[rocadelpunk]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
this has been known for a while afaik. In fact, across the board girls outperform boys on all tests/standardized testing It's still a perpetuated gender stereotype and is just part of why there are so few women in science/engineering

After the ASVAB tests, I overheard whoever it is from the Army (or whoever administers those tests) telling the students that "if you're a girl, you're at a disadvantage if you decide to go into math or science. I thought "WTF??!!" So, I approached her afterwards about it. According to her, the statistics don't lie - if males and females have roughly the same test scores going into college, the males do better. I couldn't believe such a sexist statement, especially since it came from a female... my guidance counselor cut me off, saying "I think she knows what she's talking about - she's the expert on this information." (or something like that.)

1. I sincerely doubt it's true.
2. If it is true; anyone have some sort of proof (or heard something like this before??)

This is more to answer mosh's question. I'm writing a paper right now though so I can't go through bunch of journals/profs. But I'll try and come back.

Anyway, there has been the gender stereotype that boys are better in math. This is simply not true, what is true and comes from *brain studies* is that boys and girls simply learn quite differently. These differences are easily obtained and fairly well researched at this point. The problem lies with the teachers and the state testing standards.

Girls can excel in math/engineering just as well as boys, however the material isn't taught in a fashion that's condusive/approachable/appealing to them. Then combined with how students are evaluated and it's not too far of a stretch to see why females are still not entering engineering/math fields. The courses and material are just geared toward male learning styles.

Now as far as girls catching up/exceeding on standardized testing...there's probably a bunch of reasons for that.

But at some point it comes down to how questions are being asked, what type of questions are being asked and at what depth/relevancy the questions are being asked. As well as how kids are being taught now ...

this ranges back and forth between middle school philosophy v.s. junior highs, single gender classrooms, etc ...



now, please take what I say with a grain of salt. I am only 2 weeks into my M.ED for secondary, but my interests lie in how to get more girls/minorities into the hard sciences...so I'll try and update as I learn : )


I haven't looked too far into it.
but the learning differences research just gets better all the time...whether that gets implemented into a classroom...not so much

single gender classroom research is definitely lacking, but more should be coming within the next decade as no child left behind inherently provides funding for this approach (even though it's hotly contested).

I'll have to get back to you on standardized testing. But I know i've seen data that has shown girls are ahead 1-2 years (developmentally) ahead when they first enter school in reading and writing. I'm not sure about math per se

 

[moshquerade]

Originally posted by: mikelish
boys use to dominate in math so they changed the way it was taught. boys scores went down, girls went up

elaborate on how they changed the way it was taught.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Well luckily for me I graduated HS so this doesn't apply to me. I is smarter then them dumb girls in maths.

 

[jman19]

Originally posted by: nkgreen
I had no girls in my disrete math class and one in my microcomputers class.

:shrug:

This.

 

[ElFenix]

average math skills may be the same, but boys are more likely to be outliers. that doesn't make girls skill equal to boys. not to mention these are NCLB tests, which are a joke.


journalists have very little business discussing science.

 

[RESmonkey]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: RESmonkey
For the record, the best at Calculus in my school was me and another boy, followed by a few more boys, and then finally 1 girl.

So, yeah, some girls are getting better or something.
Isn't it true that men have more grey matter in their brain or something, that makes them better at useful things like math and physics, while girls have more of something else, that makes them better at humanities?

If we're using anecdotal evidence, last year I didn't make answer keys - I just used one of my student's tests as an answer key. She was a girl. On the occasions when I did make answer keys, if there was a discrepancy, I looked for the error on mine first before hers.

If it helps, my class only (there were 3 total Calc BC classes) had the fewest boys and most girls--> 3 boys vs 10 girls. The other 2 classes had a more fairer amount (still, more girls than boys).

But even though there are more girls, the boys excelled beyond the girls. They just weren't able to picture certain things in their heads like revolving something around an axis, making it 3d, then cutting a certain part to make it hollow, calculating volume, etc.




edit = I forgot why I started my post with "if it helps." :0

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
this has been known for a while afaik. In fact, across the board girls outperform boys on all tests/standardized testing It's still a perpetuated gender stereotype and is just part of why there are so few women in science/engineering

After the ASVAB tests, I overheard whoever it is from the Army (or whoever administers those tests) telling the students that "if you're a girl, you're at a disadvantage if you decide to go into math or science. I thought "WTF??!!" So, I approached her afterwards about it. According to her, the statistics don't lie - if males and females have roughly the same test scores going into college, the males do better. I couldn't believe such a sexist statement, especially since it came from a female... my guidance counselor cut me off, saying "I think she knows what she's talking about - she's the expert on this information." (or something like that.)

1. I sincerely doubt it's true.
2. If it is true; anyone have some sort of proof (or heard something like this before??)

I'd tend to believe the standardized test administrator for scores versus gender more than any person's anecdotes or what they want to believe.

 

[Adam8281]

Some controversy about how reporters are interpreting the data from this study. This from City Journal:

"Math Is Harder for Girls
. . . and also, it seems, for the New York Times.
28 July 2008

The New York Times is determined to show that women are discriminated against in the sciences; too bad the facts say otherwise. A new study has ?found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests,? claims a July 25 article by Tamar Lewin?thus, the underrepresentation of women on science faculties must result from bias. Actually, the study, summarized in the July 25 issue of Science, shows something quite different: while boys? and girls? average scores are similar, boys outnumber girls among students in both the highest and the lowest score ranges. Either the Times is deliberately concealing the results of the study or its reporter cannot understand the most basic science reporting.

Lewin begins her piece with the mandatory mocking reference to former Harvard president Lawrence Summers? suicidal speculations about why women are underrepresented on science and math faculties. She also manages to squeeze in a classic feminist trope for how our sexist society destroys girls? innate abilities, invoking the infamous ?talking Barbie doll [who] proclaimed that ?math class is tough.?? Lewin implies that the new study blows Summers? wide-ranging speculations on gender and math out of the water; all that holds women back from equal representation in MIT?s physics department, it seems, is Mattel and other patriarchal marketers of gender myths.

On the contrary, Science?s analysis of math test scores only confirms the hypothesis that cost Summers his Harvard post: that boys are found more often than girls at the outer reaches of the bell curve of abstract reasoning ability. If you?re hoping to land a job in Harvard?s math department, you?d better not show up with average math scores; in fact, you?d better present scores at the absolute top of the range. And as studies have shown for decades, there are many more boys than girls in that empyrean realm. Unless science and math faculties start practicing the most grotesque and counterproductive gender discrimination, a skew in the sex of their professors will be inevitable, given the distribution of top-level cognitive skills. Likewise, boys will be and are overrepresented among math dunces?though the feminists never complain about the male math failure rate.

Lewin claims that the ?researchers looked at the average of the test scores of all students, the performance of the most gifted children and the ability to solve complex math problems. They found, in every category, that girls did as well as boys.? This statement is simply wrong. Among white 11th-graders, there were twice as many boys as girls above the 99th percentile?that is, at the very top of the curve. (Asians, however, showed a very slight skew toward females above the 99th percentile, while there were too few Hispanics and blacks scoring above even the 95th percentile to compute their gender ratios.)

The Science researchers themselves try to downplay the significance of the two-to-one ratio for whites?the vast majority of students?on the grounds that it should produce a 67 percent to 33 percent disparity in male-to-female representation in math-dependent fields. Yet Ph.D. programs for engineering, they say, contain only about 15 percent women. Therefore, the authors conclude, ?gender differences in math performance, even among high scorers, are insufficient to explain lopsided gender patterns in participation in some [science and math] fields.?

This reasoning is flawed, however, because the tests used in their study are pathetically easy compared with what would be required of engineering or other rigorous math-based Ph.D.s. The researchers got their data from math tests devised by individual states to fulfill their annual testing obligations under the federal No Child Left Behind act. NCLB has produced a mad rush to the bottom, as many states crafted easier and easier reading and math tests to show their federal overseers how well their schools are doing. The Science researchers analyzed the difficulty of those tests and found that virtually none required remotely complicated problem-solving abilities. That a gender difference at the highest percentiles shows up on tests pitched to such an elementary level of knowledge and skill suggests that on truly challenging tests, the gender difference at the top end of the distribution will be even greater. Indeed, between five and ten times as many boys as girls have been found to receive near-perfect scores on the math SATs among mathematically gifted adolescents, for example. Far from raising the presumption of gender bias among schools and colleges, the Science study strengthens a competing hypothesis: that the main drivers of success in scientific fields are aptitude and knowledge, in conjunction with personal choices about career and family that feminists refuse to acknowledge.

The same reality-denying feminists are itching to subject college science and math departments to gender quotas. They have already persuaded Congress to require university scientists to perform Title IX compliance reviews?a nightmare of bean-counting paperwork?covering everything from faculty composition to lab space. Misleading reporting like Lewin?s will only strengthen the movement to select cancer researchers and atomic engineers on the basis of their sex, not their abilities.

The Wall Street Journal, it should be noted, had no difficulty grasping the two main findings of the Science study: that ?girls and boys have roughly the same average scores on state math tests,? as Keith J. Winstein reported on July 25, but that ?boys more often excelled or failed.? That the New York Times, in an article over twice as long as the Journal?s, couldn?t manage to squeeze in a reference to the fact that boys outperformed girls at the top end of the curve should put its readers on notice: trust nothing you read here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her latest book, coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, is The Immigration Solution."

 

[ElFenix]

the houston chronicle ran a wishy washy op-ed stating that there is no excuse that the ratio of males to females in engineering PhD programs is lower than 2:1 (as that is the ratio of boys to girls in the top 1% of the NCLB tests).

i read that city journal article yesterday, and i swear i got the link from around here, but i can't find the thread.



here is what i'm writing to the chronicle:

I see that the Chronicle's editorial staff, much like the New York Times, saw that average math scores for boys and girls are the same for standardized testing. The Chronicle, like the Times, fell into the trap of declaring that "[g]irls perform as well as boys in math." The Chronicle at least points out that male students are more likely (twice, in fact) to score in the top 1% on these tests.

Unfortunately, that is about the extent of the Chronicle's reasoning on this matter. The tests that were studied were No Child Left Behind standardized tests, which become easier and easier every year as states attempt to make the results appear to improve. Certainly a top academic should be well into the top 1% of these tests. As the ratio of male to female scores increases the further left or right from median on the bell curve, a reasoned inference would be that the rightmost (and leftmost) 1/1,000th on the curve would be more male biased than the rightmost (and leftmost) 1/100th. The rightmost (and leftmost) 1/10,000th would be even more biased. It is these small fractions from which the best and brightest academicians and Ph.D. candidates are drawn, not the more coarse top 1%. The Chronicle's assertion that "women should make up one-third of our math, science, and engineering departments" demonstrates an utterly superficial examination of the data.

 

[Adam8281]

Some conclusions of the above article aside (e.g. "trust nothing you read here" referring to the NYT), it is interesting that articles regarding this study are mentioning the gender parity qua average score, but aren't mentioning that boys are much more likely than girls to either excel or fail. I don't think noting that aspect of the study yields a sexist or "boys are better at math" conclusion: see the last sentence of the 3rd to last paragraph, suggesting that the disparity reflects not different innate abilities, but personal choices.

 

[0roo0roo]

politically convenient study interpretation by the media ...go figure😛 its not the first time so called feminists play fast and loose with the truth. and you can bet this study and the selective omissions are going to be used to push for politically correct quotas.

and yea its the top % not the average that matters for higher education math departments.

the other thread on this. http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=2212224&STARTPAGE=1

 

[alkemyst]

With sex happening earlier, they are getting IQ injections at a younger age.

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
this has been known for a while afaik. In fact, across the board girls outperform boys on all tests/standardized testing It's still a perpetuated gender stereotype and is just part of why there are so few women in science/engineering

The fact is that the article totally misrepresents the study and you are wrong. The average boy and the average girl test about the same on dumbed down standardized math tests. The thing is, and the author is too ignorant of statistics to get this, the bell curves are different. There are far more boths than girls at the extreme ends of the curve. A major consequence at this is that there are many times more men than women who excel at math. This is a major reason why girls are underrepresented in those fields.

 

[Juked07]

It's pretty widely accepted that median abilities are about equal, just the boys have a larger SD and are over represented at both extremes.

Lol at standardized tests. Absolutely does not measure natural ability in the slightest. Even students who aren't particularly talented can be taught to do well on these tests. Show me an even spread in the USAMO or Putnam...

 

[Fox5]

That the New York Times, in an article over twice as long as the Journal?s, couldn?t manage to squeeze in a reference to the fact that boys outperformed girls at the top end of the curve should put its readers on notice: trust nothing you read here.

Sounds like the New York Times failed basic statistics. Two data set's averages are not comparable unless they represent comparable ranges.

 

[darkxshade]

There's a perfectly logical explanation to all this:

The person who did this study is obviously girl and since naturally girls are horrible at math, the results unfortunately skewed in their favor.

*ducks*

 

[bobsmith1492]

If you look at the data, there are more boys on the top and bottom ends of the curve while girls are more in the middle. Therefore boys are still better at math. The rest just don't give a rip. Girls all try and are moderately successful.