mathbabe

Nice to see another female mathematician out there! Great post! @Data_Nerd

Hi, Cathy,
Great blog! I’m a Comm. College math teacher in suburban Chicago, typical bald white male, and your take on issues of women in math fully dovetails with my own experience. I thought I’d just give you a couple additional perspectives, if you’re interested.

In my classes, I have students write a “math autobiography” at the start, telling me their past experiences in math. The single most common trope is that of women saying “I loved math up until ___ grade”, with 5,6, or 7 most often in the blank, though sometimes up to 8 or 9, “when Mr. X, my new teacher, refused to answer our questions or help us, thought we were dumb, but passed us anyway.” Of course, the sequential nature of math means these students are now unable to understand or catch up in later grades, and rapidly come to hate math, with good reason. A single bad (usually male) teacher has much more effect in math than in, say, English or history. The real locus of effective educational change in this country in math and in all aspects of critical thinking has to be at the K-12 level, where intellectual skills are as likely to be dulled as honed by allowing opportunity for real creativity and enthusiasm.

Secondly, you are rightly suspect of the “nature” side of the nature vs. nurture argument–but, in my opinion, not strongly enough. Evolutionary biology is a side-interest of mine, and particulalry the political misuses of bad science involving “biological superiority” claims. I first got into this several decades ago via the book “The IQ Controversy”, which I highly recommend. It showed that claims that minorities (largely blacks) had hereditarily lower IQ’s were both empirically false (unsubstantiated by properly controlled scientific evidence, or, worse, involving outright fraud) and conceptually incoherent. Ever since, I carefully follow similar claims about other inherent biological superiority, including, of course, that of men in math, to see if the same critique applies–and it simply always does. You could be quite confident of being right in simply saying that any such claims are almost certain to involve data that have not been adequately controlled for, and to never give them any credence in advance. Your point about the null hypothesis is thus extremely apt–but, frankly, there is virtually no real (adequately controlled) evidence at all even challenging the null hypothesis.

The main reason for this is simply that culture is a far more pervasive and uncontrollable influence than virtually any scientists allow. Even a two-year old has had over ten-thousand hours of absorbing cultural data non-stop every waking moment–for Summers to claim his kids demonstrate any of his claims just shows that he doesn’t understand controlled scientific experiments. It is virtually impossible to do an adequately controlled scientific experiment in any realm that involves culture in any way–which is every important realm!

In The IQ Controversy, Noam Chomsky makes a different point, which is worth considering as well–it wouldn’t matter if math (though he refers to IQ) skills WERE completely hereditary or biological, if we established a just society. Swimming “skills” are fairly biological, but no one finds it problematic–because society does not use swimming ability as an unjust criteria to differentially reward or oppress people. Average group differentials in swimming ability lead to no general unhappiness, and don’t prevent any individual from deploying their particular skills as they wish–we need to establish the same sort of society regarding all intellectual skills. If fewer (or more!) women then display math skills, so what, even if they are biologically based, as long as all who have them can develop them to the extent they wish.

Finally, your take on the collaborative nature of math is slowly becoming more common practice, at least in my classes. I let students do hands-on review problem sets before tests, and they can work together. Women have always been more likely to do so in pairs and small groups, for obviousl cultural reasons, but nowadays my male students take advantage of that almost as much, as opposed to “lone wolf” types struggling through it themselves. At least, this is true up through 1st Semester Calculus, which has lots of pharmacy, pre-med, and other non-math, non-engineering students in it who will never take Calc 2, and which is about 50-50 male/female. It’s true that Calc 2 reverts to more traditional form genderwise, but even there the trend is towards more women, and more males who work in collaborative fashion. It is still true there, though. that I occasionally have women who wish to work “alone”, not out of anti-social tendencies, but just because they really, really like the “challenge” and satisfaction of getting it on their own–a feeling I am extremly familiar with…

At any rate, keep up the truly excellent work–your blog is now, along with NC and a few others, a highlight of my net surfing!

Best regards,
–Paul Boisvert
Oakton Community College

Thanks for the update on the Met panel. I saved $25 and got your insights on the panel too. I am depressed by your conclusions about the market smarts of those guys, minus Soros, Also, LARRY SUMMERS, no. How lame is that? Obama hasn’t a clue. Now I’m really bumed out.
Still, I like your hard edge approach to these guys….

Thought you or your readers might be interested in this, since it’s about data-driven aid: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/972584134/what-works-in-development-10-meta-analyses-of-aid. (More at http://www.aideconomics.com/.) We’ve only got another couple of weeks left so any attention it could get would really help.

Love your blog. Thought you might like to see http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1981524074/art-and-commerce-along-the-cyber-silk-highway

i am a partialy disabled 58 yr old out of work 2 years now . when i was growing up dad always said its a good idea to have more than one trade . i have 3 . certified and current in all . auto mechanic . cabinet maker . shop floor fabrication welder . the auto field is dying because of lack of interest for experienced workers . the government stepped in 1996 and made all the manufactures standardize the diagnostic software . the cabinet making is dead because of the economic crash in the housing and building trades . and people no longer care if the whole cabinet is made out of wood .( just the doors and facing stiles ) . the fab welder trade is dead because most of the heavy equipment and machinery is made over seas and shipped here .

i would like to know if the OWS movement is gaining traction . as more skilled blue collar trades poeple find a common ground here ?

I am oddly compelled to chime in another “Wow” after seeing the Frontline interview – oddly, because I don’t feel (dare I say it?) “smart enough” to even participate beyond lurking within your blogsphere!!!

As one of those “people persons” who graduated from a fairly un-glam state college in CA with a fuzzy studies degree, landing work in corporate education, I had the opportunity to work with CapitalOne Financial between ’00-’02. I got my share of eye-rolling from better educated peers, but frankly I didn’t “get” what these smug, highly-recruited whizkids were actually DOING until years later.

I’ve been intimidated by math all of my life, but adore mixing it up with intelligent, opinionated folks like those flocking to this site. The attraction/repulsion tickles me to no end and frankly, you simply rock it.

You have a new follower in me. While I’m overwhelmingly challenged with much of the content, I certainly feel your intelligent and spiritual underpinnings and that comfort and inspires me.