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Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

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Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#51

Post by mitchty »

this2shallPass wrote: post #44
mitchty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, what? Do we say this kind of crap to Lawyers? Doctors? Engineers? (scratch the last one i'm sure we do say this kind of crap to them) Why must programming be such a soul sucking life encompassing thing? It doesn't matter if you're a woman or man, this stupid mindset that somehow the only way to be a programmer is to be a stereotype needs to be launched into the sun and forevermore forgotten. Just today I met a g…

Medicine and big-firm law are life encompassing things. Less true of engineering. But for the future doctors, usually pre-med and definitely medical school and being a doctor forces this on you, and for the big firm lawyers, the same.

Right but we're not telling people you can't be a doctor because you didn't sleep and breathe medicine before you went to college.

Least the doctors I have met all seemed to think of it as a job not a lifestyle.

It is that fundamental point I'm slightly annoyed with. Big firm law is also a bit of a clique, a lawyer friend of mine and the lawyers I know of all seem to love law, but aren't of this weird mindset that only the self chosen few are worthy of the endeavor.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#52

Post by [deleted] »

sloanesturz wrote: post #7
revelation wrote: post #3

With their high number of (rejected) applications and subjective criteria they can of course shape these statistics any way they want. So is this progress or Stanford appearing progressive ? There is no way to tell.

At Stanford, undergrads are admitted generally to the school, then they get to pick whichever major they like. Most students don't pick a major until sophomore or junior year. Stanford accepts 50% women and more of those women are picking to become CS majors after they get in, when they didn't just a few years ago. This is actually progress.

[deleted]

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#53

Post by 001sky »

ngoel36 wrote: post #4
rahimnathwani wrote: post #2

~50% of undergrads at Stanford are female. ~30% of new Stanford computer science majors are female.

Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now. What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major , and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.

In all fairness, this is likely a structural data anomaly. ie, it is driven by the number of majors at the school, and their level of abstraction. Here are some historical data points.

Notice the arbitary abstraction of, eg

Bio Sciences Human Biology

1955 1. History 2. Economics 3. Psychology 4. Political Science 5. Bio Sciences

1965 1. History 2. Political Science 3. English 4. Psychology 5. Economics

1975 1. Psychology 2. Bio Sciences 3. Economics 4. History 5. English

1985 1. Economics 2. Human Biology 3. Bio Sciences 4. Electrical Engr 5. English

1995 1. Bio Sciences 2. Human Biology 3. Economics 4. Psychology 5. English

and now we look at 2010 (from quora)

Biological Sciences (1.32%) but Human Biology (12.58%) Biology (5.74%)

=~20% of Standford majors in 2010 are "biology majors" in plain language usage.

Based on data on Bachelor's Degrees conferred in the 2009-2010 school year[1], the top majors are:

    Human Biology (12.58%)
    Economics (8.10%)
    International Relations (6.20%)
    Biology (5.74%)
    Computer Science (4.94%)
    Engineering (4.71%)
    Psychology (4.54%)
    Political Science (4.25%)
    English (3.96%)
    History (3.62%)
    Management Science and Engineering (3.39%)
    Mechanical Engineering (3.10%)
    Science, Technology, and Society (2.30%)
    Communication (2.18%)
    Electrical Engineering (2.07%)
    Mathematics (2.01%)
    Earth Systems (1.84%)
    Physics (1.84%)
    Sociology (1.49%)
    Biological Sciences (1.32%)*

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#54

Post by yummyfajitas »

reagency wrote: post #38
eru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diversity in any field makes it richer. In a testable way? I'm really interested to see which of diversity's claimed benefits hold up to scrutiny. Perfectly happy to see diversity as an end and not a means.

Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find

Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity".

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#55

Post by kelukelugames »

reagency wrote: post #38
eru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diversity in any field makes it richer. In a testable way? I'm really interested to see which of diversity's claimed benefits hold up to scrutiny. Perfectly happy to see diversity as an end and not a means.

Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find

This is not true. I'm tired of people confusing correlation with causation. The famous studies that people cite shows a correlation between women in senior management and profitability. It is entirely possible that the most competent women are attracted to the most profitable companies.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#56

Post by douche »

ngoel36 wrote: post #21
sliverstorm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So more than 50% of Stanford undergrads are CS? Shit. Does that not sound like aa glut?

No. Very little of a CS degree is "coding" - CS is so much more than that. It's even beyond "engineering". A proper CS degree teaches you how to think , how to solve insanely hard problems, and how to do so with a team of other smart people - often with different personalities. What separates CS from other degrees is that it does filter out those without the horsepower or fortitude on both the quant side (algorithms)…

University CS programs are kinda shitty for teaching people how to actually write code. It's not really more than that, it's math and theory and proofs instead of that. University faculty, if they ever worked in a professional environment, did it years and years ago before they got tenure.

The worst course I took in my CS department was the algorithms and data structures course. Didn't write a line of code. Wrote a ton of induction proofs. Learned a lot of esoteric algorithms that have very good big O profiles, but suck bogwater because of cache coherency when they are implemented on non-imaginary hardware, or have high constant factors that got hand-waved away. I'd sign up for that course in a hot second, if it covered the same material, but instead of scrawling on a chalkboard, it was structured around writing the same algorithms in C, segfaults and all. I don't think most CS majors could hack that kind of course, however.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#57

Post by kelukelugames »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54
reagency wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find

Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity". http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

Here's the abstract from your link. A bit more complicated than your summary.

Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#58

Post by java000 »

I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example).

If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets lamenting the lack of women in CS are actually partly to blame for it for their ongoing denigration and belittling of those already in the field. For example, someone in this thread cited an NPR article titled "When Women Stopped Coding." Does "coding" sound like a prestigious job activity to you? How many news articles have you seen lately that casually refer to psychiatrists or psychologists as "shrinks," and how many have you seen that refer to us as "coders," "geeks," or "nerds?"

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#59

Post by sridca »

mitchty wrote: post #43
tomp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I think every time someone says "We need to encourage more women/people to study CS." If you're only doing it for the money, you're probably doing it wrong. Studying CS for 3 years does not a programmer/hacker make; staying up coding all night or while other kids are playing outside, for years, is what it takes.

Umm, what? Do we say this kind of crap to Lawyers? Doctors? Engineers? (scratch the last one i'm sure we do say this kind of crap to them) Why must programming be such a soul sucking life encompassing thing? It doesn't matter if you're a woman or man, this stupid mindset that somehow the only way to be a programmer is to be a stereotype needs to be launched into the sun and forevermore forgotten. Just today I met a g…

Tomp, the person you responded to, wrote two sentences. You responded to their second sentence, but the first sentence provides the whole context.

Tomp said they think this way every time someone says "We need to encourage more women/people to study CS". This relates to the whole "the tech industry is sexist" non-sense some radical feminist spew out ... speaking of which, out of the following two which do you think is vital to address (psychologically) first?

- stop attributing the "promised race of super humans" self-perception

- stop attributing the "successful tech men are sexists" projection

Which is causing more strife than the other? Lookup 'github horvath', donglegate ... why even elevatorgate.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#60

Post by 001sky »

coyotebush wrote: post #11
sliverstorm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So more than 50% of Stanford undergrads are CS? Shit. Does that not sound like aa glut?

No, those two statistics alone don't say anything about the total number of CS majors. Per the article, CS represents ~20% (of students with declared majors).

CS is 214 of an estimated 3500 female student body.

That still seems exceptionally low. Posted this upthread but in 2010 20% of the student body was in Biology (once topical sub-specialties were aggregated).

20% of ~3500 would be closer to `700, which is 3.3x the number of declared comp sci students.

Or maybe my math is wrong? I'm more interested in the actual knowledge being put in and attention being paid out than a critique of the degree naming conventions.

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