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‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#21

Post by gumby »

DogLover_ wrote: post #15
areoform wrote: post #13

It is hard to do the things you love when you aren't wanted. Setting aside the statistics for a moment, imagine being a teenage girl and overhearing boys talk about how girls are dumb. Brainless machines of no consequence. That women can't code or contribute much in fields like math. "They just don't have the brain for it." These moments stay with you and they impede you at moments when you need to be free. They push…

True, but it is no different for boys these days. Not wanted by teachers and they see that girls just get better grades leaving many uninspired to pursuit greater.

As the father of a son it doesn’t look at all like things have gotten worse for boys since I was a student.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#22

Post by throwaway2019Z »

vecter wrote: post #12
killjoywashere wrote: post #5

> by the time she reached Harvard, hoping to study medicine, she was so far behind that “I couldn’t even take a remedial math class” Wat? How'd she get into Harvard then? Legacy admission?

Many people who go to Harvard aren't great at math. After all, there are so many other fields of study outside of STEM.

Most people who go to Harvard have to get very high scores on the SAT/ACT, which include math sections that are of, at least, remedial math difficulty.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#23

Post by xondono »

areoform wrote: post #13

It is hard to do the things you love when you aren't wanted. Setting aside the statistics for a moment, imagine being a teenage girl and overhearing boys talk about how girls are dumb. Brainless machines of no consequence. That women can't code or contribute much in fields like math. "They just don't have the brain for it." These moments stay with you and they impede you at moments when you need to be free. They push…

Maybe Spain (of all places) is super-progressive, but I can't recall a single instance of anyone saying anything similar to "Women can't code" or "Women can't do math".

In fact, for most of my educational life the "top student of the class" has been female, even through engineering and maths.

Am I some kind of odd outlier? is the experience on other countries different? I'm genouinly curious.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#24

Post by eecc »

okasaki wrote: post #7

What a banal way to advertise your book.

There, that’s one of those “knock down” the article is about.

There’s this point I heard someone made about internet toxicity: “it used to be that if you didn’t have anything positive to say you’d just shit up and move on; if anything to avoid a bitter quarrel in person. On the internet, the lack of any immediate personal consequence removed this restraint, allowing the worst thoughts to pour out, and drown whatever good is said.”

Thanks, for being today’s example. Now can you please make the effort next time?

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#25

Post by Tade0 »

areoform wrote: post #13

It is hard to do the things you love when you aren't wanted. Setting aside the statistics for a moment, imagine being a teenage girl and overhearing boys talk about how girls are dumb. Brainless machines of no consequence. That women can't code or contribute much in fields like math. "They just don't have the brain for it." These moments stay with you and they impede you at moments when you need to be free. They push…

By my SO's account statements from her parents like "it's okay you're bad at math - I was too" were much more damaging in the long run.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#26

Post by rsynnott »

xondono wrote: post #23
areoform wrote: post #13

It is hard to do the things you love when you aren't wanted. Setting aside the statistics for a moment, imagine being a teenage girl and overhearing boys talk about how girls are dumb. Brainless machines of no consequence. That women can't code or contribute much in fields like math. "They just don't have the brain for it." These moments stay with you and they impede you at moments when you need to be free. They push…

Maybe Spain (of all places) is super-progressive, but I can't recall a single instance of anyone saying anything similar to "Women can't code" or "Women can't do math". In fact, for most of my educational life the "top student of the class" has been female, even through engineering and maths. Am I some kind of odd outlier? is the experience on other countries different? I'm genouinly curious.

I think this stuff actually is pretty regional/local; participation rates by women are much better in some non-Anglosphere countries.

Edit: It can also become weirdly specific; participation in computer science and physics remain quite low here (Ireland), say, but I believe most chemistry undergrads are now women.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#27

Post by lruor »

eecc wrote: post #24
okasaki wrote: post #7

What a banal way to advertise your book.

There, that’s one of those “knock down” the article is about. There’s this point I heard someone made about internet toxicity: “it used to be that if you didn’t have anything positive to say you’d just shit up and move on; if anything to avoid a bitter quarrel in person. On the internet, the lack of any immediate personal consequence removed this restraint, allowing the worst thoughts to pour out, and drown whatever…

She's exploiting a real problem (or what she deems to be a real problem) to sell her book.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#29

Post by 0815test »

rsynnott wrote: post #26
xondono wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Spain (of all places) is super-progressive, but I can't recall a single instance of anyone saying anything similar to "Women can't code" or "Women can't do math". In fact, for most of my educational life the "top student of the class" has been female, even through engineering and maths. Am I some kind of odd outlier? is the experience on other countries different? I'm genouinly curious.

I think this stuff actually is pretty regional/local; participation rates by women are much better in some non-Anglosphere countries. Edit: It can also become weirdly specific; participation in computer science and physics remain quite low here (Ireland), say, but I believe most chemistry undergrads are now women.

It's a bit puzzling/weird because as it turns out, participation rates in technical fields tend to be "better" in places where women are comparatively worse off, and vice versa. Many people think that these "better" participation rates don't actually reflect anything like a full equalization in underlying interest, and that can still be a problem for women in the longer run.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#30

Post by ifianassa »

I too never thought I was smart enough - in my case, for computers. Nothing to do with my gender. My father bought me my first computer at 10. But, others said that I can't learn programming if I don't know maths, and I was crap at maths. So I didn't learn to program.

Not until I went to university, to study computer science, of all things. I was good at language, so I treated programming as a language problem. I learned well enough to make a career for myself as a programmer. I guess that doesn't say much, though, there's many bad programmers out there who make tons of money.

After university, I did a masters in Data Science. Why I get myself in those situations, I'll never know, but I studied Data Science. By then I knew how to program so I tackled all the maths problems as programming problems. When I didn't get something, I coded it. So I coded a bunch of linear and logistic regressions, and perceptrons and recurrent neural nets and the like, 'till I grokked them right.

So now I'm studying for a PhD in machine learning, in one of the best universities in the world. Not bad for a kid who always got the worse grades at maths, at school, eh?

So what I learned is this:

a) play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

b) Dont' believe when people say you haven't got what it takes. They only know one way to do things. You do you.

Oh and- you know what? Turns out I'm not that bad at maths after all. Certainly not the discrete maths used in computer science. Not even the continuous maths used in data science and machine learning. I get by.

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