Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
education.guardian.co.uk
Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#2good. Now they can start studying some computer science. Being in a class with 95% guys, is depressing. Some more balanced demographic, makes it more fun.
But I wonder if they even want to......
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#3My only real problem with this is that I do not really care about what is achieved in children's mathematics classes. Surely, the better test of true ability in this field would be to look at researchers and research accomplishments.
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#4My only real problem with this is that I do not really care about what is achieved in children's mathematics classes. Surely, the better test of true ability in this field would be to look at researchers and research accomplishments.
Valuing research mathematics over everyday math is arbitrary and subjective.
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#5The problem here is mean vs variance. The biggest performers in math and science are going to be at least a few standard deviations away from the mean.
Identical mean and slightly higher variance in men would significantly contribute to the ratios we see today.
Either way, the goal shouldn't be to make everyone feel good about innate abilities. The goal should be to find the reason why one person is innately better than someone else in a particular skill. Step 1: understanding. Step 2: enhancement. Step 3: repeat.
Similar to the recent JL post: forget the gap, focus on the product. It matters most.
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#6My only real problem with this is that I do not really care about what is achieved in children's mathematics classes. Surely, the better test of true ability in this field would be to look at researchers and research accomplishments.
Valuing research mathematics over everyday math is arbitrary and subjective.
Of course it is subjective, it is is me that does not care about children's mathematics. I make no claim for the wider world. That's why I said "My only problem" and not "the problem".
Its not entirely arbitrary though. I care about research mathematics as to do well at it(or to do it at all) requires very strong mathematical abilities. To do well in classroom mathematics is as much, and probably more, to do with being a good student.
So it seems to me that by looking at children's mathematics rather than research mathematics your results are going to be confounded by the issue that your measuring mathematics ability via a proxy(schoolroom mathematics) rather than the real thing(research mathematics). Your results might still be correct, but I find it hard to know if that is the case.
I suppose, if your just interested in day to day average numeracy skills then looking at children is fine, except even then I would prefer the study was performed on adults rather than regularly drilled students. That way you will find out who is more capable of retaining numeracy skills and who has the higher natural levels of numeracy, rather than just finding out which students revise the hardest and listen to the teacher most attentively.
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#7Why is it even worth discussing? Or even worth discovering? Why do we always break ourselves down (by age, gender, education, whatever) into groups and bump them into each other?
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#8The Economist is the one that originally published the research, 2 months ago. Here's their take, with graphs & numbers:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#9[deleted]
Re: Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valuing research mathematics over everyday math is arbitrary and subjective.
Of course it is subjective, it is is me that does not care about children's mathematics. I make no claim for the wider world. That's why I said "My only problem" and not "the problem". Its not entirely arbitrary though. I care about research mathematics as to do well at it(or to do it at all) requires very strong mathematical abilities. To do well in classroom mathematics is as much, and probably more, to do with bei…
It'd be interesting to see how these disparities change (or not) with age and through into university study. I've always heard that girls mature faster, which may mean that differences in ability by sex that appear in childhood are different in adulthood.
Completely aside from that, it does show how broad societal trends can affect maths learning for females.