Girls sweep at Google Science Fair • Hacker News Board

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#101

Post by Vandy_Travis » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 3:31 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #70

jnhnum1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look, you said this: "Most areas where men are at a broad disadvantage are caused by male tendencies acting against themselves, not by other groups discriminating against men (e.g. the violent crime issue, which is not caused by discrimination but by male violent tendencies). Fundamentally, I don't care as much when people are hoist on their own petard as when they hoist others on the same." Tell me then, how is it a…

Most areas, not all.

Why can't we focus on correcting injustice for its own sake, rather than picking teams? [Not so much directed at you; I've found this discussing very thought provoking. More directed at "everyone" waves hands that seems to feel its an us-versus-them argument.]

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#102

Post by niels_olson » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 4:56 AM UTC

I recall when I was on staff at the Naval Academy, there was a persistent finding in various in-house studies that the female midshipmen got more positive attention and feedback from virtually everyone, from staff and faculty to other midshipmen. Thus paradoxically, going from all male to mostly male made it even less likely for any given male student to find a mentor.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#103

Post by exDM69 » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 8:53 AM UTC

This is what you get when you replace boys' toys such as lego blocks and meccanos, and to a lesser extent, hack it-yourself-computers like c64's and dos boxes with xboxes.

I got my spark for science and engineering when I was a kid by building legos, making electric circuits from a construction kit and learning the baby steps of programming with qbasic.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#104

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 2:32 PM UTC

irahul wrote: post #98

pavel_lishin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother was born and raised in the USSR, and got a master's degree in engineering (if memory serves correctly). I'll link her to this comment, and see what she has to say (I'll probably end up replying to myself on this comment, I don't know if she'd have any interest in signing up for an account.) edit: can we get a reddit-style "context" option? I want to link her to this comment, and display the two parent comme…

Click on the link of the comment you want to forward: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2782258

Two problems with that. It doesn't show the parent comment (credo's), and it doesn't highlight a specific chain of replies.

If I want to show someone this comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2783390) and the two parent replies, there's no way to do that. I can link to the grandparent, but what if the parent comment is downvoted in the meanwhile? It would show up at the very bottom.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#105

Post by SatvikBeri » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

ricefield wrote: post #19

jamesaguilar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solidarity has historically been acceptable in disadvantaged groups and frowned upon when exhibited by privileged groups. This reasons for this should be fairly obvious.

True, but I guess I'm starting to feel that girls are no longer "disadvantaged." Less interested, maybe, disadvantaged, not so much. EDIT: for context, I'm a child of the 90's, perhaps much different (or not) from some of you. I grew up in liberal(?) Silicon Valley. As a male, my entire life I've felt that girls were encouraged to succeed academically, received extra help, and greatly praised for their accomplishment…

Having studied graduate level Math at UC Berkeley, I can tell you that there are consistent, major disadvantages for women in the sciences even in California.

Examples: 1. When working together on homework, guys would almost never accept corrections from women, even when they were right. They would accept the same corrections from guys. 2. If a guy got help from another guy, he would mention it when talking to a third person e.g. "Steven said that the way to think about this is...". If a guy got help from a girl, he would almost never mention it.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#106

Post by onemoreact » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 4:35 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #89

yohui wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without going into the rest, I would note that even if you're right, you haven't refuted onemoreact. If it is ”known” that men are at a disadvantage in custody battles, you might expect men to only contest if they had significant other advantages. P(male wins | male is richer) != P(male wins)

I did not claim to have refuted onemoreact's claim. However I made it clear that that particular claim needs more support and isn't exactly obvious. That said anyone quoting statistics should be able to back them up. I encountered the custody figure, along with a lot of other useful information about how the results of divorce are harder on women than men, in http://www.amazon.com/Price-Motherhood-Important-World-Val…

While I have not read that book it looks fairly biased. And as they say it's easy to lie with statistics but let's compare the fact that "Men win more custody battles" with:

"Despite changes in the law and social custom, custody arrangements remained remarkably stable over the past three decades. National estimates in the 1970's and 80's indicated that women had sole custody of the children approximately 85% of the time, and men retained sole custody 10% of the time, with the remaining 5% spread over a variety of custody arrangements, including grandparent, split or joint custody. More recent data sets indicate that father custody figures may be closer to 15%. " http://www.stanford.edu/group/psylawseminar/Child%20Custody%...

It goes further as said as joint custody became an option an increasing number of family's took that option. This suggestion a large scale imbalance where large numbers of men would like to have more custody but they are far less likely to get it.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#107

Post by bzbarsky » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

Cushman wrote: post #91

Helianthus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First of all, there isn't enough evidence to say whether that's because of privilege or because women are naturally more intelligent than men. I'm amused. Does it matter which is true if men aren't getting the education they need? >Men still run the world. Also an old, old statement that reveals why we need to get rid of gender as a real concept. How many men run the world? Not most of them. In what sense does it ca…

Have I said something to make you think we shouldn't be fighting all oppression? No doubt the elephant in the room is class — in fact fixing class might just fix everything else automatically — but that doesn't mean we should ignore racism, sexism, homo- or Islamophobia. But I have to say, at this point I'm not sure what you want from me. I'm advocating for the rights of other people according to my personal idea of…

> but I haven't seen any evidence that it's the result of > endemic, institutional sexism

You don't consider girls being encouraged to succeed by their teachers and society at large while boys are not (a common situation in schools today, and a stark contrast to as recently as 10-15 years ago) as "endemic, institutional sexism"?

Or you haven't seen any evidence that this difference in societal attitudes is causative in better female school performance?

I can accept the latter, though there is in fact experimental data that suggests that boys do better with more encouragement...

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#108

Post by Scriptor » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 6:50 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #79

Scriptor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible reason for this is that in those countries science/engineering is often one of the few routes an educated women has available. I've only heard this anecdotally and haven't been able to research it, but it could be one factor.

She responded: I am Pavel's mom who was born and raised in USSR. I don't think that being an engineer was the only route for a woman to become educated - women could become doctors or teachers as well. As a matter of fact there were more female doctors and teachers than male. Accountant degree was also very popular and obtainable among women. I think that credo may be right - it is societal and cultural pressure that…

The person who told me the above was my own mom, who is from South Asia :) In that region at least medicine and engineering are very common for girls to go into, not so much other fields requiring a college degree (I think). Again, just anecdotes.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#109

Post by ricefield » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 9:39 PM UTC

SatvikBeri wrote: post #105

ricefield wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but I guess I'm starting to feel that girls are no longer "disadvantaged." Less interested, maybe, disadvantaged, not so much. EDIT: for context, I'm a child of the 90's, perhaps much different (or not) from some of you. I grew up in liberal(?) Silicon Valley. As a male, my entire life I've felt that girls were encouraged to succeed academically, received extra help, and greatly praised for their accomplishment…

Having studied graduate level Math at UC Berkeley, I can tell you that there are consistent, major disadvantages for women in the sciences even in California. Examples: 1. When working together on homework, guys would almost never accept corrections from women, even when they were right. They would accept the same corrections from guys. 2. If a guy got help from another guy, he would mention it when talking to a thir…

I find that interesting, considering I currently study computer science at Berkeley (undergrad).

Not sure if i ever got that sense. I've had some really good female project partners and/or study mates. But I can see how some guys might feel emasculated from being helped by a girl.

Re: Girls sweep at Google Science Fair

#110

Post by btilly » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

onemoreact wrote: post #106

btilly wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not claim to have refuted onemoreact's claim. However I made it clear that that particular claim needs more support and isn't exactly obvious. That said anyone quoting statistics should be able to back them up. I encountered the custody figure, along with a lot of other useful information about how the results of divorce are harder on women than men, in http://www.amazon.com/Price-Motherhood-Important-World-Val…

While I have not read that book it looks fairly biased. And as they say it's easy to lie with statistics but let's compare the fact that "Men win more custody battles" with: "Despite changes in the law and social custom, custody arrangements remained remarkably stable over the past three decades. National estimates in the 1970's and 80's indicated that women had sole custody of the children approximately 85% of the t…

While I have not read that book it looks fairly biased.

Argument ad hominem much? I agree that the author has an axe to grind, but she backs her claims up with research.

And anecdotally her claims match my experience. I've seen a lot of friends/relatives/acquaintances get divorces, and from what I've seen the men generally want to see the kids some, but usually want the women to take the bulk of the child-raising work. Exact visitation arrangements get contested, but men seem more than happy to leave most of the work to the mom.