Women and Mathematics

Post by DaniFong » Sun, Dec 28, 2008, 1:14 AM UTC

quoderat wrote: post #7

reh297 wrote: post #4

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Having been a woman for most of my life (and a girl for the rest of it), I can assure you that women don't avoid fields applying mathematics just because they don't want to hang out with loser-types. In fact, I find most women try to pursue things they enjoy, more so than avoid things they may hate (like losers, or long division, per se). If there's a lack of women in IT, it's probably because they don't enjoy it, or…

"Most women don't make professional decisions hoping to increase their chances of havin' a cutie in the next cubicle." Not consciously, anyway. And it doesn't have anything to do with "havin' a cutie," it's more to avoid going into fields with a social stigma associated with them and their typical practitioners. This social stigma is decreasing (even in IT -- "geek" is no longer an insult), but nevertheless it is sti…

Post by DabAsteroid » Sun, Dec 28, 2008, 1:28 AM UTC

DaniFong wrote: post #13

antipc wrote: post #9

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Hi, you appear to be brainwashed by the PC establishment. Try this experiment: attempt to think for yourself for a few months. (Try out the craziest thoughts! If they're 'scandalous' you don't have to run them by other people, just evaluate them for yourself.) Also, think critically about the people who promote these views. Most of them aren't very smart (in the sense that a tenured professor with awards can still be…

I don't think dilanj is suggesting that no biologically driven differences exist. I think that the argument is that at MIT there's a preselected, science focused group of women, who have their professional involvement with math decrease dramatically as they enter the working world and need to support themselves. There's a strong, though not certain case for a cultural effect here. And by the way, on color? "In Wester…

Post by aswanson » Sun, Dec 28, 2008, 2:05 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #5

reh297 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been a woman for most of my life (and a girl for the rest of it), I can assure you that women don't avoid fields applying mathematics just because they don't want to hang out with loser-types. In fact, I find most women try to pursue things they enjoy, more so than avoid things they may hate (like losers, or long division, per se). If there's a lack of women in IT, it's probably because they don't enjoy it, or…

That is true of most adults (of both sexes) however most people (here in the UK at least) choose the general direction of their careers at the age of 14, which is when you choose your GCSEs. You get to tweak it again at 16 when you choose your A-levels (from a subset of your GCSEs) and again at 18 when you choose your first degree, but the decisions made at 14 are so far upstream at this point that you only have so m…

Post by homme » Sun, Dec 28, 2008, 2:57 AM UTC

DabAsteroid wrote: post #23

DaniFong wrote: post #13

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I don't think dilanj is suggesting that no biologically driven differences exist. I think that the argument is that at MIT there's a preselected, science focused group of women, who have their professional involvement with math decrease dramatically as they enter the working world and need to support themselves. There's a strong, though not certain case for a cultural effect here. And by the way, on color? "In Wester…

women, who have their professional involvement with math decrease dramatically as they enter the working world and need to support themselves. There's a strong, though not certain case for a cultural effect here. It would be interesting if this phenomenon were correlated with 2D:4D ratio, wouldn't it? http://www.google.com/search?q=steve+sailer+finger+length

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 28, 2008, 3:50 AM UTC

DabAsteroid wrote: post #24

DaniFong wrote: post #14

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To be fair, most men aren't pursuing careers in mathematics either. The population of professional mathematicians is a puny subset of the population at large. Even a tiny effects of cumulative cultural mores, when working on people subject to a threshold so far out they're so far out on the bell curve, can have an exponentially disproportionate effect. Many of the women physicists I've become friends with spoke fondl…

my friend, who just graduated with a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton, and is now a postdoc at Berkeley. She http://www.google.com/search?q=princeton+affirmative+action+... http://www.google.com/search?q=berkeley+affirmative+action+g... Please post your friend's relevant scores (SAT, GRE, etc.).