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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#181

Post by [deleted] »

xrctl wrote: post #157
rokhayakebe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1] I just want to add that this has to do with culture, and, again, what we were exposed to and influenced to have an interest in from childhood. In high school I can remember the top Science student were all women and they racked more awards than men.

hahah, you recall that the top science students you knew were women? How convincing! I have analyzed the records of the World Cubing Association, and there is 1 woman in the top 100 ranked [1]. I have analyzed the ratings of the American Scrabble Association, and there are 6 women in the top 100 ranked [2]. It is well known that there is only 1 woman in the top 100 ranked chess players (FIDE). I have analyzed the rat…

[deleted]

Re: Girls Who Code

#183

Post by dragonwriter »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #125
ZoFreX wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Well, yes, I suppose this is true. If you pick a random woman who cannot code, that is probably the reason. What about the women who have been driven out of coding simply because they happen to be female? It's something I have personally witnessed, both in the education system, and in commercial settings. There are real problems here, problems…

A women cannot be driven out of coding by anyone other than herself. This is not a social thing. This is not hard core research requiring millions to get started. Only a PC, Stack Overflow and an internet connection are required. Even now on HN I cannot tell who is a girl or guy by their username, let alone the gender of the person who wrote the code that populates the webpage I read.

> A women cannot be driven out of coding by anyone other than herself. This is not a social thing.

Anxiety toward certain fields driven by experiences in formative years -- including experiences of other people's attitudes, which may include bias in perceived racial or gender abilities or roles -- is a real and often socially-induced thing, and the most well-known manifestation is math anxiety.

Its not really hard to see how this can relate to programming, particularly given the close relation between programming and math.

Re: Girls Who Code

#184

Post by clarkm »

quinnchr wrote: post #165
newnewnew wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1]. The male/female ratio is especially high in the higher Math percentiles, where you would expect your best engineers to come from. The polite way to explain this is some kind of "expectations effect", which is possible, but females do dominate at all other aspects of education. We cannot rule out simple innate ability, combined with higher male interest in abstract things.…

Men score better than women on standardized tests in math in some countries, while in other countries women score better ( http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/gap_sept09.pdf ). It's almost as if the culture you are surrounded by somehow affects you. In fact the countries with more gender equality that encourage women in the sciences have higher test scores for women!

Thanks for that link. After looking through Appendix Table 2 (page 25), it's pretty obvious that the only big outlier is the gap in Israeli high-school students.

Here's a link to the (gated) paper with the data: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272708...

From the abstract:

  This paper tests for the existence of gender stereotyping and
  discrimination by public high-school teachers in Israel.
  
  Using data on test results in several subjects in the humanities 
  and sciences, I found, contrary to expectations, that male
  students face discrimination in each subject. These biases
  widen the female–male achievement difference because girls
  outperform boys in all subjects, except English, and at all levels of
  the curriculum. The bias is evident in all segments of the ability and
  performance distribution and is robust to various individual controls.
Ok, that was surprising. Does anyone have any more information about this?

Re: Girls Who Code

#185

Post by dragonwriter »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #177
RivieraKid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. I think this is partly caused by the fact that men and women have a different natural tendency to enjoy nursing. (Honest question – is this belief politically incorrect?) If you completely filter out cultural effects, the tendency to incline to a specific profession will differ between genders, at least very slightly (that's just statistics).…

To suggest that men are some how different to women is incredibly sexist, check your privilege.

Men are obviously biologically different than women in a large number of ways; the exact degree to which those biological differences affect behavior and attitudes is unclear, but we know that differences in, e.g., hormone levels within a gender have behavioral and attitude impacts, so its at least likely that there is some degree of such impact from that and other biological differences between genders.

If you define sexism broadly enough, that may be "sexist", but it doesn't stop it from being well supported by the facts we know about the world.

Re: Girls Who Code

#186

Post by Patrick_Devine »

zhemao wrote: post #171
Patrick_Devine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Harvey Mudd's approach is fantastic. I love the idea of two separate tracks for getting people to code. It allows people to take an academic risk which they normally wouldn't be able to take for fear of destroying their GPA. I think this is a fundamental problem with STEM programs in general. Why have grades and tracks at all? The important thing is to learn the material, and not what grade you got on a test…

The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate. Sure you can repeat the material until you know it, but how many people actually will? The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests, assignments, projects, etc.). This isn't to say…

Yes, that's definitely a problem, particularly the way most classes on services like Udacity are done. You can't just videotape the lectures and translate the homework/quizzes into a MOOC and expect that it's going to be compelling.

Khan Academy definitely gets this right where other MOOCs really fail. The quizzes are actually quite engaging and the 'gamified' point giving, despite being incredibly cheesy, really seems to work.

I agree that there is no replacement for TAs and the professor, and I think that's where a lot of confusion about MOOCs stems from. This is where 'flip' teaching comes about. Instead of wasting time doing daily lesson planning and grading papers, the TAs and the professor spend their time helping students out who are having trouble. The students can watch/re-watch pre-recorded lectures and then take quizzes during class time which can be graded by the computer.

Re: Girls Who Code

#187

Post by jeremyt »

dcre wrote: post #179
RivieraKid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. I think this is partly caused by the fact that men and women have a different natural tendency to enjoy nursing. (Honest question – is this belief politically incorrect?) If you completely filter out cultural effects, the tendency to incline to a specific profession will differ between genders, at least very slightly (that's just statistics).…

I'm not sure it's exactly politically incorrect -- lots of people probably believe it -- but I do think it's wrong. Similar to saying girls naturally prefer to play with baby dolls and wear dresses, when in reality every person they meet has been subtly (or not) pushing them that way their whole lives. "Oh, you're so pretty! Want to try this bow on?" Etc.

You may think it's wrong, but a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the former president of the American Psychology Association would disagree with you. There is a chapter in his book (http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/...) where he talks about gender identification as nature or nurture.

He argues, quite convincingly, that girls raised as boys still like dolls and boys raised as girls still like firetrucks and bulldozers.

I would recommend the book.

Re: Girls Who Code

#188

Post by RivieraKid »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #177
RivieraKid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. I think this is partly caused by the fact that men and women have a different natural tendency to enjoy nursing. (Honest question – is this belief politically incorrect?) If you completely filter out cultural effects, the tendency to incline to a specific profession will differ between genders, at least very slightly (that's just statistics).…

To suggest that men are some how different to women is incredibly sexist, check your privilege.

Just to be sure (one can never know nowdays) – that's sarcasm right?

Re: Girls Who Code

#189

Post by RivieraKid »

dcre wrote: post #179
RivieraKid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. I think this is partly caused by the fact that men and women have a different natural tendency to enjoy nursing. (Honest question – is this belief politically incorrect?) If you completely filter out cultural effects, the tendency to incline to a specific profession will differ between genders, at least very slightly (that's just statistics).…

I'm not sure it's exactly politically incorrect -- lots of people probably believe it -- but I do think it's wrong. Similar to saying girls naturally prefer to play with baby dolls and wear dresses, when in reality every person they meet has been subtly (or not) pushing them that way their whole lives. "Oh, you're so pretty! Want to try this bow on?" Etc.

I think that each gender has a different natural tendency to various professions but these tendencies are amplified by the culture.

Re: Girls Who Code

#190

Post by joe_the_user »

hacker789 wrote: post #153
joe_the_user wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "mismatch" in dialog about this stuff is perhaps telling. One person says (essentially): "organization need to take systematic efforts to avoid bias in hiring". The other person say (essentially): "you can't prove we're sexist, this is a witch hunt".

Not quite. One person says, "We deliberately handle women with kid gloves. A under-qualified woman has a better chance than an under-qualified man." A feminist activist responds, "But you still hire more men! Therefore, it's almost a given that you're biased against women in other ways. Fix it." The original person says, "Wow. We just can't win with you people."

If that happened, I could understand it. If you claim the thread above is summarized by that, you're hallucinating.

I simply said that bias can be invisible and it useful to have formal methods for catching it. I don't see myself as a "feminist activist" by any means.

I think the feminist activists who do sometimes uncritically toss around accusations of bias aren't really helping. But when I notice people reading my nuanced position and hallucinating a feminist rant, it increases my sympathies. It also doesn't speak well of people's abilities to see their biases (I wouldn't claim perfection for myself of course but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that).

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