Reactions to story from http://cnn.com

• 

  Girls are as good in math as boys....I could have told you that!!!

  http://www.ectutoring.com/2008/07/girls-are-as-good-in-math-...
  55 days ago in EC Tutoring Blog · Authority: 1

  Girls are as good in math as boys....I could have told you that!!! Janet Hyde, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently published an article in Science concluding that girls in every grade from 2nd to 12th have math skills and abilities equal to those of their male counterparts. Using information based on math assessments required by No Child Left Behind, Hyde was able to assess the scores from over 7 million children in the United States. While the data proves no discrepancy in ability, the belief persists amongst students and adults that math is "too hard" for girls. The gender war in the math arena seems to have been settled as females earn 48% of undergraduate degrees in the subject. Twenty years ago, data still proved that while elementary math scores were similar, girls began to under perform once they entered high school, taking less challenging courses (or none at all). There is still a long way to go in physics and engineering, however, as males still have the vast majority of representatives in these fields. Joy Lee, a student at our very own TJ, shed some light on the subject. Sometimes, it's not a matter of feeling competent, but feeling comfortable in a setting where you may be the only female (until that begins to change, of course). Hopefully, Hyde's study will encourage more teachers to recommend math and science to girls, not only in school but afterwards as well! This is just further evidence that biological differences between males and females do not have to equate to career selections or performance in school. Thank you, Janet Hyde!!!
• 

  Who said girls can't do math?

  http://hwong14.blogspot.com/2008/07/who-said-girls-cant-do-m...
  131 days ago in dorks, not nerds · Authority: 2

  Here's a big F*** You to the priest who told me in eighth grade that girls can't do math.Study: Girls equal to boys in math skillsThat's right.And yes, despite my continued (and embarrassing) inability to oftentimes perform simple arithmetic in my head -- or at times, even on paper -- I did just fine in calculus, and placed out of college math with my AP scores. Could I have gone farther? Sure. Would I have? Hell no -- but that's out of my own laziness and interest, and nothing more.My biggest beef with the article? The last two sentences: "Back in 1992, Barbie stopped saying math was hard after Mattel received complaints from, among others, the American Association of University Women. So far, while her current career choices include baby doctor and veterinarian -- and Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, too -- Barbie has not branched out into technology or engineering."Yeah, last time I checked, a "baby doctor" is a pediatrician, and both "baby doctors" and veterinarians took advanced math classes to get where they are today. Math isn't limited to technology and engineering.
• 

  Guest Blog: On Biases

  http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/guest-blog...
  122 days ago in The Martian Chronicles · Authority: 30

  Guest Blog: On Biases Posted August 3, 2008 by Rebecca Harbison Categories: Guest Author, Not Mars Hello, my name is Rebecca Harbison, and I’m a grad student in astronomy at Cornell University, and guest-blogger. Some information about me. I work on Saturn’s rings using VIMS, the Visible-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. Right now, I’m trying to measure how small the smallest particles are in Saturn’s Main Rings, by looking at how they diffract sunlight. (Think of me as sitting in a theater, staring at the light from the projector and trying to guess at how much dust is in the air by how much I can see in the beam.) In the future, I hope to expand my rings work to model composition and surface properties. I’ve done other stuff over the years as well. My first-year project (which I’m still chugging away at) was a study of the rotation of Hyperion, which is one of Saturn’s moons. It moves in an interesting way — instead of spinning neatly, its odd shape and tides from Saturn make it tumble. Having a model of this not only lets us know what Hyperion is like inside (probably: a mix of rock, ice and empty space, with better packing towards the center), but also helps the people interested in its surface know what they are looking at if they can’t get the high-res pictures. Also, before I came to Cornell, I looked at active galaxies and helped measure how they varied (in hopes of learning about how the black holes inside them worked). I’ll probably be trying to cover some non-Mars things from my corner of the (outer) Solar System. * * * So, for my first post, I’d thought I’d talk about something a little more down-to-earth. Mostly because I had this already written when Ryan asked me. It was based on this article, which ran on CNN last week — for those of you with subscriptions to Science magazine and willing to read through the statistics, the study is here. Expect a Cassini-themed post by Thursday. I’m still getting the hang of this blogging thing.
• 

  All the News Fit to Interpret

  http://www.fairerscience.org/fs-blogs/2008/07/all_the_news_f...
  126 days ago in FairerScience Weblog · Authority: 19

  Last week, Science Magazine published a short, data dense, article "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance." (Unfortunately it is behind a paywall.) It's a nice article summarizing the national data and looking at data from those states who report by gender (grumpy side bar: ALL states are required to report their results by gender and by race/ethnicity; but guess what; there are no consequences if you don’t). The article concludes "for grades 2 to 11, the general population no longer shows a gender difference in math skills." It's a well done piece, as I would expect from work done by Janet Hyde and Marcia Linn; but it's not earth shattering. But it is getting a lot of coverage and the differences in terms of what is covered and how, are, to say the least, interesting: Here's the Wall Street Journal's headline "Boys' Math Scores Hit Highs and Lows". Did I mention the Science article concluded "for grades 2 to 11, the general population no longer shows a gender difference in math skills?" The Wall Street Journal goes on to say: "One measure of a top score is achieving the "99th percentile" -- scoring in the top 1% of all students. Boys were significantly more likely to hit this goal than girls. In Minnesota, for example, 1.85% of white boys in the 11th grade hit the 99th percentile, compared with 0.9% of girls -- meaning there were more than twice as many boys among the top scorers than girls." Guess they missed that part about slightly more Asian American girls than Asian American boys scoring above the 99th percentile. The New York Times' headline "Math Scores Show No Gap for Girls, Study Finds" is much better; but check out the first paragraph. "Three years after the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, got into trouble for questioning women’s “intrinsic aptitude” for science and engineering — and 16 years after the talking Barbie doll proclaimed that “math class is tough” — a study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests." Ah Larry Summers, will you always be with us? CNN has, in my biased opinion, has the best headline: "Study: Girls equal to boys in math skills" and the best coverage. While they too lead with Barbie; their lead is oh I don't know, a little more affirmative: "Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that, at math, they are just as tough as boys." Interestingly, stuff about the gender gap on the math section of the SAT and on the ACT is mentioned both by the Times and CNN but that is nowhere to be found in the article. This isn't surprising. The article is meticulously researched, The Times' conclusion that "The SAT is taken primarily by seniors bound for college, and since more girls than boys go to college, about 100,000 more girls than boys take the test, including lower-achieving girls who bring down the girls’ average score." is not. The next time there is a report out about women and STEM, let's have a contest to see who can predict the type of coverage it will receive in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and CNN. Oh never mind, that's a bad idea—it's too easy.
• 

  links for 2008-07-28

  http://tedbarnett.typepad.com/producteer/2008/07/links-for-2...
  128 days ago in Producteer · No authority yet

  Study: Girls equal to boys in math skills For sure (tags: biology)
• 

  girls can do anything boys can do better… :-)

  http://www.taoofsummer.net/?p=921
  129 days ago in The Tao of Summer · Authority: 2

  girls can do anything boys can do better… :-) In：women by ~summer~ Tags: girls in science and math Well I already knew this, given my engineering degree and general academic superiority over most of my male classmates throughout college, but a study has shown that girls can do just as well in math as boys, and they’ve got the math to prove it. Der. Well, I guess this means that at least my aptitude for linear differential equations is not attributable to me being a freak of nature. Researchers had detailed personal info on the test takers. Researchers checked out math tests in different grades. They took the average. No difference. Some critics have said that the difference only shows up among the highest levels of math skills. So the team checked out the most gifted children. Again, no difference. From any angle, girls measured up to boys. Still, there’s a lack of women in the highest levels of professional math, engineering and physics. No comment 2008-7 26

Advertise on Technorati