Do you believe that being better at math has anything to do with the male brain? I can't do math very well at all. When I was in the remedial math class there were mostly guys in it.
No.
I sucked at math all through school. Didn't grasp a word of it.
Teachers put me in the lowest set for maths in high school and my parents freaked about it. They went in and demanded I be moved from this set where nobody was learning anything and the teacher didn't seem to give a crap either and ordered me moved into the highest set for maths on the condition I "prove" my ability wasn't a write-off. My dad taught me after school and I worked my ass off. Got top marks. This probably had a whole lot to do with my confidence being destroyed in school by bad maths teachers and the fact my father was an adept and accomplished teacher himself.
Mathematical ability has nothing to do with what sex brain you have but how you are taught in my opinon. I was bad because the teaching was bad, I started to doubt my own ability, hated and feared the subject and ended up in a vicious cycle that was easily broken within a year by some decent coaching and a willingness to succeed.
Quote from: alienbodybuilder on March 07, 2016, 10:00:15 PM
Do you believe that being better at math has anything to do with the male brain? I can't do math very well at all. When I was in the remedial math class there were mostly guys in it.
I know many women who excel at math and numerical subjects.
OTOH, for some reason I can't explain, it seems more males than females seem to enjoy it. Might be the social aspect. The need for companionship and cooperation seems to be found more often in females than males. Math and computer work tends to be a solitary pursuit more of the time.
In high school, I was the top of my class in math. I entered several provincial math contests and won a couple. My recollection is that there were more girls than boys entering the contests from my class.
'Course, now, many years later, I find out that I have a female brain. ???
I was really bad at maths and couldn't grasp it at all. I was put into the lowest set at secondary school because of it. From the articles I've read girls do better than boys at maths in school. Maybe due to the social aspect; but I think due to girls being able to generally concentrate better than boys. Whether that's down to nature or nurture who knows.
For me learning a new subject has more to do with the teacher and the book. I'm currently working on my computer science degree and there is a TON of math to get through. I was doing OK with all of the math until this semester when the combination of a horrible textbook and a teacher that was whipping through the subject without explaining anything caused me to get stuck on some topics leading to me withdrawing from the class. I plan to do studying over the summer using a different textbook and will take another swing at it in the fall.
I don't believe that men have an inherent ability to do math and women don't - I think we all have different ways of learning and the way math is taught today works against the way that women learn.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on March 08, 2016, 06:35:11 AM
No.
I sucked at math all through school. Didn't grasp a word of it.
Teachers put me in the lowest set for maths in high school and my parents freaked about it. They went in and demanded I be moved from this set where nobody was learning anything and the teacher didn't seem to give a crap either and ordered me moved into the highest set for maths on the condition I "prove" my ability wasn't a write-off. My dad taught me after school and I worked my ass off. Got top marks. This probably had a whole lot to do with my confidence being destroyed in school by bad maths teachers and the fact my father was an adept and accomplished teacher himself.
Mathematical ability has nothing to do with what sex brain you have but how you are taught in my opinon. I was bad because the teaching was bad, I started to doubt my own ability, hated and feared the subject and ended up in a vicious cycle that was easily broken within a year by some decent coaching and a willingness to succeed.
Your father sounds great. I'm discouraged because many jobs/careers I'm looking into say they require math, yet I've known a lot of men who did similar jobs who had mental disabilities or were illiterate.
Quote from: alienbodybuilder on March 07, 2016, 10:00:15 PM
Do you believe that being better at math has anything to do with the male brain? I can't do math very well at all. When I was in the remedial math class there were mostly guys in it.
No, I believe that's stereotyping at it's finest.
Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 08, 2016, 10:35:01 AM
No, I believe that's stereotyping at it's finest.
One thing I've noticed is that many binary trans people are more interested in fitting gender stereotypes than cis people. Some cis people I know call me sexist and think my perception is warped. If it is I don't know how else to think. When I look at the way different people perceive the world around them and themselves in relation I keep thinking we all might as well mentally be on our own planet. It reminds me of the song by Louis Armstrong "What a wonderful world".
Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 08, 2016, 10:35:01 AM
No, I believe that's stereotyping at it's finest.
As a teacher in a mathematically related field, I can state that the phenomenon is 100% real even if the reasons are obscure.
In the introductory classes in my subject, the ratio of boys to girls is 1 to 1. In the intermediate classes and advanced classes it's about 5 to 1. This held true both when male teachers and when female teachers taught the introductory classes. It held true when a male (me) taught the intermediate and advanced classes and holds equally true now that a female (still me) teaches them.
Given that these are elective classes that students choose whether or not to sign up for, one must concluded that males prefer to study this subject in depth in much greater numbers than females. This is not stereotyping. It's factual observation of a phenomenon that has held steady during the entire 15 years I've been teaching this subject.
That's unusual. The stereotype is that males are better in math, and I've never known many males who are bad at math. In my year, the class for remedial math is mainly female.
I always did well in math.
Quote from: suzifrommd on March 08, 2016, 11:05:12 AM
Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 08, 2016, 10:35:01 AM
No, I believe that's stereotyping at it's finest.
As a teacher in a mathematically related field, I can state that the phenomenon is 100% real even if the reasons are obscure.
In the introductory classes in my subject, the ratio of boys to girls is 1 to 1. In the intermediate classes and advanced classes it's about 5 to 1. This held true both when male teachers and when female teachers taught the introductory classes. It held true when a male (me) taught the intermediate and advanced classes and holds equally true now that a female (still me) teaches them.
Given that these are elective classes that students choose whether or not to sign up for, one must concluded that males prefer to study this subject in depth in much greater numbers than females. This is not stereotyping. It's factual observation of a phenomenon that has held steady during the entire 15 years I've been teaching this subject.
Do you believe this has to do with the student's brain, though, or external influence? The O/P asked if it was the male brain that was responsible.
Hugs, Devlyn
Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 08, 2016, 11:08:14 AM
Do you believe this has to do with the student's brain, though, or external influence? The O/P asked if it was the male brain that was responsible.
Hugs, Devlyn
I have read an analysis stating that.
Its like hardwired, and akin to art it seems to be a talent.
So it can be made up for within boundaries ... but the notion that all people equally should be able to pick it up is simply not true :)
hugs
It does seem to be the case that on average, boys do better at math.
However -- if, as we generally insist, gender exists on a very wide spectrum (i.e. "male vs. female" is a gross oversimplification), and if gender is at least somewhat hardwired in the brain, doesn't it follow that "male brain vs. female brain" is also a gross oversimplification?
So if we're going to make claims about mathematical ability being hardwired and having something to do with gender, we should first acknowledge that it's also not going to be a dichotomous variable.
There's also an age-related social variable: in grade school, girls tend to do as well or better in all academic subjects. But when they get to middle school, there's enormous social pressure NOT to outshine the boys, because the boys don't like it, and neither do many of the teachers. The "popular" girls are seldom if ever the brainy ones. Funnily enough, they start teaching advanced math (algebra, trigonometry, etc.) just at the time when girls start being rewarded for playing dumb. (https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fthefiringline.com%2Fforums%2Fimages%2Fsmilies%2Fcool.gif&hash=d4879c0267a356dff26cd86b0fa87ea42a6199e1)
And it wouldn't be surprising if puberty also plays a part in this, but that, um, gets complicated.
Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 08, 2016, 11:08:14 AM
Do you believe this has to do with the student's brain, though, or external influence? The O/P asked if it was the male brain that was responsible.
I don't know for sure if it has to do with the brain. As a possible reason, I consider that a strong candidate.
My personal belief is that there are biological differences that make the experience of being female tend to be different from the experience of being male, and that this may be one case where we see those differences at work.
According to studies males are statistically better with abstract reasoning/tasks, spatial awareness tasks and so on, which math relates to.
But I would consider that a potential aptitude probably based on testosterone and say that hormone's supposed effect of enabling concentration on specific tasks more easily, not an inherent ability in all males due to a male brain. I know males who utterly suck at math, and females who don't - is it due to the hormones milling around in their bodies and not the sex of their brain? I've seen threads around here talking about how HRT often brings mental changes in line with gender expectations from those kinds of stats.
I don't have a genetic male brain, but I can read a map like nobody's business, and spatial tasks are fairly easy for me. And once I learned the rules of math properly it's like a cookbook - you can't go wrong, it's simple enough if you have the formula - all the more simple for being a subject that has absolutely correct or incorrect answers with no inbetweens and plenty of reliable patterns or methods. In that sense if the teaching is sound, there's nobody who should struggle with it unless there are some learning difficulties preventing it. I've always found science subjects to be almost self-explanatory. It's not some inherent ability to pick up stuff at the drop of a hat or I wouldn't have had to work at the math. But the fact I could work at the math and become good shows there's really no barrier.
Ever heard that stereotype that East Asians (as in Chinese, Koreans, Japanese etc.) are all great at math? Oddly enough most of the East Asians I know are - including the women. I don't think that's because East Asians have brains that are genetically better suited for abstract reasoning. I honestly think the secret is in how they learn and how they're taught. Schooling systems are fairly uniform within countries with the majority of schools government funded and supervised, teaching in a specific manner. I know after spending some time abroad that all the E. Asian schools I was interested in were teaching math, languages and art in such a way that most of the students coming out were much better on average at all of these than the ones in the UK I went to, and the quality of the art was also on average more accomplished, and a lot of it seems to be down to attitude, how seriously kids take their education and so on. Some students are naturally more gifted at picking up subjects than others, but imo it has to be the method, for the most part, and perhaps the way students apply themselves/parental expectations/culture etc.
I suspect in the UK the perceived importance of education is less, parental expectations are in general lower, (testing/competition is definitely more relaxed than in E. Asian schools) and there's been a significant dumbing-down of the subject of math in UK schools over the last 50 yrs. I found an old C.S.E. book from my dad's stint in the same school I attended years later and the difficulty of the C.S.E. material compared to that in my G.C.S.E blew my mind. The fact kids were still finding math difficult at the level in my time at the same school points in my view to poorer teaching and a far more lax attitude to the subject. Then there's the fact that a kid like me who was continuously crap at math until forced to do better would have just continued to suck at it if not for my parents refusing to allow the "streaming system" to condemn me to a naff grade.
Lots of trans people are good at math. I always was when I took the time to actually study.
I wonder if there is any data to support trans people of both spectrums from being strong in those tasks "stereotypically" considered strong in both genders? Maybe it would be connected to greater connectivity between the brain hemispheres.
Something like this wouldn't be exclusive to trans people but might occur with greater frequency than it does in the general population.
Sapere Aude
Quote from: Deborah on March 08, 2016, 03:10:30 PM
Lots of trans people are good at math. I always was when I took the time to actually study.
I wonder if there is any data to support trans people of both spectrums from being strong in those tasks "stereotypically" considered strong in both genders? Maybe it would be connected to greater connectivity between the brain hemispheres.
Something like this wouldn't be exclusive to trans people but might occur with greater frequency than it does in the general population.
Sapere Aude
Actually, a post of yours in another thread got me thinking of another explanation. Maybe we trans folks just try harder because we are trying to earn some measure of respect or acceptance from our parents. I know I did. Doing well at academic subjects was about the only way I could get my parents to acknowledge me.
Quote from: suzifrommd on March 08, 2016, 12:49:53 PM
I don't know for sure if it has to do with the brain. As a possible reason, I consider that a strong candidate.
My personal belief is that there are biological differences that make the experience of being female tend to be different from the experience of being male, and that this may be one case where we see those differences at work.
I avoided most female experiences in my life without realizing quite how much until adulthood.
Male, female, various countries doesn't seem to really have much to do with it
Some people pick up on mathematics, some excel at it, others not so much
Quote from: V M on March 09, 2016, 03:29:24 AM
Male, female, various countries doesn't seem to really have much to do with it
Some people pick up on mathematics, some excel at it, others not so much
Here's the most common sense answer yet.
No no no no no no Graham's Number times no.
I'm a mathematician. Don't you even dare tell me that that is gender-related.
Though at the time, I didn't find it odd that my role models in math were female. One wonders about all the clues we didn't pick up. ;)
Quote from: sparrow on March 09, 2016, 04:42:41 AM
No no no no no no Graham's Number times no.
I'm a mathematician. Don't you even dare tell me that that is gender-related.
Though at the time, I didn't find it odd that my role models in math were female. One wonders about all the clues we didn't pick up. ;)
At least I won't feel like less of a man because I'm bad at math. There are many careers I want that involve math, but may never get.
Quote from: alienbodybuilder on March 09, 2016, 02:51:21 AMI wonder if the US is worse at math than Britain.
Eh? I didn't say that
Quote from: sparrow on March 09, 2016, 04:42:41 AM
I'm a mathematician. Don't you even dare tell me that that is gender-related.
Yeah, I'm a statistician.
The PhD in charge of our analysis department is female. I don't think any gender related trends are related to aptitude. Maybe just related to interest.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on March 09, 2016, 06:16:08 AM
Eh? I didn't say that
I didn't imply that you did. I was just wondering. ;)
Quote from: Deborah on March 09, 2016, 06:59:10 AMI don't think any gender related trends are related to aptitude. Maybe just related to interest.
I dunno about that. We do a lot of telling young girls that boys are better at that sort of thing. I'm pretty convinced that kids would have more balanced interests if we didn't go around telling them what to be interested in as much as we do.
When my daughter was in school I countered that by always telling her that math was easy and not to listen to people who insisted it was hard. All you have to do is learn the rules. She ended up getting a math degree in college. I also told her sports were important just for building a strong body along with a strong mind. And now she makes a living as a fitness instructor. So I agree that the message is important when they are young.
Sapere Aude
I do agree there's a disparity of interest in many fields between genders on the whole that doesn't really indicate a disparity of ability.
Despite there being almost no bar to women now in STEM fields for example, and the bar on military service careers has dropped significantly to women they still don't seem to want to do certain careers anywhere near as much as men do. I don't think it's because they can't - I think a lot of them just aren't into some fields and that's why they're not flocking to them just because they can.
The bar on military service careers has been eliminated completely. For the military though there is a gender ability disparity in some fields that require raw strength and aerobic capacity. I think those are well known but I can detail them if needed.
Sapere Aude
Yeah, I heard that in the U.S. and a few other countries there is now no bar on women serving front line positions.
(Women still not subject to draft, though, interestingly.)
The draft law may change. The US Military supports a change as do some in Congress.
Nobody supports actually drafting anyone though.
Sapere Aude
I can't completely give a scientific or statistical answer.
However, of my three daughters, two are in honors math and sciences. Very few to no boys catch up to them.
Not intending to brag, but it's hard not to.
I tend to think we condition people socially to stereotypes as well.
Have fun.
Joanna
Well it's been proven that if you tell someone they're worse at something than the opposite sex and then run an experiment with people watching to test their performances against the opposite sex, that knowledge undermines confidence and ability. They might have the ability just fine but being told they don't or being told that men can't do this as well as women or women can't do that as well as men causes people to nudge themselves toward the stereotype a little more.
Probably why it took my mother 19 years to get her act together from nothing and get a PhD in environmental science. She was always capable and intelligent but having been told as the only girl in her family that the oldest brother was the only one worth educating at uni and she was destined to be a secretary or something, I'm sure that took a toll on both her confidence and self worth. I've seen first hand how a housewife on the dole like she was can become someone who goes all over the world to speak at environmental research summits so... yeah, I believe the only real boundaries are the ones you set for yourself.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on March 11, 2016, 01:55:59 PM
Well it's been proven that if you tell someone they're worse at something than the opposite sex and then run an experiment with people watching to test their performances against the opposite sex, that knowledge undermines confidence and ability. They might have the ability just fine but being told they don't or being told that men can't do this as well as women or women can't do that as well as men causes people to nudge themselves toward the stereotype a little more.
So my degree is in math. I agree with many here it has nothing to do with gender, it has a lot to do with confidence and foundation. Math is like climbing a ladder, you need every rung on the ladder to be successful and get to the top. Too often people are convinced they're no good at math because they miss or misunderstood a rung or two along the way. But if you have confidence you'll be able to fight to understand. If not, you'll likely assume that you're not good at math.
With so many people, including teachers falsely believing women are bad at math, that confidence can be very hard to attain if you're female.
I have two daughters, both struggled with math until I sat down and started helping them. You know what I found out. Many teachers aren't very good at math.
So here are my suggestions.
1) Look for videos on the topics you're struggling with. There are a lot of good ones on the internet.
2) Practice those areas you have trouble with. Math is a lot like learning an instrument. Practice really helps.
3) Don't be afraid to retrace your steps if there's something you just don't get. If you have to look at videos for grades below yours do it. It may just be that missing rung that stops you from success.
4) Remember not everyone struggles with the same concepts. Some people have trouble with trig, some people have trouble with algebra, some people have trouble with geometry, etc.
Good luck,
Paige :)
I've never liked math and was never naturally good at it, but I do okayish if I'm taught well. I can't really say for sure because I've always had bad teachers and the fact I'm not very interested in the subject didn't help motivate me. But when I finally found a good teacher my grades were acceptable.
I think it's just stereotyping though, because the most brilliant math students in my class in high school were cis girls, they were so good that they were separated from the rest of the class during classworks to avoid helping others. I also had a Chinese friend and she was the best math student because as she explained, in her country math is taught a lot and people are encouraged to learn it and they apparently have a good method of teaching math and other scientific subjects, while people in my country are usually bad at scientific subjects because they're not taught very well and we're encouraged to learn things like literature and history. So it's also a cultural thing.
I don't think brain, gender or biological sex has anything to do with it.
Quote from: Deborah on March 10, 2016, 02:21:22 AM
When my daughter was in school I countered that by always telling her that math was easy and not to listen to people who insisted it was hard. All you have to do is learn the rules. She ended up getting a math degree in college. I also told her sports were important just for building a strong body along with a strong mind. And now she makes a living as a fitness instructor. So I agree that the message is important when they are young.
Sapere Aude
It's a coincidence that I want to be a fitness instructor someday. Did she have to get a bachelor's of science in fitness training?
Quote from: alienbodybuilder on March 12, 2016, 07:55:40 AM
It's a coincidence that I want to be a fitness instructor someday. Did she have to get a bachelor's of science in fitness training?
No. She got a math and education degree with the intention of being an elementary school teacher. But during her student teaching time she discovered she didn't like the job.
She teaches fitness in and helps manage a Barre Studio. http://barre3.com. They conduct their own instructor selection and ongoing training in Oregon. So her bonus with that company is paid trips a couple of times a year.
I do know something about fitness instructing in other gyms though. Most do not require a degree. All they require is an online certification.
Quote from: Deborah on March 12, 2016, 08:07:44 AM
No. She got a math and education degree with the intention of being an elementary school teacher. But during her student teaching time she discovered she didn't like the job.
She teaches fitness in and helps manage a Barre Studio. http://barre3.com. They conduct their own instructor selection and ongoing training in Oregon. So her bonus with that company is paid trips a couple of times a year.
I do know something about fitness instructing in other gyms though. Most do not require a degree. All they require is an online certification.
That's good to know. Thanks so much.
I'm bad at math. I can deal with basic stuff and when I have the actual expression in front of me I can probably solve it, if I can actually remember the formula for it. But if I gotta figure out what to count from text, it's almost the same as if you'd make me read Chinese. I've had problems in that kind of exercises ever since I started school in 1997.
I ended up with math grade 8 when my compulsory school ended (I believe it's equivalent the to US grade B) and it's mostly thanks to the math teacher I had for the last three years. Math got very complicated for me and I would've struggled way more than I eventually did if it were not for that teacher. She was amazing and had a way of teaching that made even someone like me understand enough that I could complete basic stuff with relative ease.
Verbal exercises, though? No luck, I always misinterpreted something in them and my solutions were wrong. Although, I had problems with cosine, sine and tangent as well... I don't know how I looked at my triangles since I always chose the wrong function for those exercises...
My mom and my aunt (mom's sister) are also terrible at math but surprisingly their mother isn't. She's like a walking calculator. I bet she would've done amazingly well if her parents had let her study more than just what was compulsory back then. But she can multiply two and three digit numbers with ease and seeing her old report cards from the late 1940s and early 1950s, she always had top grades in math. Maybe she's a one hit wonder in our family.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on March 08, 2016, 06:35:11 AM
Mathematical ability has nothing to do with what sex brain you have but how you are taught in my opinon. I was bad because the teaching was bad, I started to doubt my own ability, hated and feared the subject and ended up in a vicious cycle that was easily broken within a year by some decent coaching and a willingness to succeed.
Absolutely true. I nearly failed math several years in a row. It just didn't make sense. I argued with guidance for weeks to allow me to take AP Calculus despite my math history. I had a phenomenal teacher and I ended up acing it, and getting enough AP credit to skip a few Calculus classes in college too. I'm also the type that needs to know why we need to learn something. Those math courses I struggled in were all single-subject subjects and none of the teachers would explain the usefulness to me. Calculus brought them all together and almost every example was a real world problem.
There is also the "born with an x brain, in a y body" thing. So since I'm MtF, wouldn't that mean I have a female brain? With this math/gender idea, that should mean that I would never be able to grasp math. It would also mean that FtMs should excel at it.
Quote from: Deborah on March 09, 2016, 06:59:10 AM
Yeah, I'm a statistician.
The PhD in charge of our analysis department is female. I don't think any gender related trends are related to aptitude. Maybe just related to interest.
That sounds like a great job. Do you enjoy it? I'm obsessed with statistics even though I've always questioned or doubted the accuracy of them because they were just a random sample of people.
I do really enjoy it when I get to do it. Unfortunately, most of the time I have to do other things.
Math and statistics are perfectly honest and are accurate predictors, within a specified margin of error, when applied honestly and correctly. However, since almost nobody understands it unscrupulous people can misuse the techniques to provide whatever result they want to present. They have given the science an undeserved bad reputation.
Sapere Aude
Quote from: Deborah on March 25, 2016, 09:35:29 AM
I do really enjoy it when I get to do it. Unfortunately, most of the time I have to do other things.
Math and statistics are perfectly honest and are accurate predictors, within a specified margin of error, when applied honestly and correctly. However, since almost nobody understands it unscrupulous people can misuse the techniques to provide whatever result they want to present. They have given the science an undeserved bad reputation.
Sapere Aude
I'm impressed with your knowledge. You're such a smart lady.
Quote from: DeborahMath and statistics are perfectly honest and are accurate predictors, within a specified margin of error, when applied honestly and correctly. However, since almost nobody understands it unscrupulous people can misuse the techniques to provide whatever result they want to present. They have given the science an undeserved bad reputation.
Too true.
I've said for years (decades actually) that a basic course in probability theory should be a requirement for graduating from high school, and everyone who graduates from college should have taken a basic statistics course. Understanding the basics of this stuff is essential to learning to think.
Hardly anyone understands
coin flips, fergodsakes.
Quote from: Tysilio on March 25, 2016, 09:56:51 AM
Too true.
I've said for years (decades actually) that a basic course in probability theory should be a requirement for graduating from high school, and everyone who graduates from college should have taken a basic statistics course. Understanding the basics of this stuff is essential to learning to think.
Hardly anyone understands coin flips, fergodsakes.
I may not have graduated then. I had an IEP (Individualized Education Program) because I was mentally ill and had social problems. I can't do fractions or algebra. I did well in everything but mathematics. Government and Environmental Science were my favorites. I don't know if I could get any kind of degree in Environmental Science though.
Hey, I spoke too soon this morning and will be doing data analysis full time. Yaaaaay
I went to a job interview after lunch and was offered the job at about the same salary I am getting now. So I'll submit my two week notice on Monday.
I'll be assisting in experiment design and doing the data analysis for simulation experiments. I'm looking forward to it. Its been a while since I had an interesting job that required turning on more than a couple of brain cells at a time.
Sapere Aude
Quote from: Tysilio on March 25, 2016, 09:56:51 AM
Hardly anyone understands coin flips, fergodsakes.
If they did the casinos would be empty.
No. I am good at math and tend to be masculine of centre but I know many cis women who are equally good at it and cis men who are lousy.
I used to tutor university math classes and most of my students were people who had just never been taught math in a way that worked for them.
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