Few gender differences in math abilities

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Because interests are subject to more than the cards dealt by biology.

Why did Einstein choose the path of a theoretical physicist and not say, a philosopher? He certainly had the aptitude for philosophy or for mathematics or any other discipline; but, he chose a particular path as his focus (acknowledging that yes, he did study other disciplines but did have a primary focus).




It makes perfect sense, if one permits for the option of choice. Just because the skill, talent or otherwise ability exists doesn't mean it will be pursued nor desired.

As far as other countries; again, we are comparing entire societies with each other and not on even terms. Sure, some countries seem to have more females in certain disciplines. Does that make them better? I say, "Only if one carries certain expectations of the end result."

I am rather troubled at the notion that social engineering a society to create more involvement in academia is in any different than doing so to create more involvement in family. In either case, the social engineering is done to impose a certain behavior upon the citizenry.

I'd agree it's partly nurture, but I'd say it's partly nature too. There are noticeable differences between the male brain and the female brain. I thought this was common knowledge? After all, Simon Baron-Cohen's theory of how autism represents the extreme male brain isn't all that controversial, is it?

Differences in Male and Female Brain Structure

Scientists have known for a while now that men and women have slightly different brains, but they thought the changes were limited to the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls sex drive and food intake. A few scientists may have admitted that men's brains were indeed bigger, but they would have tried to qualify this finding by telling you that it was because men were bigger. Because brain size has been linked with intelligence, it's very tricky to go around saying that men have bigger brains. Yet men do seem to have women beat here; even when accounting for height and weight differences, men have slightly bigger brains. Does this mean they're smarter? Let's keep going.

In 2001, researchers from Harvard found that certain parts of the brain were differently sized in males and females, which may help balance out the overall size difference. The study found that parts of the frontal lobe, responsible for problem-solving and decision-making, and the limbic cortex, responsible for regulating emotions, were larger in women [source: Hoag]. In men, the parietal cortex, which is involved in space perception, and the amygdala, which regulates sexual and social behavior, were larger [source: Hoag].

Men also have approximately 6.5 times more gray matter in the brain than women, but before the heads of all the men out there start to swell, listen to this: Women have about 10 times more white matter than men do [source: Carey]. This difference may account for differences in how men and women think. Men seem to think with their gray matter, which is full of active neurons. Women think with the white matter, which consists more of connections between the neurons. In this way, a woman's brain is a bit more complicated in setup, but those connections may allow a woman's brain to work faster than a man's

http://health.howstuffworks.com/men-wom ... rains1.htm

... and if you follow the reference:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm ... s.htm&url=
http://www.livescience.com/health/050120_brain_sex.html
where the original text reads: "Their findings show that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men."

I.e. the above, original text has had the bold portions omitted in the subsequent quote.

I have no idea what the original, original text might have said. Certainly, there is no question in my mind that men and women have virtually the same amounts of white and grey matter in their WHOLE brains. Which snippet of selective brain volume the original is talking about, I have no idea. Quite probably it was chosen by some gender weighted test that utterly invalidates the conclusion. E.g. maybe their criterion for "general intelligence" was "is stimulated by pictures of nude females".

Lies, damn lies, statistics, and misquotes.

Last edited by lau on 10 Jan 2010, 6:09 am, edited 2 times in total.

Brilliant detective work, lau.
What is your point?
Do you deny that nature has anything at all to do with why males outnumber females in the realm of world class mathematicans?

More paragraphs from http://www.livescience.com/health/050120_brain_sex.html

Their findings show that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.

"These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," said Haier, adding that, "by pinpointing these gender-based intelligence areas, the study has the potential to aid research on dementia and other cognitive-impairment diseases in the brain."

The results are detailed in the online version of the journal NeuroImage.

In human brains, gray matter represents information processing centers, whereas white matter works to network these processing centers.

The results from this study may help explain why men and women excel at different types of tasks, said co-author and neuropsychologist Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico. For example, men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localized processing, such as mathematics, Jung said, while women are better at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language skills.

Only problem with that statement is that yes, women are truly 'expected' to do much of the childrearing. I suppose it's by virtue of having the equipment to carry them for nine months and then feed them beyond that. Usually the woman takes off work to do so, the man keeps his job. Once you reach the point where those roles could conceivably change, around a year and a half to two years later, why? Now you'll have to start over in the workforce, loose the income generated by the male's job, in which he's probably advanced. See, this is how it's seen in America. And it's difficult to overcome that.

Several points...

You quoted something which was obviously wildly untrue. It made me wonder what the site actually said.

The source you quoted was misquoting another source, which gives me no confidence in anything they say.

The quotes you now make from that further source (which may or may not be accurate quotes from the research document concerned) do not attempt to distinguish between nature and nurture - which seems to be why you quote it all in the first place.

...

So, for a start, show me the research on patients (I do wonder what the criteria were, for inclusion as subjects of this research) not resident in California that conclusively dissociates the "intelligence" results obtained there from the effects of west coast nurture.

@ Apple_in_my_Eye: I wasn't replying to your post.


@ AnotherOne:

I know it has been true for certain employers that they preferred men over women.
The fact that the universities you are talking about now like to have women among their staff en that they now can get more money if they have women among their staff, are country- and time-dependent, resulting from rules rolled out to counter employers preferring men over women and to get more women in high positions.

Of course women themselves have problems meeting the demands.


Concerning Baron-Cohen's theory about the male vs female brain:

Wheelwright, Baron-Cohen et al. (2006) found differences between typical men and typical women on their EQ, SQ-R and AQ tests, but I would like to stress the last sentence in their abstract: "Future work should investigate the biological basis of these dimensions".
Baron-Cohen's theory is still a theory.

According to 'Principles of Neural Science' by Kandel et al. (4th edition, 2000):
"A number of structural sex differences in the human brain have been reported, but these differences and their functional significance are less well established than those in rodents. (...) the study of (...) clinical conditions has not provided clear support for a role of hormones in the sexual differentiation of behavior in the human brain."

Too many women have overcome such, "disadvantages" to claim childbearing as an expectation--at least in the sense of an obstacle. This includes women who are heads of state all the way down to single moms with two kids working in management in the local store, diner or restaurant.

I have a daughter, two grand-daughters and many nieces and I can tell you from direct experience that girls and boys do not think the same way from a very young age. And it is not a cultural matter either. There is a basic inherent difference in the way girls and boys process their experiences.

ruveyhn

KazigluBey, I think you're missing how influential social expectations are. Don't follow them and you're a freak / outcast / lose status. While they can be broken, most people won't pass this extra barrier.

At my school, everyone was expected to hate math. When I'd say math was my favorite school subject, they'd go "oh...." and end the conversation. Math was one of the things they'd b***h about to connect. I had the "fortune" of AS to not really get that back then, but I can easily see a NT changing to the culturally correct anti-math to avoid losing (potential) friends.

I read that in east asia the genders are quite equal (and both are supperior to american kids) in math. The reason being that gender and math ability are not linked in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cultures the way the way they are in the USA- girls are not expected to be bad in math- so they arent.

Another factor: well take any population of American students- say your old highschool.

Who are the top ten percent in math?
In any American HS it would probably be mostly boys.

But if you look at who are the dumbest ten percent in math in the same school you would find that that population would also be mostly boys!

The average aptitude of both genders would be about the same, but most of math genie (if thats the plural) are boys. But the worst innumate ret*ds would also be mostly male as well.

Boys go to extremes, and girls clump near the mean. Kinda like the fact that most of the people listed in "Who's Who" are male,--and --most the people featured on "America's most wanted" are also male!

Yet another plagiarism from Captain Obvious.

haahaa

Yeah, I went to an all girl school and we all sucked at math, it was a joke. A novel of a joke...

I've come to regard it as pretty much BS, myself. I'm not sure how it's been taken so seriously.

I am a female Aspie, and I am not good at maths at all. In fact, when I was in my last year of school, I was in the bottom set for maths, and I was so slow and behind with the maths work that I had to even be singled out of the class and got took down to the Special Needs room by a helper, and she had planned a whole week just to sit me with her so she could level me down to the maths level of a 2 year old, then as the week went on, work her way up to levelling me onto the maths level of a 6 year old, and so forth. Then by Friday I was on the teen level - but after all that, I was still confused at maths.
Goes to show how backward I am at maths!

And there isn't much else I'm good at either. Only spelling. I came top of the class with spelling and puntuation.

The subjects I was never good at was science, maths, physical, religeon, history, geography, languages and carpentry.

Subjects I were better at were english, general studies, music, food tech, needlework, art and drama.

Those aren't really typical Aspie subjects. But I don't think the knowledge part of my brain has Aspergers. Because Aspie people are bright.