Posted on 09/26/2023 1:56:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway
IT has been claimed for a long time that boys are inherently better at mathematics than girls, and this has led to intense debate on the issue.
According to gender stereotypes in mathematics, girls are less confident in their arithmetic skills and experience greater anxiety and this eventually lowers their test scores.
However, it is important to rely on scientific evidence and extensive research to determine whether this stereotype has any basis in reality.
Is it true that men have an advantage in learning mathematics?
Experts and research have found that there are only slight differences in the maths performance of boys and girls; these differences depend on several factors, including a pupil’s age and maths proficiency and the type of maths they are attempting.
A meta-analysis on gender differences in mathematics performance showed that males have an advantage when the mathematical concepts require more reasoning and are more spatial in nature.
This is in the context of solving problems in geometry and calculus, typically taught in the higher secondary-school grades.
It also found that females have an advantage in early primary-school years when mathematics consists of computational knowledge and speed.
Research also shows that at times, there were no differences and in some cases, an advantage for girls to do more basic numerical skills and math problems that have a set procedure for solving them.
Age and the type of math might have an impact on research findings simultaneously. For instance, two recent studies on the gender differences in children’s earliest numerical abilities found no gender differences in infants and children’s basic maths skills.
Findings also suggest that girls and boys learned math at similar rates, and boys did not have a higher aptitude for learning math or for processing numbers compared to their female counterparts.
No one is better in anything unless one has the desire to learn it and it is not gender that determines our interests but our habits that dictate what we are good at.
SOURCES
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359013929_Understanding_the_Symbolic_Effects_of_Gender_Representation_A_Multi-Source_Study_in_Education
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47642285_New_Trends_in_Gender_and_Mathematics_Performance_A_Meta-Analysis
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07370000903221809
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0028-7
https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.13044
Depends on who’s asking.
Any liberal would say, “No, and that’s sexist!”
I would say, “Depends on how complicated the math is. I’m good at basic math but bad at advanced math.”
Age does have consequences, I hated math from day one. Reading and writing was printed on my brain at a very young age. Now my brain is rebelling. It’s very Disconcerting. I have forgotten both Greek and Hebrew which I was so proud of actually learning both during my Masters. I suppose 90 is not a bad record.
Two trains are approaching each other from 120 miles apart. One train is going 60 miles per hour...
I think they know full well what kind of stats that study would generate so it would never be conducted. People want to live in their comfort zones and the truth makes them way too uncomfortable.
Just stop! 😂😂
LOL, I may have to steal that!
boys, real boys, doing boy things, are always looking at size and shape of things, how parts fit/go together, measuring lines and angles by eye, how strong something is, all without even thinking it/let alone knowing they’re doing it, and they do it their whole lives...
when it comes to math i’d say that is where headstart comes from
In my family growing up, 3 boys and 3 girls, I was the most math proficient in the family, and I think my little sister was next. All of my brothers are older than me, and one of my brothers needed remedial math in junior college. My brothers all struggled with algebra, but were some better at geometry. None of the 3 were better than I was at any type of math class.
However, my husband is an engineer, and he is definitely better with numbers than most anyone I know.
What this proves, I don’t know. I may have been the outlier growing up, but my brothers weren’t geniuses in math. In fact, they weren’t much genius at any school subjects. The one brother who is terrible at math is quite a historian, though. He knows all sorts of historical information.
Shopping is awful; give me a math problem! ;)
Looking at the high end (perfect score of 800 on math), there are a lot more math-gifted boys than girls.
“Specifically, at the highest level of math performance on the SAT test last year for perfect scores of 800, there were 11,098 males and 5,570 females achieving those scores, meaning that nearly 2 males achieved perfect scores for every one female (male-female ratio of 1.99-to-1). Adjusted for the fact that more females (903,719) than men (794,802) took the SAT test in 2015, the percentage of males who earned perfect scores of 800 points was 1.4% compared to the percentage of females with perfect scores of 0.62%. That produces an adjusted male-female ratio of 2.26-to-1 (vs. the 1.99 unadjusted ratio) for high school students who had perfect 800-point scores.”
So, math is “Racist” AND “Sexist”! Who knew!
Guys have always been interested in figures.
LOL
Well, it does take patience, attention to detail, and the ability to not multitask while solving a math problem.
Hypatia of Alexandria was a brilliant mathematician. But if you showed her a page with mathematical calculations using Arabic numerals, she wouldn’t have the slightest idea what they meant.
Why does society insist that women are better or equal to men in ALL categories and ALL LEVEL of categories, primarily the upper levels of categories? Ditto by race?
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