Posted on 06/20/2006 3:48:12 AM PDT by Renkluaf
There is clear evidence that men perform better at spatial tasks and women outpace men on tests of verbal usage and perceptual speed, according to research conducted by Wendy Johnson, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota, and Thomas Bouchard, director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research. The findings, which will be published in the journal Intelligence, indicate that there is little difference in how the genders fare as far as general intelligence, however. But since engineering positions are overwhelmingly filled by men, this further supports the theory that spatial abilities are key to success in the field.
(Excerpt) Read more at eet.com ...
In a few years after Hitlery is President such studies will be declared "hate speech". Scientists who engage in them will face fines and prison terms.
It's gonna be a brave new world.
Based on THAT anecdotal evidence, I'd say the study is correct.
All for the greater good, you know!
I always did well on those tests we were given in school, until it got to the "spatial" part of the test.
Oy, no way could I figure them out.
When I was homeschooling my son, we used books that taught "critical thinking." I could sequence, I could do analogies, but when it came to spatial relationships, I just handed the kid the book and told him he'd have to figure those out for himself, LOL.
I'm a female and I have an engineering degree and I agree with this study based on what I know about myself. I love math and aced calculus 1,2,3 and differential equations, but when it came to courses like vector analysis where I had to visualize 3-d functions in space, turning around and moving and such, it was like my brain just shut off. I believe I got my first D ever in that class.
I recently read a book called "Brain Sex" ("sex" means "gender" in the title) that discussed the differences between men's and women's brains and how they function. One of the things it pointed out is that men and women tend to use road maps differently. Women reorient the map so that the map is pointing in the same direction that the woman is going in order to be able to read it. Well, *I* do that, lol! I couldn't believe I actually saw that in writing. I have no problem reading maps and I even like reading maps. But, if I'm going north, then by golly, I have to turn my map so that the road I'm on is also going north, lol. Otherwise, a left on the map might be a right in reality and I'll get confused, lol!
I love this subject!
I am exactly your opposite. Before spell-check, I had to consult a dictionary continuously to write reports and memos. But I often amazed my coworkers by troubleshooting a system by visualizing the system and the reported symptoms and then figuring out a list of things that might cause them before leaving my chair.
I believe this study is correct.
OMG, I never heard that about the maps! I love reading maps, but you're so right...I ALWAYS turn the map around, almost like a compass, to read it. Too funny!
What is the closest approach of the line passing through points A and B to the line passing through the points C and D?
Took me a couple of hours to see how to use dot products and cross products to solve it (and I'm a guy). As always: "This problem, when solved, will be simple."
Another instance of liberals not letting facts get in the way of a chance for righteous indignation.
"This problem, when solved, will be simple."
Only when I visualized the lines from the POV looking perpendicular to the line connecting the points of closet approach could I solve the problem.Then I saw that the direction of that line would be defined by the cross product of the vectors AB and CD. Call the resulting vector V. But since we only want the direction of that vector and not its magnitude, we calculate the square root of the dot product of vector V with itself, and divide each component of V by the resulting magnitude of V. Call the result vector W.
Looking at the vector W from a direction perpendicular to it, we see that the dot product of vector W with any vector which connects line AB with line CD (e.g., AC or BD or AD or BC) yields the shortest distance between lines AB and CD.
Your mileage may vary. Generally, all of this is true, but...
I handle spatial problems easily. My ex husband, the chemical engineer, was a lost soul at this kind of thing; I was always way ahead of him with a practical solution.
A lot of women exasperate me with their inability to read maps; people come to me because I can draw such clear maps to guide them to unfamiliar places.
The exceptions are out there. I can visualize and solve problems in three dimensions, and write fiction to bring a sincere (not maudlin) tear to the eye.
Making assumptions based on studies like these carry some risk if the generalities are regarded as absolutes.
Yes, and I'm sure that somewhere there's a woman who could drag a 230 pound man out of a burning building.Just as long as you don't conclude that therefore half of all firefighers must be women since women constitute half of the general population!
>Just as long as you don't conclude that therefore half of all firefighers must be women since women constitute half of the general population!<
Never. That's silly. There are a few women with the size and upper body strength to carry an adult out of a burning building, but not many. If I need rescuing I don't want a 109 pound 5 foot woman to drag my half-dead body out of the building.
But I don't want to be denied even an interview for a position requiring logical, linear, spatial thinking, either, just because many of my sisters are lost souls at that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's a tough one. After all, notwithstanding the fact that "the race is not to the swift," that is the way people want to bet 'em . . .But if you can get a hearing, you will have the advantage of helping the company meet affirmative action goals.
>But if you can get a hearing, you will have the advantage of helping the company meet affirmative action goals.<
I can quite honestly say that I have never benefitted from affirmative action. I also have absolute evidence of discrimination in the 1970s [when a company hires a guy with 6 weeks of post college experience, and you had a degree and 3+ years with the kind of instrumentation they used, it is discrimination], but I knew and know better than to squawk. You just go on to the next.
I've seen women who did benefit, who had no business in the positions they held, but I was never one of them. I've always pulled my own weight, and then some. The truth is, a lot of women still have to be a lot better than the men considered for the same openings.
I just spent 6 years in a technical job supervised by a man whose job was created for him by his buddies when he was about to lose his job after a merger. He didn't have a technical degree (I do), he had 10 years less experience than I did, but he earned 30% more than me "supervising" me, which seemed largely to consist of time on the phone chatting up the work "we" did.
When he started, he refused a key to the building because he said he did not want to be called in for emergency work on weekends. I had long since requested and carried such a key with the stated reason of being able to get such work done. Big attitude difference, huh? [and gag, he was a liberal, too, a noisy one]
Don't kid yourself that unfairness does not exist, because your wife, your daughter, your granddaughter could find herself exactly in such positions.
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