If they pass those exams they will be awarded $1000,000. I think that more than 95% of these average students will pass their exams. Most of these student will look like extremely gifted children with high IQs.

I totally agree with this. But the point I was trying to make was that “differentiation, integration, complex analyses, contour integration, linear algebra, topolgy, functional analyses differential geometry, quantum field theory, general relativity…” and so on are the Latin of our day. These things have been created by scholastic Doctors to advance their own careers. This means that the way before Calculus Latin was considered the true knowledge by the Scholastic Doctors, today, calculus, took its place. Calculus is just a dead language, the programming language of the 17th century. Teaching calculus today is like teaching Cobol as the hottest computer language. There is no reason to define intelligence as the capacity to cram calculus.

I think what is stereotyped here is math. It is an academic scholastic notion that mathematics, or calculus, the Latin of our day, is a measure of intelligence.

I don’t think many experts believe this to be the case. The study just shows that the educational standards are very low in the US.

If you randomly pick 100 average 12 year olds you can make then experts in calculus by the age of 17 provided they study well. You don’t need more than a few years to master differentiation, integration, complex analyses, contour integration, linear algebra, topolgy, functional analyses differential geometry, quantum field theory, general relativity, etc. etc.

The problem is that most children are not motivated enough to study hard enough. But you can perform the following experiment. You let average 12 year olds participate in an experimental education program. When they are 17 they take an exam on subjects such as General Relativity, Lagrangian dynamics, quantum field theory etc.

If they pass those exams they will be awarded $1000,000. I think that more than 95% of these average students will pass their exams. Most of these student will look like extremely gifted children with high IQs.

So, thank you for posting this that I might randomly find it and be inspired to some new thoughts.

I would love to see the exact same set of tests given out to a sample of men and see if the opposite effect unfolds

Or the same effect.

Basically, if you want to draw conclusions from this study, you need to further test a group of men. It’s clear that reading a paticular essay had an effect on the test scores, but you can’t yet draw conclusions from this. For example, the candidates could have be irked by reading an essay that put down people, or anxious after reading something that mentioned mathematics as being difficult. That said, there were substantially different essays used which would elminiate uncertainty in this direction.

However, in order for the final conclusion to be accurate, you need a final control, i.e. a group of males. Frankly I don’t see how this was missed. It’s all in Feynman’s cargo cult physics speech. That said, I think the conclusion is most likely correct, but before you say that scientifically, you need that final control.

Incidently, the presentation of these results is excellent, because someone has made the effort to put the standard deviation in their graphs. Bravo.

The big iceberg hiding under the water is the myth that math and physics are so difficult that only gifted students in university can understand it. It’s high time to start to teach science in primary school!

Primary school — pfeh!

I’ve got a 4 year old daughter, and I’ve been teaching her math, physics, and astronomy since she could hold her head up by herself. I’m being sneaky, though — she thinks we’re just playing…

BTW, when the Canadian study first came out, did anybody else immediately think of ‘Teen Talk Barbie?’

In principle, we do….

Unfortunatley, too often science is taught as definitions, I think.

Regarding math, I don’t know why but for some reason the “math is hard” meme seems to take over bigtime somewhere aroudn 6th or 7th grade. I see so many students in my intro non-majors class who tell me that “I’m not a math person,” or “I can’t do math,” that it’s depresisng. Because, with very few exceptions, they can. Yeah, they make some classic mistakes, but they know how to do algebra, they even generally know trig. The big conceptual gaps are in connecting math with reality — what “word problems” in math classes are supposed to get across, but don’t seem to do. But the biggest problem is that the students come in convinced that they don’t know how to do math, and so freeze up when they see any scary math.

-Rob

Also, if you want to think about relevance to society, there simply are not message out there saying that men shouldn’t be able to do science… but there are messages like that out there about women and science. Even if a study showed that men would respond poorly when reading reports about how dumb they are (and I suspect they would!), it doesn’t shed so much light on reality because reality isn’t set up that way.

(There is, I think, I message that “math is hard” that everybody gets– which makes people in general approach math with a pre-existing bias that “I can’t do this.” This is either an extension of, or in addition to, the differential message women get about women’s abilities.)

-Rob

Likewise, nobody who has looked at the data (including steve pinker) is really arguing that there is no gender-discrimination going on. Steve pinker is only trying to say that not only is there discrimination going on; there is also data that supports other reasons for fewer women happening to be in science, including motivational and or ‘greater standard deviation’ arguments. It’s not a dichotomy — there can, and likely are, at least a few different reasons for the (great) disparity between men and women at the upper levels of the sciences. Discrimination at the university level is undoubtly the largest, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other factors.

And if you believe things like intrinsic motivation might be a factor, then if our ultimate goal is really to have as many men and women both trying to go into science and succeeding in science, that might take way more than eliminating discrimination at the level of high school, college and professorships. It might mean changing the way young children play or carefully controlling very young people’s experience with science and scientists.

In the end its mostly a question of where men and women diverge — not necessarily in numbers, but also in things like attitude toward science. The idea that some of the variance could be innate is not totally out there, even though liberals like to attack steve pinker for even having the thought. You could certainly imagine that correcting discrimination at the univerity and high school levels would still leave some differences between men and women, and its not unthinkable that even correcting the problems in early education wouldn’t fix them. It’s all a question of how far you think it is necessary to go to make things as equal as they ought to be — if a 5 year old who decides to be a scientist has equal opportunity regardless of their gender, and equal chance of success, does it matter if fewer female 5 year olds decide they want to become scientists?. Thats a personal question, I think, of when we’ve done as much as is necessary.

I was never afraid of the maths itself. It’s more about having one’s attention drawn away from the maths.

At least for some it works.