A large body of research has revealed that boys and girls have, on average, similar abilities in math. But girls have a consistent advantage in reading and writing and are often relatively better at these than they are at math, even though their math skills are as good as the boys’. The consequence? A typical little boy can think he’s better at math than language arts. But a typical little girl can think she’s better at language arts than math. As a result, when she sits down to do math, she might be more likely to say, “I’m not that good at this!” She actually is just as good (on average) as a boy at the math — it’s just that she’s even better at language arts.

Supervisor just posted this in the not-so-slack-channel. (I'm a 'math instructor')

This paragraph scratched at something from that Anthropology 101 general education class. Something something denser brains, something something shorter neural pathways, something something better communication skills.

Anywho, thought it was a nice share since we've got some brainy people here and parents of daughters.

oyster:

I don’t disagree with the findings just the conclusion in some part. I was good at math but math in school is abstract. It’s the stuff everybody knows some people will need later on in their wacky fancy careers but everybody else goes ohhhmagawd when will I ever use this. No joke, when I was in college I remember learning math how it related to architecture which I was studying and realized I was that person who would need it later, the reason everybody else had to sit through all that high school math they would never use. It was an odd feeling, I never saw myself as that person. Being good at math isn’t what made me look at studying architecture, I wanted to build something and do something big. The understanding that I could build things and occupy space with my ideas/plans is what was missing.

posted 2079 days ago