![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thursday, 24 July 2008 04:18 pm
(no subject)
Girls match boys in math, say researchers published in Science.
This interests me. While my math skills in school ranged from okay to excellent depending on the exercises, my sister once placed #1 among girls in a national competition. Thing is, she only placed #59 overall. What's the deal here? Do most girls who are good at math lack the confidence to compete? Do they just not feel like competing on that front? Are they insufficiently encouraged? Or was the landscape that much different a decade ago?
My best guess pertains to averages: Math geniuses are predominantly male, but so are math underachievers. The same has been said about many other skills, bolstered by the theory that having two X chromosomes makes both extremes less likely.
This interests me. While my math skills in school ranged from okay to excellent depending on the exercises, my sister once placed #1 among girls in a national competition. Thing is, she only placed #59 overall. What's the deal here? Do most girls who are good at math lack the confidence to compete? Do they just not feel like competing on that front? Are they insufficiently encouraged? Or was the landscape that much different a decade ago?
My best guess pertains to averages: Math geniuses are predominantly male, but so are math underachievers. The same has been said about many other skills, bolstered by the theory that having two X chromosomes makes both extremes less likely.