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Remember when Barbie whined that “math is hard.” Maybe you got annoyed at hearing a popular female doll say that to little girls. Or maybe you also had a nagging suspicion that, in fact, boys are better at math. Well, the latest research is in, and the answer is a resounding no: boys are not more math savvy. The finding appears in the July 25 issue of the journal Science.
Janet Hyde at the University of Wisconsin-Madison led the study. The group dug through piles of information from seven million students tested through the No Child Left Behind program across ten states. Researchers had detailed personal info on the test takers. Researchers checked out math tests in different grades. They took the average. No difference. Some critics have said that the difference only shows up among the highest levels of math skills. So the team checked out the most gifted children. Again, no difference. From any angle, girls measured up to boys. Still, there’s a lack of women in the highest levels of professional math, engineering and physics. Some have said that’s because of an innate difference in math ability. But the new research shows that that explanation just doesn’t add up.
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Add CommentI've looked at the electronic supplement to the paper, containing details of the "study". It shows that, at higher performance levels on the standardized tests, the percentage of girls does tend to be lower than that of boys. (So, the title "Girls Equal Boys at Math" is quite misleading already for this reason.) But the authors of the Science article complain that that percentage of girls is less than the percentage of females among mathematicians.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, to me as a mathematician it is quite clear that _standardized_ tests designed to be taken by most (or by a significant percentage) of high-school students to measure their _routine_ skills cannot possibly measure the ability to do mathematics -- which requires the ability to think in highly non-standard, novel ways.
The only reason that such a "study" appeared in Science, a journal which used to be highly reputable but is highly politicized now, is "political correctness".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTeller-why so offended at the thought that girls may equal boys at math?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd the results for children are more important than those of adults, because this is before many social cues have set in which tell girls that they SHOULD be bad at math.
I am a little confused...do they report similar test results for higher level math skills? Because Hyde's paper also claims that most of the data does not have difficult questions on it, there exists some difficulty in determining more abstract abilities. Also, did they really only look at the average amongst the self selected best 10 boys and best 10 girls at each school for gifted and talented results?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI want to see the distribution tables...I am not getting enough information
it's funny.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat's funny?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Teller-why so offended at the thought that girls may equal boys at math?" -- I am not, not at all. I am sad when obviously bad science is hastily published -- just because of "political" correctness -- in journals that used to be reputable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe conventional wisdom has been boys are better in math and girls outsmart boys in language. This needs not be true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, just like there have been many more male politicians than female, there are more male mathematicians than female. Nevertheless, it does not necessary mean that it is due to the innate or inherent difference between the genders.
I believe the main factor arises from how young boys and girls are being brought up by the parents and influenced by the society. Subconsciously, the children have been stereotyped to follow a path that is supposedly correct for them boys have the natural inklings towards math and politics while girls the language and humanities. Such misperceptions perpetuate, resulting in what roles the genders eventually play in their adult life.
In a nutshell, boys and girls are born equal mentally. (Tan Boon Tee)
It's ridiculous. Grade sheet does not equal to the ability of study. Do the most gifted children has any different in their grade?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishope the result will be the real fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan anyone help me to make a subscribe to this programme.well,it seems that every time i do i will fail.
I think the experiment itself may not be so precise,for what the scientists are trying to prove might be something relevant both to the culture and science,which are too complicated for a research to explain clearly.Besides,I admit that in the highest level of math,most professors and scholars are men.But maybe,the more we grow up,the more impacts those stereotypes will made to us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResearch is always a research!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi actually agree with teller that you'd want some more interesting questions than what appear on standardized tests. but i've always thought any gaps were due to socialization. good article on that appeared also in science. (hope this research was better done.) i can't see the details at science, since i haven't paid them. but it was about how equity in the culture affected performance of girls vs boys in math and reading across lots of different cultures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-sue (masters in math, no phd because i couldn't imagine working alone on math for so many hours a day, a concern not so many men would have)
My universitary experience:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGirls are better at memorizing definitions, rules, and things.
Boys are better at making some useful from memorized things, and discovering new things.
..I agree with the second replier, this is all about political correctness, I love seeing how "reverse" sexist these kinda of articles are, they are always about how dumb boys are and how"smart" girls are. I see they didnt mention the reading gap between boys and girls, I guess that females are just superior all around compared to males, forget the past few thousand of years that say the opposite.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA generation of teachers with substandard math skills has populated our public schools, especially at the elementary school level. They believe that "math is hard" because they are ill-educated and in some cases just not that bright. They happen to be mostly female, and they become role models for girls, who come to believe, for no good reason, that math [and physical science] are "too hard". So that's why many girls shy away from math. The fact that girls perform as well as boys in math is nothing to celebrate--these days, girls outperform boys in everything else! We still have a gender based expectations gap that won't disappear until get rid of substandard teachers. We also have huge crisis relating to boys not acheiving at the same level as girls anywhere else. That is the source of this statistical anomaly. The solution is better teachers, and more demanding professors of education at our teaching colleges.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA generation of teachers with substandard math skills has populated our public schools, especially at the elementary school level. They believe that "math is hard" because they are ill-educated and in some cases just not that bright. They happen to be mostly female, like the majority of all elementary teachers and they become role models for girls, who come to believe, for no good reason, that math [and physical science] are "too hard". So that's why many girls shy away from math. The fact that girls perform as well as boys in math is nothing to celebrate--these days, girls outperform boys in everything else! We still have a gender based expectations gap that won't disappear until we get rid of substandard teachers, which may require remedial training, higher standards, and even firing the hopeless ones. We also have a huge crisis relating to boys not achieving at the same level as girls in other subjects. That is the source of this statistical anomaly--boys are doing worse at everything, girls still don't do as well as they could at math. The solution to the math expectations gender gap is simply better teachers, and more demanding professors of education at our teaching colleges. The solution to the larger problem--why have our schools so miserably failed our boys?--still doesnt get talked about enough.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have no problem with news that matches the math savy of girls with boys. I do protest when people equate math ability with engineering or computer aptitude. Both require far more than just math aptitude. Furthermore, data supports a stronger aptitude in math in boys, than it supports a stronger aptitude in verbal skills for girls, yet women are always trying to promote this difference without acknowledging its bias.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's the "ability ratio" between girls and boys at the 99-th percentile of these various tests?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do boys and girls compare at the 99th percentile?
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