Females are shite at Maths

[AutisticHedgehog]

According to a fucking hilarious Mumsnet cliche-meme on the FB feed.

FFS this is appalling. Why are Mumsnet of all places perpetuating the myth that girls can’t do maths.

I know plenty will say “lighten up, it’s harmless fun” but it’s not. It’s continual nonsense-shite that pervades and influences girls and their views that maths is a boys’ subject.

Maths is for everyone.

Shame on you MN.

[noblegiraffe]

Mathematician trying to patronise a Scientist.

No, just telling someone they don’t know what they’re talking about...

[maxthemartian]

Is that a Mathematician trying to patronise a Scientist. Aww bless, it's like a PCSO telling an armed response copper that they are the real Police :-)

How do you think Stephen Hawking did what he did, or Einstein, or any other cosmologist or astrophysicist?
Maths.

[donquixotedelamancha]

No, just telling someone they don’t know what they’re talking about...

Just found counterpoint's first post. I'd assumed dripping irony on their part, but now think i'm wrong.

Still, I enjoy a good bunfight between us rational thinkers, because secretly we all know we are better than the artsy folk. On that note...

How do you think Stephen Hawking did what he did, or Einstein, or any other cosmologist or astrophysicist? Maths.

Of course they used maths, but when your plumbing gets fixed you thank the plumber, not the wrench.

[maxthemartian]

I have never read such crap in all my life.

[wishitwillbeme]

An individual or small group of individuals happen to be crap at maths think they represent the whole world. I think my post will be deleted very quickly....

I've got a maths degree.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

I haven't read the whole thread. I went to a girls' school in the 1970s. It was very academic indeed. No male teachers at all most of the time I was there. Female headteachers and heads of department. Out of a year group of about 90, around half did all or mostly STEM subjects for A level and most of those went on to do STEM degrees. My best friend became an astrophysicist. Others in the year did engineering, chemistry, physics, maths, biology, medicine, dentistry, veterinary science. There was no stigma whatsoever about doing STEM subjects.

Fast forward 20 years. The school merged with the boys' school. A few years later I got a newsletter where an earnest young woman had been given a couple of paragraphs to tell younger girls that it was fine for girls to do STEM subjects, girls could do science and maths just like boys! I could have wept.

[hellokittymania]

How are women and girls supposed to be good at stem subjects if people have it in their minds that they never will be? We need to change her attitude's, then we can be good at things.

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

That's probably why girls/women get more easily bored by the repetitiveness of such a subject and they are more able to apply the higher order thinking skills that I believe women are more predisposed to.

Women actually seem to have more stamina for repetitive meticulous hand calculations than men. That’s why NASA employed women as human calculators before computers became readily available – see earlier link. It’s also why there was a glut of female X-ray crystallographers – women like Dorothy Hodgkin – who were engaged in calculation-heavy work in the pre-computer era too.

[OCSock]

I have scanned the thread, and can't say whether M/F has an edge. I was and am very good at arithmetical calculations, but I preferred language as an expression of personality, and I remain unrepentently a social scientist, with a serious interest in infomatics, graphics, and stats.

But hell yes, girls can be great at maths.

[The3]

I have reported the goady troll: unfortunately you really need a good maths/science degree to really understand how goady and trollsome that PCSO comment is.

The idea that one doesn’t need higher order thinking skills for algebraic geometry or group theory is laughable.

I think I shall get myself a biscuit and go and prove the transcendence of pi to help calm myself down.

[borntobequiet]

Maths is entirely creative. It enables people to think about and describe aspects of reality that can’t be thought about or described in words or pictures. It allows people to understand deep connections between what appear to be disparate phenomena. These are drivers of creativity.
It’s also, on a different level, a very useful tool.

[Waddlelikeapenguin]

Maths is the language of the universe

[counterpoint]

That’s why NASA employed women as human calculators before computers became readily available

No, if they did, NASA employed these women because the would have thought the real work, ie Maths, was for men who could 'think'. It's part of the myth. The reality is that Maths is completely do-able by machines so it's the men that are replaceable but no one wants to admit that - it's the male domain. Women are more adept at higher thinking skill subjects which require human creativity.

And as for the pp who mentioned Hawkins - what exactly did he do? Wrote a book while women looked after him? Then got some physics wrong (shh) and won the admiration of men.

[counterpoint]

Maths is entirely creative.

You mean, made up nonsense?

When was the last time a Mathematician made a truly great, life-changing discovery? Let's say, like Fleming did (with the help of his wife) .... or Watson and Crick (who stole a woman's hard work)?

[blueshoes]

Maths is entirely creative. It enables people to think about and describe aspects of reality that can’t be thought about or described in words or pictures. It allows people to understand deep connections between what appear to be disparate phenomena. These are drivers of creativity.

This.

I am a lawyer and trained to express complicated concepts in words. I only took (double) maths to A level but even then I could see the potential for math to be a beautiful and elegant language. And yes, creative. Just like a well crafted legal document can also be creative and a joy to behold.

[noblegiraffe]

counterpoint as the mathematician GH Hardy said “A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.”

[counterpoint]

Often it's those with the least understanding of Maths that fall for its 'allure'. In awe of rubbish research when a random equation is thrown in.
"The Nonsense Math Effect"

[noblegiraffe]

Have you run out of Russia threads to post on, counterpoint?

[counterpoint]

Oh yeah, Hardy - the 'creator' of the most useless equation in Biology.

[Coffeeisyourfriend]

I don't like the insinuation that all females are bad at maths, however I recently lost my DH a grand over some minor miscalculations... after claiming I'm better at maths than he is so I'll do it.. but I also know a lot of woman who are shit hot at maths and will be calling on them when its time for maths homework!

[noblegiraffe]

GH Hardy again: “I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.”

He wasn’t aiming to create anything useful.

[counterpoint]

Here's what a mathematician like Hardy assumes when he tells Biologists some 'Maths':

"The proportion will remain constant, or at equilibrium, as long as five key assumptions hold true.
Assumption 1: No Genetic Drift. ...
Assumption 2: A Closed Population. ...
Assumption 3: Mutations Don't Happen. ...
Assumption 4: Random Mating Patterns. ...
Assumption 5: No Natural Selection."

Thanks, but no thanks. Real world? Absolute nonsense!

[TheGreatestHo]

I’m away to phone Carol Vorderman

[counterpoint]

He wasn’t aiming to create anything useful.

For sure!

Leave the real stuff to women and the useless Maths to men....

[borntobequiet]

Tell all the great artists that they haven’t done anything creative, because their creations haven’t been of any use.