Girls Need Math

http://www.pacifict.com/GirlsNeedMath.html

by pooriaazimi • 14 years ago

101 67 14 years ago

pooriaazimi2• 14 years ago

In case someone wonders why I thought it's HN-worthy: There are lots of teenagers on HN. I remember a poll from quite a while ago that a good 300 had answered "I'm under 17" or something like that. Now there must be more of them and this might be of interest to them.

What actually got me into programming was a writer (of computer-related topics) praising my absolutely shitty Flash app/game when I was 14 (or maybe 13). It felt really good. Having someone (who is already successful) tell you at that age that you shouldn't care if you're not the best and what matters is how much you try means a great deal. It did, at least to me.

It's really a cliché article, but I'm glad it made it to the front page. Amidst all these Big Co nonsense articles.

Shank• 14 years ago

HS student here:

We have a good collective of students who hang out after class ends every couple days to discuss & practice Cyber Security. The unfortunate problem is that the majority of the guys overshadow the girls so much in regards to behavior that we have to do similar motivational runs to keep people in that deserve to be there. At least where I'm at, there's an air of disrespect that constantly has to get pushed back, lest the truly inspired people leave out of boredom or hatred for it.

Thanks!

anuraj2• 14 years ago

Why would a 14 year old be taught C++ and low level networking? Familiarizing them with a high level scripting language (like python say) will not do? Will you teach surgery to a 14 year old? Will you teach them to design and construct a building?

seabee2• 14 years ago

Why shouldn't they learn C++ and low-level networking?

Tichy4• 14 years ago

Because it is not as useful as other languages?

anuraj2• 14 years ago

a 5 year old may be taught neurosurgery - the point is what is the point?

pooriaazimi2• 14 years ago

It was 1997. I was 6 at the time so I don't know, but probably python/etc. were less known at the time or deploying them was harder than C++ on Windows.

quesera2• 14 years ago

Don't underestimate children, or girls.

I know sub-14 year olds who are fluent in C and a couple flavors of assembly language.

batista3• 14 years ago

And I know tons of them that cannot even pin point their country on the maps. What's with using outliers as examples?

logn3• 14 years ago

C++ was taught in my high school. A good teacher can make C++ learnable. You just focus on using a sane subset of the language and it can make sense to beginners.

Also going from C++ to Java is a lot easier (and others I'd imagine too) because C++ forces you to master pointers. And of course, Java is filled with pointers but the syntax hides it.

jmvoodoo• 14 years ago

I think C and low level networking are great things for beginners to learn. I started learning C at age 9 and networking around age 12. C is great because it teaches a ton about how computers actually work, and practically forces you to learn CS concepts, without having to go as far as program counters, etc. in assembly. Low level networking is great because it teaches how properly architected systems are built in layers that each serve a particular purpose. It also helps tremendously when building systems later on in your career. You have no idea how many "programmers" I have interviewed that can't even write a bubble sort because all they learned was Array.sort(). Starting with C fixes this problem, and sets the stage for proper learning (and appreciation) of high level languages. The other thing that I would really focus on at a young age is troubleshooting. It teaches you how to think in a way that not many other things can.

sp332• 14 years ago

You're over-estimating the difficulty. I just did a networking project in C, and the APIs are quite straightforward and well-documented.

irahul3• 14 years ago

> Why would a 14 year old be taught C++ and low level networking?

There is an entry age for learning C++? Tell me more about it.

> Will you teach surgery to a 14 year old?

Apparently high school biology followed by 5 years of undergrad followed by 2 years of grad is the same as learning C++.

Now don't go on a tangent about how CS schools need math foundation and are 4 years and you need grad school for deeper understanding. CS education isn't under contention - C++ is. C++ doesn't need a big foundation. An average 14 year old will pick up C++ just fine.

shmerl2• 14 years ago

And why not?

TallGuyShort• 14 years ago

I learned C and C++ when I was 11, having only done BASIC before that. Why hold 14 year-olds back if they're capable of doing it?

kennyt• 14 years ago

What would be interesting is a follow-up 15 years later. Would be really cool if she turned out to be a programming monster.

logn3• 14 years ago

I grew up in Catholic schools which were not co-ed. I disliked so much about a single-sex education, but I'd imagine that for girls it can be beneficial in this respect.

We need to do all we can to encourage girls in match/science/CS. The shortage of women in incredible. And it will lead to women not being represented not just in lower-level single contributor jobs, but also at the executive level as men move from programmer to manager to VP.

pbhjpbhj3• 14 years ago

This again.

>We need to do all we can to encourage girls in match/science/CS. //

Why is sex so important to math/science/CS that you must, presumably, aim for a population that is directly representative of the proportions in the wider population.

Presumably you're also concerned that there is an under-representation of men in, oh I don't know, 'family and consumer science'? If not, why not?

logn3• 14 years ago

Well, computers are what I know so I'm concerned about that. I guess if I were a male nurse I'd be saying the same thing about men.

I think it's important to have somewhat equal representation. First, we have a shortage of developers so this is an easy way to address that. Second, like the subject of this article, a lot of girls would be interested in CS but because of the lack of women they're turned off. This is a real shame. Third, CS people are literally designing our future. Do we want to live in a world as envisioned by men or as white men or as a fair balance of people?

natrius2• 14 years ago

I'm concerned that men are underrepresented in nursing. It's a fairly remunerative career that I'm sure many men would enjoy if there were less societal baggage.

andrewflnr2• 14 years ago

You presume too much. What we, I anyway, want is for the CS "population" to reflect the population of people who are naturally good at and enjoy CS. This may not have the same gender ratio as the population at large, but I'm pretty sure we're not there now either. And that means some people are not doing what they they're best at, what they were meant to do, which is bad for both them and society.

Now as a tactical concern on the road there, there are definitely some men in the system who will not react well to there being more women. Trying to change them with reason will have limited effectiveness. I think what we need to do is put enough highly competent women in front of them that they either have to shut up or look like idiots, thus marginalizing them and their bad attitudes. This will make it easier to get to the natural, aptitude-based proportion of people in the field. This is, IMO, a good reason to encourage well-suited women to go into the field. I don't know of a better way to accomplish the goal of reducing gender bias overall.

rayiner3• 14 years ago

The field of CS is currently where the field of law was in 1970. The overt discrimination of the 1950's and 1960's was gone, but indirect forces existed to keep the number of women in the legal field small. Law schools and law firms made determined efforts to increase the representation of women. Fast forward to today, half of all law schools graduates are women. Nearly half of all associates in large law firms are women. At some old-line NYC firms, 20-25% of partners are women. Law schools and law firms no longer make a concerted effort to recruit women, they just happen to end up with roughly evenly distributed classes.

It's easy to say that women are just "less interested" in CS/Math, but that's a cop-out. One might point out that a job in a large law firm is often boring and exceedingly detail-oriented (it's kind of like debugging code actually). One might point out that such jobs are also guarded by an entrance examination that depends very heavily on formal logic, something women aren't stereotypical good at. Yet, law firms around the country are full of women.

The problem is not so much that there are not enough women in CS. It's that 40% of the kids who get SAT Math scores of 700+, and 30% who get a perfect 800, are girls, yet top CS programs, which presumably screen heavily for math aptitude, might have only 5-10% girls. Given that CS is such a great way to a solid middle class income, and so many girls clearly have the aptitude for it, I find it very difficult to chalk up their self-selection out of CS to merely "interest."

oob205• 14 years ago

I initially read this without looking at the date at the top (1997). Made me a little sad that I assumed the entire exchange happened recently. Not much has changed in the 15 years since.

orangethirty• 14 years ago

Good post. Today my niece and I are going to start hacking her first programs, a website and an arduino (turn on/off an LED). It helps not to treat girls as "girls" (in the traditional US media style), but as people. Makes a lot of difference. They struggle not because of their gender but due to the difficulty of the problems.

k2xl• 14 years ago

this reminds me of stephen wolfram's talk at TED recently http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OVlfAUPJg

karpathy• 14 years ago

I've experienced something similar from the other point of view. I was one of the 15 guys in class and sat next to the only girl in the class. I remember the teacher giving us exercises and I would type up the code in few minutes, while she would struggle for half hour. She kept telling me how much smarter I was and how she didn't get it, and I would help her through it.

What she never realized was that I've already implemented a 90% similar code twice in the last month in my spare time. Or that after she got off the school to hang out with her friends, I went to the library to do some reading, or write the next module of the awesome game I was developing.

What I'm trying to say is that in my experience the smarter ones is a lazy way of saying "the ones that had more interest and spent much more time on it already than you did". And of course, the argument isn't unique to girls and applies just as well to other guy friends. But in the end, in my experience it has always traced back to raw interest in the topic. So I've always said that girls are not different in any mystical raw Mathematical intelligence way, it's just that for some reason they tend to have less interest in these topics, on average. And why is that? Upbringing and early biases is my best guess - The mother who pulls away the rocket ship from a girls hands and puts in a Barbie is at fault. (But realistically, it is probably only one of the factors.) Worst of all, there is a positive feedback loop involved where if someone thinks they are not good at something, they will only become less and less interested.

davidbalbert• 14 years ago

I think you're largely correct, but you're probably underestimating how much societal pressure goes into making things this way. Parents taking away the rocket ship is just the tip of the iceberg. Not only are young girls pushed away from science and other subjects that are considered masculine, but they're also socialized to have a "broad range" of interests and not to obsess over any one thing, which is the exact trait that enabled me and many other programmers I know to get ahead in programming. I underestimated it too until I read Unlocking the Clubhouse (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8515...) a few months ago.

For problems this large and systemic, significant corrective action and positive reinforcement are required.

calibraxis• 14 years ago

Thank you! I'm getting the book now.

I was friends with one highschooler who constantly showed off his math knowledge. He much preferred to leave people (many of whom were poor) with the impression that he was superhuman, rather than proactively explaining that his father was a mathematician, his mother taught him at his Montessori grade school, and his family was very well-off...

I think a significant problem is the self-aggrandizing way males are socialized. Often to intimidate. This interacts badly with how females are pressured to defer and feel inferior.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

I had a somewhat similar experience. I took a CS class in high school and, having had something like a four-year head start, did pick the material up somewhat faster than other people.

The biggest difference I noted didn't have anything to do with what the other students did in their spare time. Rather, the major difference was that some students would immediately ask for help as soon as they ran into any sort of trouble where others would spend some time trying to overcome the problem themselves.

The latter approach is far more important than anything you do in the subject itself--it teaches you the skills you need to solve problems yourself. Forcing yourself to sift through documentation, try different approaches and just sit there staring at the screen and thinking prepares you for similar problems in the future where just asking for help only teaches you how to solve your immediate issue (at best).

This post is gender-agnostic because it applied to both boys and girls in my class. I'm sure there are plenty of gender-specific issues as well, but this was the single most important factor I saw in how well other students did.

TWAndrews• 14 years ago

I'm going to save this and show it to my daughter (2 1/2 now) when the time is right.

Girls Need Math

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