July 25, 2008 by Jerre Levy From Chicago Tribune
Multiple studies have shown that girls outperform boys in school courses, including math, and in math achievement tests that evaluate what has been learned. In contrast, there is a small average male superiority in mathematics aptitude tests, which assess mathematical abilities that go far beyond what is taught in school or college.
However, people with average mathematical ability do not become mathematicians or theoretical physicists, much less those who make the seminal contributions to their fields.
Variability in math aptitude is greater in males than females, which means more males at both the lower and upper ends of ability. Further, because average math aptitude is slightly higher in males than females, this pushes the more variable male bell curve upward compared to females, which increases the ratio of males to females at the upper end of the curve still more. By the time math aptitude reaches the top one out 10,000, there are 11 times as many males as females. Although more boys than girls choose to take the International Mathematics Olympiads for high school students (which means that girls are more highly selected among females for math ability than are boys among males), males greatly predominate among gold medalists. The same is true of the extremely difficult Putnam competition in mathematics for college students. There has never been a female winner of the Fields Medal, which is given only every four years, and is the Nobel Prize of mathematics.
Since there is no question to answer, I will give my opinion for this article.
I had always heard the differences between men and women. Let’s explain two famous examples. Always when we heard the word ballet come to our main a girl dancing. In those times, there are many men who dance ballet better than some girls. A final example is the case in cooking. In women there were always given better cooking because they had more skill, but now there are many chefs who cook very well; like, Ferran Adrià. I explained these two examples because I want to compare it with what the text says. I always heard that boys are better at math, but as the text says this is not true because there are girls that are better.
Reading this article it has been very interesting because in fifteen years of life, I haven’t heard anything about the differences of boys and girls in the world of mathematics. To finish I would like to add that I’m so impress to know that exist prizes of mathematics like the prizes that are given for films and actors.
During all my life, I have heard many things where women are better than man or where man are better than women, but I have never listened that Men are better in maths than women. In this society there are many people who thinks that women and men can’t do the same things, an important example that I have lived can be: I only have father, so many people has asked to me that if I have a person in my home who cook, who clean the house… I always answer why? and they always say ”because your father can’t do all this” Always that I heard this I think that this people is so stupid, I give this example only to demonstrate that people thinks things that are not true. I know that in the past there were many important mathematicians, and all were men , but this is because in those times women couldn’t study like men, women were always cleaning the house, with the children…
It’s possible that can be true that men are better at maths than girls, but I think that no, that all depends at the person , no if it’s a boy or a girl.
Clàudia Perona Garcia 🙂
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