Calculus at the heart of the STEM gender gap, study suggests | Hacker News Reader

Calculus at the heart of the STEM gender gap, study suggests

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If we care so much about the STEM gender gap, why not other majors as well?

http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

1) Health Professions (85% women): nursing assistant, veterinary assistant, dental assistant, etc.

2) Public Administration (82% women): social work, public policy, etc.

3) Education (79% women): pre-K, K-12, higher education, etc.

4) Psychology (77% women): cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, etc.

5) a majority of Biology degrees in 2012 (58%) were earned by women

These majors are dominated by women, many paying more than some of the other STEM majors. So why aren't we changing these as well to be more accommodating towards men?

More women than men graduate from college on average:

http://fortune.com/2013/03/27/boys-vs-girls-whats-behind-the...

Shouldn't we be figuring how how to change this to make it more equal?

My problem with all of these articles and the entire movement is that the goal isn't to make things equal, it's a power-grab to allow one group to completely dominate the other.

I'm waiting for someone to suggest we either get rid of Calculus as a requirement altogether or reduce it's difficulty to make it more 'fair'. This is exactly what has started happening in our military.

This is not uncommon in other aspects of the society as well. Harvard is facing a lawsuit that the school’s admissions policy discriminates against Asian Americans.

"the suit notes the findings of a study of seven top public and private colleges: “Asian Americans needed SAT scores that were about 140 points higher than white students. . . . [I]f a white student needed a 1320 SAT score to be admitted to one of these schools, an Asian American needed a 1460 SAT score to be admitted.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-misleading-lawsu...

We don't care much about it because it's not politically incorrect for men to acknowledge that they're just not as into these things as women.

I think there are two related problems with your argument. The first is that everybody has to major in something, so a preponderance of men in one group of majors has to be balanced by a preponderance of women in another group. The statistics are two sides of the same coin.

Second, an unspoken perception is that there is a hierarchy of majors with STEM at one end, and well, something else at the other end. Some majors have weeder courses, others don't. Some majors have GPA requirements for entry, others don't. Nobody drops out of <low tier major> because it's too hard, and majors in chemical engineering instead.

I saw this weeding happen when I taught a freshman algebra course at a big ten university. There were kids who, thanks to their performance in my course, weeded themselves out of their chosen majors. Not every student is in their first choice of major, for a variety of reasons.

> The findings suggest that a major factor in women’s decisions to leave STEM paths after Calculus I have nothing to do with ability, but confidence in their ability. (Though this particular study did not examine students’ grades in the class, a 2015 paper about college math concluded that women outperform men in Calc I.)

I don't understand. They have no confidence, yet they outperform the men? So, they take the class, do well, then decide it was a failure? That doesn't make sense.

Another issue is that they're looking at Calc I in freshman year of college. Many of the top-performing STEM students probably took AP Calculus in high school and tested out of Calc I. What does the gender breakdown look like there?

It makes sense to me, based on my own limited personal experience as a college prof (teaching CS). Particularly for our intro classes, it's fairly common for a male student to struggle all semester and scrape by with a D-, then without hesitation declare his intention to be a CS major. At the same time, a female will get a B or A- and walk away apparently thinking "I guess I'm just not good at this and CS just isn't for me."

This is all just my impression, of course, from a small sample size. Still, we've had very good results improving our male/female ratio just by have a short 1-minute chat with each student that gets above a B, praising their work and encouraging them to consider CS as a major.

Does that male student actually become a STEM practitioner, or do they just flunk out at a later date than the female? It's unclear that female behavior here is what needs to be fixed. Perhaps men should drop out more.

Another possibility is that both behaviors are correct responses to different incentives. Males generally have far lower social value than females, so for the male it might be STEM or bust. In contrast, the female has options like moving into a non-competitive profession and then get married to an engineer/lawyer/doctor/banker. So for the female, the marginal value of STEM over her next best choice might be a lot lower than the male.

> Males generally have far lower social value than females

Probably because men are more willing to marry down socioeconomically, although this is changing and may move further in the direction of equality in the future.

This is not generally what has happened so far - so far women's rise has driven assortative mating rather than women marrying down.

I think this is (in the long haul) a good thing, provided we can encourage high intellect couples to reproduce. It'll generate a high IQ upper caste who will be natural leaders for society.

Men have become more socioeconomically selective, at least to a greater extent than women have become less selective. I think you and I are in agreement there.

100% agree that men should also probably drop out more. I did, but many others continued, only becoming disillusioned, frustrated and ending up in completely non-STEM fields in large numbers. That being said, addressing barriers to career choice earlier in life is important so people can start becoming passionate before the opportunity to explore them (at traditional educational stages) passes them by.

That one rang a little too close to home. The reason I chose math was it was the hard subject that I could reliably overcome. Meaning, while I still had a hard time with concepts, I could eventually get there. I liked the challenge even if it hurt my GPA at times. Meanwhile I overheard many engineers group working on homework (copying one another) to ensure their GPAs were never in question.

Some of this is in the eye of the beholder. I've seen people working 10+ hours in a class and still end up with an A, but found the process mentally exhausting. Others might barely work at it and end up with an A-, and think that it was pretty easy.

At least in my experience as a math major undergraduate, calculus was a class that introduces students to rigorous proofs and new lines of thinking, but in examination seldom tests students on proof-ability. Later classes such as Real/Complex Analysis are where you are expected to produce proofs during examinations. So I would not be surprised if some people 'saw the writing on the wall' in that they could solve problems on examinations but were lost on the theoretical content.

Oddly enough, (also anecdotal) I'll mention that STEM majors in the hard sciences and mathematics seemed far less obsessed about GPA than many other majors. So a Bio major (especially if they were pre-med), for instance, would be much more stressed about upcoming examinations than the math or physics folks.

From what I've seen, the GPA obsession tends to be common to all students trying for some sort of grad/med/law school, and therefore not tied to major. Non-grad-school bound students, by contrast, are typically much more relaxed.

GPA matters a lot in some industries—plenty of finance firms won't look at you if you are below their treshold. We're spoiled in that someone with a 2.8 Comp Sci GPA can still get a dev job.

That said, GPA obsession is a thing in high school, regardless of future plans, so it carries to college even in majors/paths where it doesn't matter.

I was also under the impression that kids who plan out STEM majors typically bypass single variable (Calc I) and other freshman intro programs through advanced placement. https://www.cmu.edu/mcs/prospective/ap.html as an example

It's not measuring performance at calculus. It's measuring confidence in performance at calculus. This is where sexism and all those icky social things come into play. Most women have spent their lives up to that point hearing subtle and not-subtle variations of "girls can't math". So even if they're good at it, they tend to believe they aren't.

Meanwhile, college-age men tend to be brimming with confidence, walking examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Even if they're not good at calculus, they often think they are. This is partly a result of a society that says, directly and indirectly, that people like them are natural rulers.

That's how sexism works, in both directions.

Not sure which is bigger effect here - cultural or physiological. It just can have something to do with testosterone which male students have higher levels than female. Here is an example of article describing effect of testosterone on confidence: http://www.everydayhealth.com/low-testosterone/how-low-testo...

Girls get better grades but don't do as well on tests. It's easy to see where the confidence gap comes from.

> the notoriously difficult college math class, Calculus I

Are college courses in the United States standardised? Does every college have a course they call Calculus I and have the same content and level of difficulty?

Calculus seems to be a really big deal in the US education system. In the UK we learn about differentiation and integration in what you would call highschool as just another topic among many, and I don't remember it being introduced with the branding or fanfare that US calculus courses seem to have. Maybe treating it a no big deal is helpful to avoid the barrier that it apparently creates.

That's because our marketing department in the UK isn't as awesome as the ones they have in the States... have you not noticed that _everything_ has far more fanfare in the States than anywhere else on earth? Everything is so dramatic... including the "notoriously difficult" calculus. It's just their way of patronizing you with "don't worry if you don't understand, it's notoriously difficult" or put you on a pedestal "wow, you must be a wizard to understand that, it's notoriously difficult."

It's just like everything else in the visible universe: A bunch of simple fundamentals put together to make something complicated, wrapped up in a bunch of jargon making it look scarier than it is, like the monster under your bed that only exists in your head.

>>Everything is so dramatic...

It's true, we Americans love the spectacular. Landing on the moon? Spectacular! The Super Bowl? Spectacular! Bombs over Baghdad? Spectacular!

I'm not sure why, but we can always blame Los Angeles.

Who mostly just has spectacular traffic jams... which I think we can all agree are spectacular. Widest highways on the planet and you use them as a parking lot... you're a weird bunch :P

American here. I took Calculus I in both highschool and college. I thought it was easy in highschool. The rigor of the college course was incomparable. Mostly because the way they asked the questions on the exams were far more demanding.

That's because in high school you're not really given the whole picture of how to apply your knowledge and you don't have the life experience yet to understand how to use it usefully so while you understand the math in a limited fashion, you don't really get it. By the time you're in College, you're expected to really get it by the time you sit down in an exam and can apply it to the real world. So the exam questions are designed to test if you really do get it or if you're just going through the motions of what you were taught.

Agreed, Calculus I in university is more demanding. I had the fortune of using the same text in high school as in university. However, the difference between the classes was pace. In high school we had class every day and took a week to work through a chapter. In university we had class three times a week and went through a chapter each class. All told it took one semester (15 weeks) at university to cover what took an entire school year (30 weeks) in high school.

College courses aren't standardized, but calculus is often a weeder class and far more difficult than previous classes.

This is often unintentional. The real problems are that kids are being passed through high school without learning math and that the other college classes are far too easy and lack any rigor. Therefore a class that requires memorization/understanding of concepts and isn't open book is considered incredibly difficult.

If english/history/science general education classes weren't such jokes then calculus wouldn't be considered a bottleneck.

The first year or two of math (and physics, and to some degree, CS) are roughly standardized. There are variations, not only across colleges, but within the same college (honors vs. non-honors, calculus for business, calculus for pre-meds who won't take any more math), and among professors teaching different sections of the same class even. But to a first order of magnitude...roughly the same stuff.

Many American students have often taken a year or so of calculus (sometimes more) before starting. But these are so-called "Advanced Placement" (or AP) classes which are considered "college-level" (even though at top colleges, this is basically a requirement to get in). At less competitive/less technically focused colleges/programs however, most students may not have taken it.

You can think of AP as an equivalent of A-levels in the UK. I'm not sure if calculus concepts are A-level or not? But either way, from what I know of UK education, you can get by not taking mathematics A-level...it's the same for AP mathematics here.

Calc 1 in college is a common weed-out class.

This. I took Calc 1 twice. First time was during the day in a big auditorium style classroom. The prof had a pompous attitude, like he didn't even want to be there. I dropped the class mid-term. I re-took it in the evening. Smaller class size, mostly "non-traditional" students. Prof was awesome. Frequently stopped the lesson to re-explain things and made sure everyone was understanding, stayed after class to help students. Because of that class I actually "got" calculus.

Yes, and I believe many colleges make it intentionally difficult. My Calc I class was given by an instructor with a heavy Asian accent. I had to struggle to understand every other word.

My Chemistry for Engineers class was in a large classroom that was under construction.

Needless to say, I went for MIS instead of CS/EE. I ended up taking many CS classes, so it worked out well.

On a side note, teaching is really difficult. Knowledge of the subject is the minor skill. My parents were teachers and I considered it in college but didn't have the patience.

Weed-out is a really bad way to look at teaching. It puts people in the mind set looking for excuses to get people to fail. The attitude should be teach-in.

If someone passes your entrance tests then in most cases if they fail either you failed to develop the ability that you decided they had, or your entrance test was wrong.

The UK military realised this a while ago and describing any activity as being 'weed-out' is a big no-no.

They are only informally standardized, but are usually quite consistent between colleges/universities. You have single-variable differentiation, integration, and applications. Possibly some of the easier differential equations. The high school advanced placement (AP) curriculum usually goes a bit further but in a less rigorous manner.

After going through 7 or 8 advanced level math courses in college, I noticed there was a dissociation of interests between the teachers and many of their students (90% STEM).

Mathematicians might be interested in math because they enjoy math purely for what it is: abstract and theoretical. However, many scientists and engineers just what to know where what they're learning might be useful or applied somewhere in their career.

Even if one never uses it directly in their jobs, it's at least nice to know where it actually has an application so it's in the back of your head. I ended up having to look much of that up on my own, but after I did, I had way more interest in calculus and linear algebra than I did beforehand.

I think you are on to something. I remember struggling in my math classes (Calculus 2 (Integral), Calculus 3 (Multivariable), and Differential Equations), but doing very well in the major courses that used the same math (Networks, Linear Systems, Electromagnetics, etc.). For me, presenting the math in the context of a concrete application made understanding the principles much easier.

> but doing very well in the major courses that used the same math

My school's EE department offered a few math classes (presumably because the EE professors were exasperated with the low level of understanding students were showing with important math concepts). The math classes I took from my Electrical Engineering professors were infinitely more valuable and interesting to me than the equivalent math classes I took from the Math department.

In my EE department math classes, I was encouraged to use any tools at my disposal to solve the problems (TI-89, Wolfram Alpha, Matlab, etc.), and the problems were always very real, so I knew exactly why I was learning what I was learning and how it applied to solving real problems.

In my Math department classes, we had to solve everything by hand, the professors were overly concerned with semantics, and the problems were often very abstract and hard to wrap your mind around.

Yeah, we weren't allowed to use graphing calculators in university Math Department courses either. However, Physics and Computer Science & Engineering courses it was okay to use them.

It was sort of strange though, you could take the same math courses at the local community college that allowed you to use a graphing calculator and transfer them to the university without an issue. I took a few there and enjoyed the classes much more, since they were taught by experienced teachers and not TAs.

To be fair math classes from MATH departments usually have only simple numeric calculations involved, the answer is usually small number fractions combined with pi/e/squareroot of 2 (actually half of time is just 0 or 1). The goal is to force you use identities and manipulate algebraic expressions instead of typing a long long formula into the calculator.

That is more representative of what I got in my engineering classes. The math classes used problems where it was easy to make non-obvious errors.

When I first took linear algebra, the class bored me to tears. It was presented in a dry, unimaginative way. I got an A, but basically rote-memorized everything and then promptly forgot it after the final exam.

Later on, when I started learning quantum mechanics, optimization, and machine learning, linear algebra suddenly became fascinating, and I signed up for a bunch of courses in it. The abstraction isn't what made me dislike the field the first time around; it was the unenthusiastic manner in which it was taught (largely by TAs).

The sad thing is there are already many well-researched strategies for improving the success of all students in calculus and significantly reducing any gaps between student groups.

Things like:

* Teaching the math in context instead of abstractly. See https://engineering-computer-science.wright.edu/research/eng...

* Give students opportunities to learn from one another in groups, using techniques like peer instruction, peer-assisted reflection, peer-led team learning, supplemental instruction, etc. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40753-015-0005-y

* Use adaptive learning tools that help personalize the learning, give students extensive practice, and let them go at their own pace. See ALEKS or MyMathLab, for example.

* Teach students how to learn, how to study, how to manage their time, etc. See for example this class https://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/lrngclas.htm or this lesson https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/Titles/TeachStudentsHow...

* Certified training for tutors, peer mentors, teaching assistants, and the like http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/learning_assistants/inde... http://www.cirtl.net/

* Train the faculty on how to teach better with active learning instead of just lecturing http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/lectures-arent-just-b...

There was a national study even of what the best calculus programs do: https://launchings.blogspot.com/2014/01/maa-calculus-study-s...

Most top US schools don't consider the quality of instruction as a professor's primary objective.

The study showed that the problem is not in performance, but in confidence levels. So the strategies that you mentioned won't solve the problem.

Teaching strategies and teachers/tutors have an effect on student confidence, motivation, self-efficacy, attitudes, and performance.

The first link (teaching math in the context of engineering) increases the confidence of female students (along with many other benefits): https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/tides/Klingbe...

Peer instruction narrows the gender gap http://mazur.harvard.edu/research/detailspage.php?rowid=9

Inquiry based learning in math helps female students http://www.colorado.edu/eer/research/steminquiry.html

and so on

confidence (and related concepts like self-efficacy and sense of belonging) can be taught directly or positively influenced indirectly. See for example interventions that teach 'growth mindset' in math: http://www.aauw.org/2011/05/26/growth-mindsets-and-stem/

This video explains growth mindset the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc

And Jo Boaler has written a great deal on how growth mindset can improve girls' performance in math classes: http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/boaler-math-min...

This study shows that a major factor is confidence rather than performance. Since levels of testosterone are related to confidence it might be hard to resolve this issue.

the study: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna...

>>“When women are leaving, it is because they don’t think they can do it – not because they can’t do it,” said study co-author Bailey Fosdick in a press release.

Very aptly put. It reminded me a quote by Henry Ford: "If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right."

We must encourage the women (and also the men) entering STEM courses to persist even in case of initial difficulties.

Another point, which is not discussed in the article but is somewhat relevant in this discussion (although not directly addressing the gender gap, per se) is: the US school level math has become almost a joke, because it's been watered down so much in the names of various reforms and various (perceived) societal needs and thus it instills false and undue confidence amongst many university entering students. [1,2]

Such students when encounter a subject like Calculus-I in its full glory and depth, they naturally get frightened. Even if they somehow get past the Calc-I hurdle (e.g. after remedial coaching etc), they are not in a position to handle the cognitive load needed to sail through the entire STEM courses.

[1] http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematically_Correct

You know what's interesting? Our grade school math sucks and a ton of people get scared of college math... yet we have some of the top math universities and both graduate top scientists/engineers and attract foreign talent. I wonder how many more good mathematicians we'd have if we taught it well.

>>I wonder how many more good mathematicians we'd have if we taught it well.

Yes, but teaching is just one aspect, what matters for the school going children more though is the overall cultural and societal stance/attitude about math. Unfortunately, it seems that the US society in general avoids/abhors/hates/ignores/undermines/fears math mostly and this attitude gets inculcated in the children too. So such children lack motivation to put in the required amount of efforts to learn math.

It's great that despite all this US is doing well at university level math. Also, the US stood first in IMO 2016, that is also great. [1]

[1] https://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx

Purely anecdotical, but most of the women with a STEM education or interest I've heard from had a strong visceral dislike for calculus and strong attraction towards algebra.

And not in the US. And also including mathematics graduates. "I'd take any abstract algebra problem/work anytime, just keep differential equations of all kinds away from me" was smth I've heard once if memory serves well...

And at at least in European countries, high school math puts strong focus on calculus because of the obvious applications in physics. If doing stuff with groupoids and matrices is you kick, you could just as well get labeled "not a math person" if you don't get integrals and derivatives well enough...

(Me personally, I'm a male with strong calculus intuition - "checking my privilege" here to be PC :) )

The upsetting thing about DiffEq is that the way it is taught has nothing to do with the way it is practiced or used, either by mathematicians or engineers. Separable equations, for example, are the highest order of bullshit. Almost no interesting problems are separable. (Like, there are infinitely more inseparable than separable ones.)

The track that should really take over should be one where the student develops the intuition about what related rates of change mean, and then abandon the chicanery of these special-case tricks in favor of the numerical solution of DiffEqs and the evaluation of the quality of the solutions.

I always found differential equations required a few, key insights and then a lot of grunt work. Pages and pages of algebra. You have to be sure you're right The whole time or it all comes apart.

But the hard part of calc 1 (for me at least) wasn't the calculus; the concepts are simple. The hard part was figuring out how to apply those concepts to the problem at hand and then grinding through the pages of algebra to get the result.

So, it seems to me that someone with an affinity toward algebra would do just fine.

There's a significant portion of tech jobs that don't require degrees, yet these jobs aren't being filled by women either. I would have dropped CS immediately if it required difficult math, as even simple math problems can take me a considerable amount of time to finish. But i've worked in tech my whole life.

I guess my question is, do we really believe difficult college courses are the main thing supporting a STEM/tech gender gap, when many tech jobs don't even require college?

Most tech jobs requires college degrees though. Maybe in SF and NYC and HN we talk about how they're not relevant but out in the real world, outside of big cities I always see "B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent".

And most tech job requirements are flexible. It says "or equivalent"... that means equivalent experience, or skill. If you don't have a degree, or even experience, you can still demonstrate your skill, and they may take you at less pay or on a probationary period, or as an intern-to-hire.

The biggest problem tech companies have with hiring is that most people applying are simply bad at the job. They really could not care less if you graduated, they just need a competent worker. If anything, it might be the opposite of how you describe: big cities have a larger pool of experienced graduates from which to pick, and smaller cities have to take what they can get.

My college is weird and bad in that it requires no math aside from basic discrete math (as in, sets and truth tables). The gender gap is inexistent until late sophomore year when we start learning more advanced CS concept that require math.

It's weird seeing 30-50% women become 10-20% in the course of a semester.

It's also a really bad thing that this happens in late sophomore year - you've wasted 2 years of someone's time on a trajectory they aren't suited for .

That's why traditionally colleges start with weedout courses. If someone isn't cut out for STEM (and in my experience teaching, some folks just aren't), better to find that out in semester 1 so they don't waste several more semesters doing the wrong thing.

perhaps researchers need to look into differences in average lifestyle. there are plenty of male students who don't do very much except study at that age. they are not very valuable at all. on the other hand, girls they get asked for all kinds of things, especially if they are in classes where they are already in the minority. I'd say it's pretty hard to combine calculus with a 'spare' time job promoting a good cause and a column in a magazine and sitting on the board of a student's association somewhere.

The actual title of the article is "This Popular Math Class Is At The Heart Of The STEM Gender Gap, Study Suggests" which such transparent clickbait that I refuse to believe the article could possibly be worth my time reading it, despite the fact that the subject could actually be interesting and important.

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