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Comment by adbge | Hacker News Reader

I think it's generally accepted that if you take a sampling of average men and average women, they will both perform at similar levels in regards to mathematics.

However, I believe the differences between men and women in mathematical thinking, should they exist, will only be apparent when it comes to dealing with the levels of math that deal with abstractions upon abstractions and so on.

In my personal experience, I've noticed that 90%+ of (American) women are just not interested in formal systems, be it predicate logic, computer science, pure mathematics, etc. I'm inclined to believe women are just wired to prefer more practical disciplines, but I think a compelling argument can be made for either view. I suspect the answer probably lies somewhere in between.

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I think it's quite possible there are imbalances in the tails of distributions, but it still means that the middle could plausibly be more balanced. I'd personally not worry that much about gender balance among Fields Medal winners, and more about gender balance among engineering graduates from the local Big State U. The men there are probably above average in math ability, but few are world-class mathematicians; most are probably in something like the 70th-90th percentiles for math ability, a region which doesn't seem (from what data is available) to have large inherent gender imbalances.

I agree with the grandparent post, because I think it's misleading to lump all of mathematics together. I'm very bad at mental calculations and basic arithmetic, and I couldn't memorize integration formulas if my life depended on it, so I've never had very high grades in math, at least until I hit university. Yet I have a relatively easy time picking up the theory behind SAT solvers, Fourier transforms, or solving complex integrals.

I think some people are better at concrete things like geometry or arithmetic, some people are better at logic, some people are good with operators and algebra... but one does not imply the others, and engineers may have an above-average capability for abstraction or logic that does not translate to much higher results in a high-school level exam.

The study here is said to have studied people "from grade school to college and beyond", so I suspect the "math ability" they tested really has little to do with the math ability required for science and engineering.

Here's another (slightly caustic) blog post which appears to be about the same study: http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-m...

It is enough to read a brief review in Science to see that the headlines don't follow from the paper at all. The review explains the main reason of the results: they have detected no signal because the tests were too simple. They didn't really test "g" or the ability to think mathematically but rather attainment.

More anecdotal evidence!

Last night, I jokingly asked my SO what 30/4 was. They said 8.25. Seriously. And they're an academic that does math for a living.

I never got past single variable calculus, but I can do most 2 digit math in my head, accurately.

I study maths and if you asked me what 30/4 was, I'd respond, "it is 30/4, obviously".

Math is not about calculating. I rarely perform calculations on numbers greater than 20, and I do not even remember when was the last time I performed a long division. What is this "2 digit math" you are talking about?

I'm sorry, I should have typed "thirty divided by four," which is what I actually said, instead of 30/4, but I was lazy. And yes, math is absolutely not about calculating. I was supporting the previous poster's point that they suck at calculating, and that math and calculating are very different things. I hate math. I am completely comfortable with calculating. WTF with the downvotes.

In many cases, the choices are made at a very young age or by other people (relatives) and this leads to stereotypes playing a huge role.

At Columbia there are numerous women in the mathematics department. They do not seem to be doing any worse than their male peers at handling complex work. I'm inclined to say that women probably aren't interested in formal systems in exactly the same way as men, but that lack of interest doesn't somehow mean they can't handle it or find their own way to it.

I'm inclined to believe women aren't naturally drawn to fields that favor autistic personality characteristics.

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