Trying to Figure Out Why Math Is So Hard for Some
Theories Abound: Genetics, Gender, How It's Taught

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A13

Three little words -- "math is hard" -- uttered a decade ago by Teen
Talk Barbie drew enough protests of sexism that its maker, Mattel Inc.,
pulled the doll from stores.

But researchers today say Barbie wasn't all wrong: Math is hard for many
-- male and female, children and adults. And while a "math gene" has not
been discovered, experts say that early school-age boys and girls tend
to approach the subject differently, influenced by biological,
environmental and educational factors.
--
Frank Caggiano                          "The best education for the best
caggi...@crystal-objects.com             is the best education for all."
http://www.crystal-objects.com/                 Robert M. Hutchins

I have been thinking about this a lot recently and wanted to throw
out a few random comments, mostly based on gender differentiation.

---- BERC group study
Last year I attended an ASME session where we worked on a lobbying
effort for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
Education legislation.  Dr. Baker spoke on the Math Helper Corp,
a group mostly from Seattle Pacific University School of Education
who helped elementry and middle schools improve their WASL score
(Washington Assessment of Student Learning).  Most of the effort
was on improving the teacher's technique of math instruction.

Their results are impressive, one vote for how it's taught.

http://www.asme.org/gric/StateActionPrg/WA2003/Duane%20Baker%20presen...
http://www.bercgroup.com/document/2003%20MHC%20Final%20Report.pdf

---- Sixth grade flip
At NECC this summer Rhonda Christensen from the University of North
Texas presented a research paper _Girls and Computers:_ .  She
found that 4th and 5th grade girls enjoy computers (and math) more
than the boys but in the sixth grade and beyond the statistics flipped.
This is the age of puberty for many girls.

One vote for Gender.

---- In Code: a Young Woman's Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery
This is an excellent book written by a 16 year old girl.  It has the
best explanation of the RSA algorithm I have ever seen.  She won
Ireland's Young Scientist award in 1999.

Of course her father is a Math instructor at Cork Institute of
Technology.  Their family had a chauk board in the kitchen where her
father would post math and logic problems for his kids to solve.
Also in Ireland students can take a transition year before their
last two years of high school.  They get to study noncore subjects
like art, drama, they do collaborative projects and they get two weeks
of work experience.  And then there is Irish saying, Mol an oige agus
tiocfaidh si, which roughly means "Praise youth and it will flourish".

One vote for environment.

---- Tools vs Toys
You often hear, "Why do I need to learn *this*, I'll never use *this*  
after I'm out of school" (where *this* is some abstract math concept).
A female educator told me that the reason that girls didn't return
to my programming club is because I told them that we were going to
learn to program games.  Boys see technology as toys and girls see it
as tools.  "It's not about the sewing machine, it's about the cloths
I'm going to make with it".  Is math taught in as an abstract concept
or a powerful tool for solving real problems?

---- Personal experience
My daughter is a high school freshman.  She claims to hate math even
though she is very good at it.  I explained the concept of a truss
bridge and how it carries the bending moment, then she built a toothpick
bridge with the highest strength to weight ratio of any bridge in her
science class.  She doesn't want to learn programming but she makes
web pages for herself and friends that she coded in html.

So thats the random comments I wanted to share.

Thanks,
Jeff Sandys