Why aren't girls tops in math competitions?
Among Top Math Students, Why Does a Gender Gap Persist?
I don't even want to quote this one, because it felt so stupid to me.
This isn't about regular math in K-12, college, or whatever. It's about a specific set of high school math competitions (which I did back in the day, and did okay on them).
I've ranted about this before, and I found my rant from 2001:
I thought I'd post this little rant for posterity [posterity thanks me!]. I had fun with academic competitions when I was in high school, but my interest definitely faded over school. Truthfully, if I had not been given free pizza every year when we took the Putnam, I don't think I would've done it.
The questions were =boring= and had little to do with what I found interesting in math.
....
Yes, there were fewer girls in the math team and computer team in high school, but there were plenty of girls in the college bowl/knowledge master quiz teams. I knew plenty of girls in the upper-level math classes; but there were many guys as well as girls in these classes who were totally turned off by the competitions -- the attitudes of the people competing.
....
Even more so, as I got further along in math, I found the problems more and more boring, because I found the =real= interesting stuff was in research problems - I saw these competition puzzles as little mind-teasers, no more consequential than crossword puzzle championships (and, admit, they are little more than that.) The physics olympiad problems were, to me, boring beyond belief. I had more fun listening to the speakers talking about, and demonstrating, scanning tunneling microscopes and other ideas and equipment from modern physics. I had taken a course in astrophysics and a course in modern physics (baby quantum, I suppose) my senior year in high school, and their open questions were much more fascinating to me than figuring out some mechanics problem involving cleverness in making free-body diagrams or changes in variables. Past a certain point, the point at which one has obtained mastery of the mathematical tools of physics or math, these "cleverness exercises" are little more than intellectual masturbation. They make one's self feel good, if one can do them, but doesn't add to the knowledge of anybody else.
I did the academic competitions not only because I did well in them (I've competed in lots of things I totally suck at, but found fun, like rowing), but because they were fun. To reach top levels of math olympiad, etc., you have to practice solving those kinds of problems. I simply wasn't interested in doing the amount of work it took to get to that level, and preferred spending time reading about fractals, and other things like that. I preferred learning new math, not being "clever" about some very old math.
Back to my rant:
The last thing you want to do is to equate doing well in these competitions with some kind of necessary quality of being a mathematician, physicist, chemist, or whatever. People come to these fields from other directions than timed competitions over prescribed material. I don't think these competitions necessarily make students more interested in a field that they are already interested in; they might put some students off if they think to do well in these fields, they've got to be good at competitions.
While some top mathematicians and scientists did very well in these sorts of competitions, lots of them did not. This sort of math/science has very little to do with research or teaching. It has very little to do with STEM career success (indeed, I know some people who did extremely well in these competitions who went nowhere on that score.)
This isn't even an argument about gender. It's about not making kids feel they're shut out because they don't want to do an extremely artificial activity and that they don't find it fun. You can find these competitions fun, but not like the real business of using/developing math at work... and vice-versa.
I don't even want to quote this one, because it felt so stupid to me.
This isn't about regular math in K-12, college, or whatever. It's about a specific set of high school math competitions (which I did back in the day, and did okay on them).
I've ranted about this before, and I found my rant from 2001:
I thought I'd post this little rant for posterity [posterity thanks me!]. I had fun with academic competitions when I was in high school, but my interest definitely faded over school. Truthfully, if I had not been given free pizza every year when we took the Putnam, I don't think I would've done it.
The questions were =boring= and had little to do with what I found interesting in math.
....
Yes, there were fewer girls in the math team and computer team in high school, but there were plenty of girls in the college bowl/knowledge master quiz teams. I knew plenty of girls in the upper-level math classes; but there were many guys as well as girls in these classes who were totally turned off by the competitions -- the attitudes of the people competing.
....
Even more so, as I got further along in math, I found the problems more and more boring, because I found the =real= interesting stuff was in research problems - I saw these competition puzzles as little mind-teasers, no more consequential than crossword puzzle championships (and, admit, they are little more than that.) The physics olympiad problems were, to me, boring beyond belief. I had more fun listening to the speakers talking about, and demonstrating, scanning tunneling microscopes and other ideas and equipment from modern physics. I had taken a course in astrophysics and a course in modern physics (baby quantum, I suppose) my senior year in high school, and their open questions were much more fascinating to me than figuring out some mechanics problem involving cleverness in making free-body diagrams or changes in variables. Past a certain point, the point at which one has obtained mastery of the mathematical tools of physics or math, these "cleverness exercises" are little more than intellectual masturbation. They make one's self feel good, if one can do them, but doesn't add to the knowledge of anybody else.
I did the academic competitions not only because I did well in them (I've competed in lots of things I totally suck at, but found fun, like rowing), but because they were fun. To reach top levels of math olympiad, etc., you have to practice solving those kinds of problems. I simply wasn't interested in doing the amount of work it took to get to that level, and preferred spending time reading about fractals, and other things like that. I preferred learning new math, not being "clever" about some very old math.
Back to my rant:
The last thing you want to do is to equate doing well in these competitions with some kind of necessary quality of being a mathematician, physicist, chemist, or whatever. People come to these fields from other directions than timed competitions over prescribed material. I don't think these competitions necessarily make students more interested in a field that they are already interested in; they might put some students off if they think to do well in these fields, they've got to be good at competitions.
While some top mathematicians and scientists did very well in these sorts of competitions, lots of them did not. This sort of math/science has very little to do with research or teaching. It has very little to do with STEM career success (indeed, I know some people who did extremely well in these competitions who went nowhere on that score.)
This isn't even an argument about gender. It's about not making kids feel they're shut out because they don't want to do an extremely artificial activity and that they don't find it fun. You can find these competitions fun, but not like the real business of using/developing math at work... and vice-versa.