In my article, a group studied about 500 students by running them through a ridiculous gaunlet of various tests, 6 different math tests, and 2 verbal/logic tests. The results showed that in most canses there was essentially no difference between boys and girls. The big differences were in mental math and arithmetic problems, where boys outperformed the girls. Basically girls can recognize concepts better, but boys can do the actual problems better.
In my experience, I can see where these ideas would come from. I remember a lot of times in school, being able to work out these giant, ridiculous calculus problems, but when someone else asks me how I did it, I drew a blank. I just knew that it was the answer. Also I noticed some difference in my academic team when it came to math. Through my 4 years we had five people that were really good at math, Jason, Greg, Chris, me, and Jared. What's in common with those? They are all males. I think the reasoning behind that though is later in the article how boys seem to be quicker at doing math, which in academic team, you have to be able to do semi-complicated calculus problems in usually 3-5 seconds, if youre lucky you may get 10.
This also is shown in a way by Gladwell. He goes into detail about a woman trying to recall her middle school algebra, and can't recall what the slope of a vertical line is. She was able to figure it out, it just took her a little while to go through the thought process. So she had the skills to do the problem, just she needed to work through it a little slower. If you were to look at it from Dweck's mindset point of view, there was very little difference between boys and girls, it all depended on how much you were motivated to finish the problem or succeed in class.
Essentially, there may be a small difference, but I don't think its anything too huge. Its more about applying the information than knowing it. Girls seem to understand better, but boys seem to do better. Its basically a gender trade-off of understanding for computation.
I can understand where you're coming from for this post. I have always been good at math throughout school, but when it comes to figuring out complicated problems fast, I am not as good. I like to have time to work out the problem and go through all the steps. Also, when I was on a math team in middle school, the top three members were girls, but when it came to the speed round, a boy would usually win. So I agree with you're conclusion about boys and girls to an extent, but I don't think boys do better, they just don't need to go through all the steps in order to figure the hard problems out. I'm sure this is not right in some circumstances, but it is just what I have personally observed.
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job at bringing up points Dweck and Gladwell both made. Like Kelsi, I'm good at math, but I don't necessarily solve the problems quickly, so I guess Kelsi and I are both examples that support the results of that study.
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