Yeah,behold my power of hardass dickery!
No, seriously.Hyde and Mertz have written a paper-and oh boy,is it bullshit.
Hyde and colleagues reported a 1990 meta-analysis on gender differences in mathematics performance involving 100 studies representing the testing of >3 million individuals, most from the U.S. but some from other nations such as Australia and Canada (8). Overall, they found d = −0.05 for samples of the general population, an effect so small as to be considered no gender difference.
Alright,why is this B.S?Because this data is very conflicting with most other major data.
ACT math portion:0.13-0.16 SD(yeah,quite small,but still significant)
PISA 2006:0.15 SD(abt 0.12 SD in OECD countries)
Besides which,math gaps first bloom in puberty,and...
The results indicated a slight female advantage in computation in elementary and middle school, and no difference in high school. There were no gender differences in understanding of concepts at any age. Complex problem solving displayed no gender difference in elementary school and middle school, but a gender difference favoring males emerged in high school, with d = 0.29. This latter finding is of concern because complex problem solving is an essential skill for success in life and in STEM careers.
Guess what,Hyde?You just hit the jackpot.Male advantage in problem solving blooms in puberty when they get a boost of the big T.And guess what?Computation is NOT the most important criterion for being a harvard faculty,problem solving is.Now,why don't you say,"Yes,math is a man's game and men are better at problem solving?"It hurts your agenda maybe?
These findings were largely replicated in a 1995 meta-analysis using large datasets based on the testing of excellent probability samples of U.S. adolescents (9). For high school students, d values ranged between 0.03 and 0.26 for mathematics performance, that is, boys performed better than girls by a small amount.
Alright,move on,Hyde.You are disproving your own thesis with data like this,y'know?
Hyde then moves onto describing how her 2008 paper found no gender gaps in math thanks to more girls taking math courses.That "paper" has already been debunked by Mr. Motl here.
Now let's move on to Hyde's paper.
Averaged across these 10 states, gender differences in performance were close to zero in all grades, including high school, with d values ranging between −0.02 and 0.06
However, coding of the test items on these examinations for cognitive level indicated that none of them tapped complex problem solving at most grade levels for most states (13). Thus, it was impossible with these NCLB datasets to investigate whether a gender gap existed in complex problem solving. Therefore, the researchers also examined data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federally managed program that tests a random sample of U.S. students each year (14). Items from 12th grade data categorized by NAEP as hard and by the researchers as requiring complex problem solving were analyzed for gender differences; effect sizes were found to average d = 0.07
As Hyde herself states,these tests suffered from a lack of hard questions.So she says that in so called hard questions,the gender gap was trivial.But the question is,were they really hard?NEVER!Take this as an example:
1. The lowest point of the St. Lawrence River is 294 feet below sea level. The top of Mt. Jacques Cartier is 1,277 feet above sea level. How many feet higher is the top of Mt. Jacques Cartier than the lowest point of the St. Lawrence River? Show your work.
From here.
Most sane people would agree harvard faculty,hell,average freshmen do not solve this type of easy questions.And for 8th graders?!!For goodness sake...I am in that grade right now....so there's no question of me being too high above the level being tested...
The other questions are no better.I finished each within 30 seconds.Any student in my class,save perhaps that dumbass Arko,could have done it.THESE.ARE.NOT.HARD.
These findings provide further evidence that U.S. girls have now reached parity with boys, even in high school, and even for measures requiring complex problem solving.
If you arbitrarily and idiosyncratically qualify simple problems as hard.I shudder to think what "simple" problems must be like.Why has american education fallen so much?
Some have argued that the absence of gender differences in mathematics performance in the general population is irrelevant to the advancement of STEM fields; rather, researchers should focus on the mathematically talented, a topic discussed below. However, Weinberger found that <1/3>650 (15). Thus, progress in STEM fields is fueled, not only by the highly talented, but also by the millions of laboratory technicians and other bachelors- and masters-level scientists whose mathematics skills might place them below the 75th percentile, but whose contributions are still essential.
I will bet that those who are thus qualified as Hyde's "also-ran" group will not make an Einsteinian or Newtonian revolution,or be a harvard faculty.The highly talented are the spearheaders,the movers,the shakers."Drudge" has always been a very irrelevant profession to the world's science pantheon.
Moreover, numeracy is important for everyone, with mathematical competency being crucial to anyone shopping for a home mortgage, investing their savings for retirement, or deciding among several treatment options for a serious medical ailment. The recent example of consumers' failure to comprehend adjustable-rate mortgages is a sobering case in point. Mathematical skills are essential, not only for accountants, economists, and physicists, but also for teachers, nurses, politicians, and the lay public in general.
The first sensible thing Hyde says.
Stay tuned for part 2-wherein the arrogant prodigy uses his mighty dick to probe Hyde's answer to the million-dollar question:
Do Gender Differences Exist Among the Mathematically Talented?