Are boys naturally better at math?

[Puppycow]

The evidence* seems to indicate that they are better (on average of course; some girls are very good and some boys not so good). The question is, is it just natural or is it because girls are "discouraged" by society or something like that? Natural aptitude seems like the simplest explanation to me.

* Evidence 1 and Evidence 2.

I just don't see much compelling evidence for social factors being the main cause of this disparity. Some people claim that math is stigmatized as unfeminine. It's also claimed here that it is a problem that there are disproportionally few women in mathematics. But without explaining why this is inherently a problem. It seems like an ideological position, not a pragmatic one. In a way, it also devalues traditional female gender roles by implying that areas that have been traditionally dominated by men are the most important and valuable.

Anyway, I don't believe that "stigma" explains it. I think that girls who excel at math are much more likely to be praised and encouraged about it by teachers and parents than told "don't do that; it's unfeminine". Who are these people who are discouraging girls from excelling at math?

And if the causes are not mainly sociological, then aren't efforts to eliminate the "gender gap" doomed to failure? Trying to make math "pink" or "girly" won't help, but neither will removing a "stigma" that doesn't actually exist. And instead of trying to push more girls into areas they aren't naturally suited for in order to meet some other person's arbitrary notion of what the ideal ratio of women to men should be in a given field, why not let them self-sort and let the chips fall where they may? Those with a natural interest and aptitude for math or science can choose to go into those fields, and those whose interests and aptitudes lie elsewhere can choose to follow whatever path they think is best for themselves.


It's not necessary to watch this documentary to participate in the thread, but I think it's a very good exploration of the debate over nature vs. nurture (it's not narrowly focused on math ability, btw). Both sides, the nature people and the nurture people, are given opportunities to make their case. It's a documentary from Norway called The Gender Equality Paradox and there should be subtitles.
Embedded:

Or, link to Youtube.

 

[Nihilianth]

I'm going guess a few things here, and just throwing it out there without actually knowing for sure, and there is going to be a LOT of generalizations thrown in for good measure, but here goes:

It is often said (not sure how true,) that women are better at multi-tasking then men. I would assume therefore, men are better at focusing on a single task than women.

Math generally requires one to be able to focus quite intensely on one fact at a time.

"Traditional women's roles:"

Despite women being able to multi-task better than men; and despite cooking being a "traditional woman's role," men tend to be better at cooking than women. (Men, apparently, have larger tastebuds than women, and therefore, have more intense taste. But cooking requires quite a bit of multi-tasking. And it also requires a bit of math at times.)

I dunno. I got nothing.

 

[marplots]

I learned some important math from a girl once. She taught me that one is the loneliest number.

 

[psionl0]

Are boys naturally better at math?

You must have a death wish starting a topic like this.

 

[DarthFishy]

It's one thing to note a correlation, you need to specify a mechanism as well.

In your case you need to specify a biological or physiological difference between boys and girls that explains the difference. If you you cannot specify such a mechanism then an opposing hypothesis (i.e. the "stigma" or social factors hypotheses") is equally valid.

Interestingly enough research has shown that while boys are generally better than girls at spatial reasoning (tested via playing first person shooters), once you provide the girls with equal practice times the differences in spatial reasoning ability decreases (Playing an Action Video Game Reduces Gender Differences in Spatial Cognition, Feng, Spence and Pratt 2007).

It seems likely that in a similar way that spatial reasoning ability is, to some extent, socially learnt, so to are mathematical skills. Visual-spatial skills are often correlated with mathematical skills as well.

Your OP seems heavy on opinion and light on evidence, especially evidence of a biological mechanism that causes this difference.

ETA: There's a lot of unsupported suppositions in this thread and little in the way of evidence for these opinions.

 

[DarthFishy]

Some more sources (I have not accessed any pdfs that are behind paywalls to ensure others on the thread have the same access to sources I have):

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/107/2/139/

This one is a little old (1990), but the following bits from the abstract are interesting:

Gender differences were smallest and actually favored females in samples of the general population, grew larger with increasingly selective samples, and were largest for highly selected samples and samples of highly precocious persons. The magnitude of the gender difference has declined over the years. Gender differences in mathematics performance are small. Nonetheless, the lower performance of women in problem solving that is evident in high school requires attention.

My bold.

This meta-analyses shows that there is not so much of a difference as there is currently perceived.

 

[DarthFishy]

Another one from APA PschyNet:

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/gpr/16/1/93/

Men and women score similarly in most areas of mathematics, but a gap favoring men is consistently found at the high end of performance.

Once again overall the differences are negligibly. This indicates (alongside the OPs articles), that the differences that exist are at the higher end of performance (e.g. high SAT scores and Maths Olympiads).

This though I feel is a different question to the one posed by the OP, though still of some interest.

 

[Loss Leader]

I taught SAT prep for a couple years. The pattern I noticed was this: Boys were quick to answer and wrong more often, but they'd just keep trying (frequently without actually thinking about anything). Girls were more deliberate, but when they did get a wrong answer, they were more quick to just give up.

Whether this is cultural or biological, it meant that girls were always shouted down by boys and they eventually stopped trying.

I'd rather teach a class of all girls than all boys.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Me no maths.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Me no maths.

Is that you Barbie?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Is that you Barbie?

I Ken what ya mean, laddie.

 

[ThunderChunky]

Anyway, I don't believe that "stigma" explains it. I think that girls who excel at math are much more likely to be praised and encouraged about it by teachers and parents than told "don't do that; it's unfeminine". Who are these people who are discouraging girls from excelling at math?

You don't have to actively discourage someone from something for there to be a stigma about. There stereotype that women (or girls) are worse at math is still around. On top of that, yes, math is also viewed as unfeminine. Women that are good at math don't have the same status as men who are good at math. None of this precludes some dimorphism, but certainly our social values encourage boys more than girls when it comes to math. When it comes to issues like this, I always think of the Polgar family. Where the parents had three daughters and rasied them all (3/3) to be chess prodigies. Two of them became the very first female GMs and one peaked at the 7th highest rated player in the world. Nurture is surprisingly important.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Are boys naturally better at math?

Actually no. It's not so simple as that. Girls are slightly better at math when young. At puberty on, boys gradually become slightly better or worse. (since boys who end up being worse at math are unlikely to continue studying higher math, the perception is that the boys in the class are better at it than the girls) But the differences between sexes are smaller than the differences between individuals. This is similar to the general intelligence curves where geniuses are more likely to be men, but also idiots are more likely to be men. The average being pretty close to the same.

While culture may have something to do with it, more likely a causation is hormones that effect brain development, particularly changes at puberty.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

At my school the top math students were always girls, so I never understood the whole "society discourages girls from pursuing math" thing.

ETA: I went to a regular public school.

 

[Metullus]

I can only speak from my experience as a middle school teacher over the last 8 years or so. In our advanced math classes - 7th grade Algebra 1 and 8th grade Geometry - girls were the better students by a clear margin. The classes were almost always circa 50/50 boys/girls except in 2 years when the 7th & 8th grade overall enrollment was roughly 3/2 in favor of girls. In each of the past 8 years the top student in the Geometry classes have been girls. Of these, one completed AP Calculus as a 10th grader and finished high school having completed multi-variable calculus, engineering calculus, and AP Statistics. Three others finished AP Calculus in the 11th grade. In most cases the boys completed AP Calculus before graduation from high school. I suspect that a not insignificant part of the girls' success is that they were generally better organized and much better cooperative learners, while the boys were, well, neither.

Our school is a rural K-8 public charter school with around 400 students next year. We are dirt poor and rely heavily on volunteers both inside and outside the classroom.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

It's one thing to note a correlation, you need to specify a mechanism as well.

...snip...

Interestingly enough research has shown that while boys are generally better than girls at spatial reasoning (tested via playing first person shooters), once you provide the girls with equal practice times the differences in spatial reasoning ability decreases (Playing an Action Video Game Reduces Gender Differences in Spatial Cognition, Feng, Spence and Pratt 2007).

It seems likely that in a similar way that spatial reasoning ability is, to some extent, socially learnt, so to are mathematical skills. Visual-spatial skills are often correlated with mathematical skills as well.

Yes, the correlation between gender and spatial reasoning is reproducible. As you say, that doesn't mean the correlation is directly causal.

Loss Leader suggested an alternative cause for the correlation:

I taught SAT prep for a couple years. The pattern I noticed was this: Boys were quick to answer and wrong more often, but they'd just keep trying (frequently without actually thinking about anything). Girls were more deliberate, but when they did get a wrong answer, they were more quick to just give up.

Math is a subject in which guessing wrong is one of the quickest ways to learn (provided you're willing to accept your own wrongness), while giving up is one of the quickest ways to fail.

It's easy to believe gender-correlated differences between giving up and continuing to try despite failure are at least partially attributable to nurture.

 

[Sherman Bay]

What, me generalize?

It was long ago when I was in school, but my observation in math and science classes in highschool to upper level education was females typically get better grades, but required rigid rules to solve a problem. Males might not memorize the formulas quite as well, but they could derive an answer using reasoning.

Which meant that if a new concept was introduced, the females were lost until the formula or principle was outlined by the teacher, then they got good at using it. The males saw it coming and figured out the theory in advance, then were bored with the application as they preferred to move on.

Or: females did it by rote, males understood the concept.

 

[Earthborn]

I'm calling Betteridge's law on the thread title.

Natural aptitude seems like the simplest explanation to me.

Please explain why you think this the simplest explanation.

In a way, it also devalues traditional female gender roles by implying that areas that have been traditionally dominated by men are the most important and valuable.

I don't see how that follows. Just because someone notices that women are underrepresented in one field does not devalue traditionally feminine fields. That same person may in fact argue that in traditionally feminine fields men are underrepresented, and that that's a problem equally worthy of adressing.

I think that girls who excel at math are much more likely to be praised and encouraged about it by teachers and parents than told "don't do that it's unfeminine".

Please explain what you base this thought on. Even if true, there is evidence that the way a person is praised for something also affects how they perform in a task.

Who are these people who are discouraging girls from excelling at math?

You may be one of them, by suggesting that they might be "naturally" worse at maths than boys.

And if the causes are not mainly sociological, then aren't efforts to eliminate the "gender gap" doomed to failure?

No. Even if the difference is primarily genetic, genes are not destiny. It may just mean that kids with a particular genetic profile may need a bit of extra tutoring.

And instead of trying to push more girls into areas they aren't naturally suited for in order to meet some other person's arbitrary notion of what the ideal ratio of women to men should be in a given field, why not let them self-sort and let the chips fall where they may?

Sure, just make sure everyone is taught equally well regardless of gender, by teachers who themselves have no biases as to who is "naturally" more inclined to maths. And while we're at it, improve maths education in general because it is not often very good.
Sounds like a good plan, but it may be hard to implement.

 

[Andy_Ross]

My sister has a PhD in pure and a Madters in Statistics. She thinks maths is a fun way to relax.

 

[blutoski]

Actually no. It's not so simple as that. Girls are slightly better at math when young. At puberty on, boys gradually become slightly better or worse. (since boys who end up being worse at math are unlikely to continue studying higher math, the perception is that the boys in the class are better at it than the girls) But the differences between sexes are smaller than the differences between individuals. This is similar to the general intelligence curves where geniuses are more likely to be men, but also idiots are more likely to be men. The average being pretty close to the same.

While culture may have something to do with it, more likely a causation is hormones that effect brain development, particularly changes at puberty.

Doubtful... we already have good studies that show the impact of social expectations on achievement, math is just one example.

Girls outperform boys at STEM prior to puberty, and underperform afterward. There is a generalized modelling theory that stipulates children model the opposite sex parent prior to puberty and the same sex parent after puberty. There is a cultural inertia for STEM performance where historically they have been seen as something men find easier to do, it passes to the next generation, even if it gets less severe every time.

These two facts combine to create a consistent theory: dad thinks STEM is easy, mom thinks STEM is hard. As the child shifts modelling attention across puberty, the child's attitude and performance starts to correspond more closely to that of the modelling parent. It would follow that a child's attitude toward STEM would be more stongly influenced by the mother, and this turns out to be the case. The mother's expectations for the child's performance appears to be the strongest single predictor of a woman's performance and interest in STEM. There appears to be no difference between the influence from adopted versus biological mother's.

The gender gap for STEM performance is diminishing, and this is also consistent with social influence and overall improving cultural attitude. There is still a gap, but the best explanation is inertia due to conservative attitudes, but the trajectory is going in the right direction to be consistent with a near 100% cultural explanation.

What's interesting is that it's not the mother's performance in STEM, but rather her expecations for the daughter. ie: a mother who is a nuclear engineer, but is "traditional" is less likely to have a STEM interested daughter than a mathematically illiterate mother who is supportive. Again, very good evidence that the biological predisposition is negligible.

eg: [Gender and Mother-Child Interactions during Mathematics Homework: The Importance of Individual Differences]