# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Other Discussion and Support > Ubuntu Women >  Puberty and Math

## daynah

WebDrake said, in another thread...



> One of the problems everyone faces in their lives is a psychological phenomenon known as "learned helplessness". At heart it is our ability to learn to be unable to learn. For example, you're in a maths class and stuck on a problem. You can't solve it, but you want to show you're trying, so you screw up your face and try to look like you're thinking really hard and ...
> 
> ... and the teacher notices and comes over and gives you lots of help, maybe even writing out the answer for you, step by step, and at the end of the class maybe you still did badly but the teacher will praise you for trying. Wahey! You've found a solution, and it will probably still keep working all through school, and it's much simpler than actually solving the problems yourself. You'll get crap grades and people will think you less able but they will praise your effort. Meanwhile you will grow more and more convinced that really you can't do this stuff (because you get crap grades, you always need help, etc. etc.), and all your interactions will reinforce that.


In a Social Psychology class I was in, we noted that the majority of women who feel that they either "hate math" or are "not good at math" used to be good at math when they were young, but then had their feelings towards the subject change. Usually this happens around puberity, when children become more aware of people's opinions of them and social expectations of them. Unfortunately, some women even know this happened, and got so lost during the years they were taught math, that they have a hard time catching up now that they're an adult (the current stigma in their lives being that adults should be able to do such things).

If you also "hate math" or just are "not good at math," did you used to be good at math, be on okay terms with math, or even enjoy math?

Did you have different experiences but still saw this going on?

Or do you think this is a load of dookie?

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## sanderella

deleted

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## sanderella

I think it depends more on the teacher. I was a dodo at maths until I was 15. Then I came into the class of a good maths teacher who loved his subject, Suddenly maths took off for me, and I began to get really good marks. I still find algebra hard work, but geometry is a wow!

 :Smile: 

ps i reached puberty at 11

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## ComplexNumber

boys actually do better than girls at maths both before and after puberty, so i doubt it can be blamed on learned helplessness. thats just an excuse.

there are 2 hemispheres in the brain - the left side which is solely concerned with language, and the right side which control everything else. women tend to be left brain dominant whilst men tend to be right brain dominant, and this has been shown from studies of the foetus.  this can also be seen from IQ tests where women outperform men at verbal ability, whilst men outperform women at everything else (especially spatial and mathematical ability). 
one of the criteria for an IQ test is for it to be valid, and one of these criterion states that men and women, and people of all colours and creeds MUST have the same average IQ. on the early IQ tests, men tended to gain a higher average IQ than women, but this would render the IQ invalid by the criteria. so they found out what women do best and what men do best at, and added extra tests to bring women up to the same standard as men. thats why you will see that on modern IQ tests, there are more verbal tests than all others. 
even modern education is weighted more favourably for women with the emphasis on course work rather than exam. boys tend to outperform girls in exams, whereas girls tend to outperform boys at coursework because they tend to work harder and be more conscientious.
i remember this from my A level in psychology because Intelligence(and Learning, where i studied learned helplessness) was one of the modules that we studied. luckily, a question came up on Intelligence(but not on learning because it had come up the previous 4 years, so i don't know what my tutor was thinking) in the final exam. oh, and i ended up with a B grade.

so basically, the learned helplessness theory is mostly dookie. its true that having a good teacher is important, but genetics and nature dictates our maximum potential. nurture just helps us to maximise and approach that potential, beyond which we can't go

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## daynah

Women and men majoring in mathematics in a top university (I'll find you the study when my teacher emails me back) where given a standardized test. They were put in two class rooms, both men and women in two different classrooms, the test was on math. Both genders know they are excellent at math. It's important to note, that in each classroom, tic for tac each man has been paired for a woman that matches his abilities in all of his grades. All of the girls can perform as well as all of the boys. In one classrooom, the proctor reads off the standard blah blah blah about the test, you can't leave to go tinkle, whatever, and the women do, on average, not as well as the men. In the other classrooom, the same thing is read off with the addition of one sentence. (I'm not quoting obviously, I don't have ethe study on me) but it is something very close to... "This study is proven to have no gender biases."

Poof, the women do just as good as the men. As they were chosen to do.

"Such comments are damaging for a number of reasons, Boaler continued. If people think the differences between boys and girls are innate, they assume nothing can be done to improve the situation. Negative stereotyping also can have a direct effect on performance, she said. Studies have shown that if people are told beforehand that members of their ethnic group or gender don't do well on a particular test, they tend to choke. But if they go into a test without the so-called "stereotype threat," they do better."  LINK

Women Perform Better In Math When Tested Without Men

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## ComplexNumber

*daynah*
see my last paragraph. i'm sure that if one takes a small enough sample as in the test you are highlighting, one can find any result that can go either way. 
there was a recent(last 5 years) test conducted in germany involving over 100,000 people. it was found that there was no IQ differences between blondes and brunettes. the point is that many people may say that a blonde is expected to act dumb, so therefore she will not do any good in academia and intelligence tests because of the stereotype. the test showed otherwise.
the line of argument that you're highlighting fails to distinquish between actual ability and 'outward' projected ability.




> Women Perform Better In Math When Tested Without Men, Study Says


you may  be interested to learn than the reverse is also true, so the study isn't adding anything to the original hypothosis in post 1.


also, you may be interested in reading this.

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## Sef

The way math is taught often affects how well people do on it.   I have had a lot of problems learning math, and eventually I realized it was the way it was taught.   Math tends to be taught from a bottom up method: taking individual pieces and later connecting them.   I learn better by a top down method: taking a whole and breaking it into pieces.  That way I can see the relationship between the pieces.

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## ComplexNumber

> I learn better by a top down method: taking a whole and breaking it into pieces.


i learn better that way too  :Smile: . i used to have a boss who explained everything to me by first giving me a brief overview of the concept, then preceded to go further and further  into the details, but in a structured way. for example, if one were explaining a book that was split into several sections, and those sections were split into chapters. he would first give me a brief overview of the book, then go into the meaning behind each of the sections, then explain each of the chapter. so when he was explaining each of the sections and the chapters, i could easily see how it fit into the whole. if the whole isn't explained first, i'm usually lost for ages until i can begin to see the whole on my own.

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## borris.morris

I am 14 and I love math and always have been good at it. In 7th grade I hade a teacher who hated me. I got horrible grades and didn't learn hardly anyhing in that class. Now I have a cool teacher and I get A's.  Also, here in UT, Man to Women ratio is the same. BTW, I'm 2 years ahead of most of the other kids in my grade in math.

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## Dokatz

I liked the start of this thread, Bravo O.P.

I can say that I never enjoyed math, because early on I decided it wasn't close to my personal philosophy.

Numbers are honestly the underlying force in the universe, And I can respect the study of it.

But I will not study the atom, To better further my understanding of human psychology.

Excuse my metaphor.  :Smile: 

Studying the underlying global everything behind everything makes sense to me...But when math becomes more black and white...I simply turn my head.

1 = .999..(Repeating) Discussion, That peaks my interest. Things that deal in the gray, In the imaginary...Seem way more incredible to me than simple number crunching.

I wasn't taught the gray though in school...I was taught the usual; 

Formula > First Application > Crunch (For an extended period of time) > Test (Which I would fail)

I'm too smart in some sense, But then again...I'm too dumb. When I had problems with a math problem, I would simply stop trying all together. Thats why my friends, Why I am considered a LOSER.  :Smile:

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## happy-and-lost

Well, I'm great with numbers, which really helps in chemistry, but when it comes to my A-level maths... hopeless. I'm good at the "decision" module, however; which is all about algorithms. We learned about dependancy tree algorithms today, which was a simple for me, being numerically and computerly (it's a word now) minded, but my more typically female classmates struggled.

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## borris.morris

Dokatz, yes, I'm learning i and e and all of that fun stuff. I really love it.

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## IYY

I was fairly horrible at math before grade 12 or so. Now I study math and computer science in university, and I find those subjects to be the easiest.

I think the reason the reason for this drastic change in the teenage years is because the math you need to learn becomes completely different. Math you learn in early grades is purely memorization and mechanical work, whereas late highschool and university math is theoretical and abstract, requiring thought. Some people do better at the mechanical math, while others do better at the abstract math.

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## Dokatz

> Dokatz, yes, I'm learning i and e and all of that fun stuff. I really love it.


Well good! School rules.

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## borris.morris

> Well good! School rules.


Amen to that, brother!
 :Guitar:

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## DoctorMO

I used to love mathematics (just can't bare the word 'math' instead of 'maths') but I found it's teaching to be slow and based on memory instead of systems and functions which is how I work best; for instance:

My dad who has the same kind of mental tuning as I do taught me very early on what adding _means_, that multiplication is a function of numbers and powers and roots are just abstracts of other processes. binary was fun for me to learn at 7 years old but because of the way I was taught it I discovered trinary and all other bases without even touching a text book.

Then I hit High School, became very bored and discovered that I was failing mathematics; this could be because of the teaching methods or it could be that I was told over and over that because my spelling was bad that I would do badly at everything, lowering my class level for mathematics and sciences effective demoralising.

I never did any mathematics above 16 (end of high school in the uk).

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## WebDrake

> boys actually do better than girls at maths both before and after puberty, so i doubt it can be blamed on learned helplessness. thats just an excuse.
> 
> there are 2 hemispheres in the brain - the left side which is solely concerned with language, and the right side which control everything else. women tend to be left brain dominant whilst men tend to be right brain dominant, and this has been shown from studies of the foetus.  this can also be seen from IQ tests where women outperform men at verbal ability, whilst men outperform women at everything else (especially spatial and mathematical ability). 
> one of the criteria for an IQ test is for it to be valid, and one of these criterion states that men and women, and people of all colours and creeds MUST have the same average IQ. on the early IQ tests, men tended to gain a higher average IQ than women, but this would render the IQ invalid by the criteria. so they found out what women do best and what men do best at, and added extra tests to bring women up to the same standard as men. thats why you will see that on modern IQ tests, there are more verbal tests than all others. 
> even modern education is weighted more favourably for women with the emphasis on course work rather than exam. boys tend to outperform girls in exams, whereas girls tend to outperform boys at coursework because they tend to work harder and be more conscientious.
> i remember this from my A level in psychology because Intelligence(and Learning, where i studied learned helplessness) was one of the modules that we studied. luckily, a question came up on Intelligence(but not on learning because it had come up the previous 4 years, so i don't know what my tutor was thinking) in the final exam. oh, and i ended up with a B grade.
> 
> so basically, the learned helplessness theory is mostly dookie. its true that having a good teacher is important, but genetics and nature dictates our maximum potential. nurture just helps us to maximise and approach that potential, beyond which we can't go


I am not sure I would trust your A-level psychology course to give you an accurate picture of the state of understanding.  I base this at least partly on my own experience with maths and physics A-levels, and the distinct difference between what was taught at A-level and what at university; and then, the difference between what is taught at degree level and what goes on at research level.

I should add that my words were somewhat taken out of context; I was not talking about women's ability in maths per se but giving an example of how "learned helplessness" develops.  However, it's very likely that in the case of spatial reasoning---one of the key observed differences in ability between men and women---this factor is at least partially responsible.

While there is good research showing genetic influences on intelligence on an individual basis (although environment still plays an important part), research on _group_ differences is much more dubious.  In any case variance _within_ a given social group is always substantially greater than variance _between_ social groups.  You will only really notice these distinctions at great extremes---the very top or very bottom of a distribution.  If we assume for the sake of argument that men are _on average_ slightly higher-IQ than women, what it means _in practice_ is that the only place you will see any difference is in numbers of people with IQs at the very highest level, i.e. 140+.

Work on group differences is dubious for various reasons, mainly the difficulty of putting in place effective experimental controls to disallow environmental influences.  These may include the attitude of experimenters themselves: e.g. if one looks at the people who have done work on _racial_ differences in intelligence, they are almost invariably white.  It also includes something as simple as asking an individual to indicate their race prior to an experiment, or what an experiment is perceived as being about**: there is a paper showing how observed differences in academic performance between black and white college students in the US vanish when the test is perceived as non-diagnostic.

(I remember hearing about, but don't have a reference to, a paper which examined creativity.  Some very unimaginative and uncreative businessmen were asked to take a test, imagining that they were hippies.  They suddenly became very creative.)

It's not so much that there may or may not be inherent differences in learning ability between men and women, as that the actual social differences we observe are affected by a great many other things.  If as you suggest genes control the maximum level off performance, it is probably accurate to say that most people, whatever their gender, do not perform anywhere near their maximum, and that social influence such as gender or racial stereotyping probably has a strong effects on bias away from it.

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## nursegirl

All through my childhood and high school I used to score in the top ten (people not percent) in my province for standardized math tests. I had planned on majoring in math, but in my final years of high school, the gender stereotyping stuff got to be too exhausting, so I changed my mind. Now, I love my work, and I wouldn't change it for the world, but I think it's strange that not only was I not encouraged to study math, I wasn't encouraged to study Engineering or any of the applied maths (except business, which I would have hated).

I'm not saying it was because of either gender or race (I'm a visible minority as well). I'm just saying it's odd that the person who won top marks in two out of three types of math classes, as well as physics, was encouraged to become a nurse.

~Nursegirl

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## WebDrake

> All through my childhood and high school I used to score in the top ten (people not percent) in my province for standardized math tests. I had planned on majoring in math, but in my final years of high school, the gender stereotyping stuff got to be too exhausting, so I changed my mind. Now, I love my work, and I wouldn't change it for the world, but I think it's strange that not only was I not encouraged to study math, I wasn't encouraged to study Engineering or any of the applied maths (except business, which I would have hated).
> 
> I'm not saying it was because of either gender or race (I'm a visible minority as well). I'm just saying it's odd that the person who won top marks in two out of three types of math classes, as well as physics, was encouraged to become a nurse.


That's quite sad.  Did you receive no encouragement at all?  I had the lucky distinction of most teachers whose subject I was good at wanting me to go further in their subject (which led to some sad choices because I couldn't satisfy all of them).

What was it that happened that pushed you towards nursing instead, and away from your maths/physics interests?

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## EmilyRose

I liked math up until about 6th or 7th grade (I forget exactly), when we switched from using a combination of fun, interesting math books to Saxon Math, mainly because it got to the point where I was learning/doing math that was slightly above what my mom/dad could help teach (I was homeschooled), so we had to switch to something that could teach me without their help...  don't get me wrong, I learned math (more or less) from Saxon, but it took all the fun out of it and made it a chore. As a result I can generally DO math today, though I've definetly forgotten all or most of algebra/calculus, but I don't generally like it... (though I love reading about mathematical theories =)

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## sporx

I just straight up hate math. Love literature, but hate math.

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## Sunflower1970

I didn't mind math at all until Geometry. That's where I lost it. I also had trouble with the problem solving. But, for the most part, I loved algebra. I found it really came down to the teacher. The geometry teacher was horrid. Didn't teach us anything, really. In fact, she didn't care if we cheated on tests. 

Finally in college, my freshman year, I had to take one last math class, and I took something called "business math." Had lots of problem solving math questions and geometry in it. But the way it was taught it made perfect sense.

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## Teg_Navanis

Just a little study I want to bring in:

Dar-Nimrod, I., & Heine, S. J. Exposure to scientific theories affects women's math performance.

Basically, it says that womens' performance in math tests is significantly worse when they are first confronted with (pseudo-)scientific articles saying that women are bad at math for genetic reasons.




> so basically, the learned helplessness theory is mostly dookie. its true that having a good teacher is important, but genetics and nature dictates our maximum potential. nurture just helps us to maximise and approach that potential, beyond which we can't go


A good psychology course should have introduced the concepts of self-fulfilling prophecy and the Pygmalion effect. As long as people (teachers, parents, peers, etc.) expect women to perform worse in maths, it is likely that they indeed will do.

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## Nils Olav

I don't understand how anyone can actually hate math. I can understand being bored with simple calculations but can't imagine that someone actually dislikes it.

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## maed

Whoa, nice one.
I used to be good at math when being young (class 1-3, years 7-9). I even tried attending a competition, but I got stuck at the school level. Since then I liked math less. During classes 5-6 I used to have additional private lessons (which were meant to help me with math). On each of them a miracle occured! Not only were I able to do the tasks I found "too difficult" for me in the classroom (without any help), but I was able of doing tasks meant for 8th class. Then again - when it came to classroom, my wisdom hid in a mysterious place and voila - grades were the same as usual (which didn't mean I was unable of doing anything; my grades were around 4 (that's ca. 80%)). I moved on from primary school to secondary school (uhm, it's like, junior high?). Math teacher was a great person - one of those charismatic, ever-young people, able of getting respect and attention even of those students, who seemed to respect no-one (imagine a 54yr woman carrying three bags beating a classic 'jock' at ping pong between having her coffee and checking homework). Then my love for math was greater than ever, but I encountered other problems; I had problems with remembering complicated expressions (formulae) and with problems with concentration; I could rewrite 80 as 30 and 2 - 1 came out as -1. But I fought and I fought and I finally managed to get a 4 again. Then, the lyceum (high-school) came. I managed to get through 1,5 year at math&physics oriented class. That was a nightmare. My first teacher was kinda cute and knew the subject very well - but she lacked pedagogical abilities and thought, that if they are 4 math-geniuses in the class, the other kids will get it the way those people did (3 guys and 1 girl, AFAIR). Well, we didn't. Then, another teacher was way too compulsive and thought, that dramatic changes of mood: ranging from telling us, that he loves us and we're gonna be the best mathematicians ever to telling us we should better go to a "zawodówka" (school for people who don't intend to go to the university and want to learn a craft, such as cooking, fixing cars, laying bricks and so on). At that point I became too lazy, too disappointed and frustrated with my lack of certain skills and I decided that I hate math & physics more than anything in my life.
So chose my ultimate solution again - let's switch to another class.
Heh heh heh. Although the math was easier (basic programme, not the extended one), the teacher was way neurotic. She would call us idiots, cry, argue with us and claim that math will take over the world and we (humanists) will be reduced to slaves. Whoa, nice one. So I got 1,2&3's till the end of my high-school education. But then the teacher, probably iritated with our lack of good will and abilities let us have the basic formulas (duh, basic. I still fail to see what's basic in geometric progression). It was a perfect time for another miracle: I received my first (happening to be also the last) 5's in math in high-school!
I don't like math and I claim that it's not my cup of tea, really. And I can't even say that I'm too stupid - being tested on my problems with writing (illegible handwriting) I scored as perfectly balanced human being - the IQ test has shown that I could be a good 'humanist' as well as a good scientist (I was very dissatisfied with myself - my vanity wouldn't let me cheat on the test and prove that my left hemisphere IS impaired because of my desire of telling the others "look, I'm an intelligent person"). The only thing that actually would explain my problems at school were my memory problems (psychologist looked at the results, murmured something beneath her breath and told me that I've scored like a person 30 IQ points lower than I am and pointed to a poster entitled "The damage marijuana and alcohol do to your brain". how nice of her) and my attitude towards the subject (if it can't be learnt by lying on the desk and partly listening, then I don't care).
Long story made short: I'm lazy and I don't like math, but it doesn't prevent me from using Linux. The only thing in life it really prevented me from was studying computer science at university. And so I am a happy Ubuntu user studying sociology who almost laughs out loud at so-called "computer science training", where the lecturer tells us how to turn the PC on, what can we do with a mouse, how to zip&unzip files and such (;

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