math

The Mathematics of Sex: How Biology and Society Conspire to Limit Talented Women and Girls

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

I’ll be honest. I was scared of reading The Mathematics of Sex. I am not the kind of women they’re writing about, and I know very few women who are. I’m not a mathematician, physicist, chemist, computer scientist, operations researcher, or engineer. Without the subtitle, “How Biology and Society Conspire to Limit Talented Women and Girls,” the title is somewhat misleading; it’s not so much about sex between the sheets as biological sex. It’s not about the math of sex so much as the math surrounding women… or the lack of it surrounding them.

Ceci and Williams note that boys and men perform better than girls and women on standardized tests. (They use the SATs and the Putnam Mathematical Competition as examples.) Interestingly, girls and women earn better grades than boys and men in math and science classes. “For example, a man with the same SAT-M score as a woman seated next to him earns a grade nearly two letter grades lower than her in a mathematics course—he gets a C/D versus her B.” Still, even though women do better in classes, “the ranks of professionals in math-intensive fields are lopsidedly male.”

There are three supposed causes of the under-representation of women in math-heavy fields of work: comparable innate ability, social and cultural bias and barriers, and women’s lack of interest. The authors cover these arguments thoroughly in chapters two and three, which they call “opening arguments.” Then, in chapters four and five, they challenge those arguments with their own research and data.

Ceci and Williams conclude that women are not in math-intensive fields as much as men because of _non_biological/ability factors, including the tendency for “women with high mathematical talent…to enter non-math fields such as medicine, veterinary medicine, law, and biological sciences.” They analyze evidence across multiple fields of expertise: “the cognitive psychology of mental rotation, the social psychology of stereotypes, personal preferences, discrimination, and hormonal bases of behavior, econometrics of hiring and promotion, and cultural comparisons of mathematics achievement.”

Overall, The Mathematics of Sex wasn’t as scary as I expected it to be, and it was worth the read. To those people who say, “All these worrying women; I don’t know what the big fuss is,” I say: this book has the answer to why women aren’t in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) professions. It’s important to promote women in fields in which there are few female representatives so that future generations will continue to come to the radical conclusion that women are also human. Ceci and Williams do a good job of encouraging that in this book. Kudos.

Written by: Viannah Duncan, January 11th 2010

The Housekeeper and the Professor

admin — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:43:00 +0000

By Yoko Ogawa

Picador

If you want to read a book that is punch-you-in-the-gut beautiful, then pick up Yoko Ogawa's novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. This novel is a careful meditation on memory and communication. The precision of the plot is such that you won't know what hit you until you finish the very last sentence; you'll feel as moved as you do gutted.

The premise of the novel is seemingly simple: the plot revolves around the relationship between a housekeeper and a once-famous mathematician, the latter of whom was in a car accident that left him brain damaged. This man's short term memory is shot; it lasts for only eighty minutes. Armed with only decades-old memories and his formulas and theories, the novel shows that despite such loss, affection and love are still possible. Math becomes the language that penetrates this man's mind and allows him to make sense of a world that has changed without him knowing it.

There are no bleeding heart miracles or learning curve love affairs in this book. Ogawa is wise enough to let the novel's plot unfold without explaining too much. In this way, Ogawa understands the mystical power of numbers and memory—that what is unknown is as moving and powerful as what is known. As the Professor says about God, you have to acknowledge the truth of what can not be disproved. Thus, although the Professor may not have access to memory, the ties that bond are there; they cannot be disproved, and thus, they must exist.

The complexities of memory and love are present in the relationship that forms between the housekeeper's son and the mathematician. The professor may not remember Root, (the son’s nickname) after eighty minutes have passed, but upon each introduction, he is as paternal, protective, and loving as before. He feels something behind concrete memory—an essence, an idea, a certain truth. Thus, memory becomes something of an iceberg, both seen and unseen.

Ogawa accomplishes the seemingly impossible; she makes numbers exquisite, exotic, and alluring. The language of love is contained in the pluses and minuses and equal signs that dot the communication between the characters. The poetry of the formulas will curl in and around the reader's mind so they can't help but fall into them.

By the end of the novel, math becomes the decoder ring for the relationship built between the housekeeper, her son, and the professor. The journey they take is one that is equal: the son and mother discover one another as much as the professor discovers them again and again. You'll never look at a prime number in the same way.

Written by: Lisa Bower, May 8th 2009

Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:33:00 +0000

By Renée Bergland

Beacon Press

Nineteenth century New England was a virtual breeding ground for progressive ideas. During the period, a host of feminist philosophers, jurists, and scholars emerged onto American society. Among the heroines associated with the era, you’ve probably examined those such as Dorthea Dix and Margaret Fuller in your high school U.S. History class. Many women, however, still remain relatively unacknowledged, despite their critical roles in scholarly debates of the era. Among them, mathematician and astronomer Maria Mitchell remains most prominent.

Renée Bergland’s Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science tells, in careful detail, the story of the glorious, if too little known, Maria Mitchell, and her triumph over what soon grew to become yet another division of the so-called masculine domain. Raised in isolated, but vibrant Nantucket, Mitchell’s interest in astronomy started at an early age.

Apprenticed by her father, as an amateur astronomer young Maria would climb, night after night, to her house’s crude rooftop observatory to diligently study the stars. In 1847, during one of her many nighttime sweeps, Mitchell discovered a comet, propelling her into international fame. Within subsequent years, she became America’s first professional astronomer and one of the founding professors of Vassar College.

Although Mitchell’s success as a feminist scholar was certainly rare for the day, she had not, contrary to what some might expect, triumphed over impossible odds. Barriers against feminist achievement in the twenty-first century are pretty intense, and upon starting the book, I that expected that conditions must have been much harsher nearly 200 years ago. The great surprise for me came when I found that Mitchell had faced, in actuality, relatively little bias. Young Nantucketeers, both male and female, were encouraged by their Quaker upbringings to rigorously pursue academic studies.

In Maria’s time, girls were thought of as naturally scientific, and were urged, rather than dissuaded, to pursue studies in the field. The discipline, given the age, was considered less politically threatening than the humanities. Sadly, in later years the scientific field began to close ranks against female students. In the later half of this biography, Bergland chronicles those changes in American society that led to original ‘sexing of science’ and its transformation into a "man’s" game.

Although the Mitchell’s story is certainly an interesting one, Bergland provides only a dull narration of facts from the astronomer’s life. What I expected was the compelling saga of one woman’s journey to achieve scientific greatness turned out to be a rather lackluster account. The author also tended to stray from the main idea, overwhelming her reader with a mass of unnecessary detail. Often, Bergland would present a pages-long description of events that had no apparent connection to the central plot. Nevertheless, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science remains a satisfactory account of Maria Mitchell and her truly enormous contributions to astronomy, education, as well as the nineteenth-century feminist movement.

Written by: Sameeraa Pahwa, June 10th 2008

She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:40:00 +0000

Edited by Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders

Seal Press

A collection of essays by women geeks? What can self-professed geeks share with the rest of women about what it means to be female? A heck of a lot, whether you measure it in decimal or binary.

She's Such a Geek is a wonderful affirmation of what it means to be a geek and to be a woman (sometimes even feminine!) without falling into the trap of sounding bitter or obnoxiously over-assertive. I loved it. From essays like Kory Well’s “Really Good for a Girl” to Violet Blue’s “The Hacker’s Guide to What’s in Her Own Panties,” these essays explore the beginnings of geek culture with hard drives that had less memory capacity that floppy disks to the growing field of teledildonics – with musings on how cool it would be to have a vibrator that plugs into your USB port for cybersex.

These women think about logic and intuition and how male/female stereotypes apply to the worlds of geekiness. But geeks, of course, aren’t defined by computers. “To me, a geek is someone who is passionate about something,” Jessica Dickenson Goodman says. These geeks are obsessed with computers, chemistry, astronomy, history and (I would add) life. There are worse ways to live than being passionate about learning. Let these women introduce you to obsession, or validate your insecurities about your own passions.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, March 9th 2007