In my article The Universalism of Mathematics and its Detractors I have tried to sound the alarm about recent trends of deconstructing mathematics based on what I called radical equality dogma (RED1), a precept which claims that “human beings are roughly identical in terms of talents, intelligence (both cognitive and emotional), interests, motivation, powers of concentration, ability to perform various cognitive tasks, and that, consequently, every visible disparity between groups of individuals has its origin in some form of bias and discrimination”.
"Moreover in the tenure-track hiring, arguably the most important metric of all, their analyses revealed “that women applicants have a substantial advantage over comparable male applicants”."
One need look no further to understand the vehemence with which women in STEM push the narrative that they are discriminated against. They have a good thing going; their advantage depends entirely on the perception that they are systematically victimized by the white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy; therefore they must at all costs defend the perception that this discrimination is real.
In the process, young white boys are actually systematically discriminated against. They are disadvantaged in admissions at the undergraduate and graduate level; discriminated against in hiring, particularly at the tenure track level; they have no special scholarships, mentorship programs, or affiliation groups. As a result of this they become demoralized, completing higher education at far lower rates than women.
I’ve personally been told by a search committee chair that: “You are on the shortlist, but haven’t got a chance as the university demands a woman”. An earlier employer in Germany refused to support male candidates for independent research group funding.
Just anecdata of course, from somebody who no longer has to care about speaking out :-)
I have had friends with stellar academic backgrounds who were told, "We will never ever hire another single male for a faculty position from now until the end of time. It is imperative that males vanish from this field, the sooner the better." And then, in a few years these males were now perceived to be in newly emerging "victimhood categories" and they became highly sought after by the same institutions that previously rejected them. But by then, they had moved on with their careers.
These transient victimhood categories are just nonsense. Departing from "merit" was a bad idea. Of course, "merit" is sort of subjective, but none of these selection systems are "perfect". However, some seem to be "better" than others.
I was separately informed, by two different sources, that the deans of various Canadian universities had gotten together and agreed to stop hiring white men for the foreseeable future, and that in consequence I had no future in Canadian academia.
Before that, I had an experience in which I got to the top of the shortlist, to the point where I was fielding after-interview calls regarding funding package requirements, before it unaccountably went silent. Was later informed that what had happened was "politics", at which point I recalled the interview with the dean. She informed me at the very beginning that women in STEM was her top priority.
Before that, in another application I heard through the grapevine that the department was determined to hire a woman; the shortlist, remarkably, was all women.
Needless to say, in the aftermath of all of this my motivation more or less disappeared.
Great article. Rather than simply insulting asshats like Gutierrez and Rubel, writing reasoned articles refuting their absurd claims is very good, although I am sad to say I don't think it will help. The Cultural Marxists seem to have captured every research and academic institution out there, we are in the middle of mass psychosis, I don't know that we can reason our way out. But keep it up.
I personally think a lot of the reason that males outperform females in math related and adjacent subjects is both preference and temperament. Two years ago I discovered the Arduino systems (for some home-based data acquisition I needed) I had never heard of it before, and as I have gotten into it (hardware and software) it has become clear to me that the vast majority of people doing Arduino (freely available, cheap and open to anyone - and even promoted mostly now to women and minorities) are boys and men. Even though the Arduino organization, like many academic adjacent entities today, appears pretty woke (all its advertising would be woke approved) and their policies include things like renaming Master-Slave actuators to some other more PC label, its pretty clear its a male dominated field. They also will clearly know this internally, via their own stats, though I doubt they would ever admit it. Arduino is a good case study in many ways because it is so free and open, so to get into it is mostly a matter of interest.
And if women and girls are less involved in Arduino than men (my prediction, without knowing actual Arduino user data) it would have to be mostly because they are not that interested. I am almost 60 years old, and I have known maybe only a couple of women in my entire life who would need or want the kind of 'home-based data acquisition' system I needed. 99% of all the women I have ever met in my life wouldn't even know what that was. Or care. A measurable percentage of all the men I have ever met would be keenly interested in a home-based data acquisition system.
Actually I really needed a driver and controller for some DC motors I was using to develop some kinetic sculptures. But when I got the Arduino Uno microcontroller, I realized immediately that I had a need to monitor relative humidity in some rooms in my house, and could also use some air temp readings, and also wanted to monitor barometric pressure. Mainly because I am an engineer nerd type, who just wants to quantify my world. But once I got Arduino, an entire world of Instrumentation and Control opens up to you, that was once only available to professionals in industry. So my plans and projects now are unlimited, at least for prototyping. And then I built this -
That’s super cool. I’ve been thinking about how to grow mushrooms in my house and something like that could be immensely helpful, thanks for the inspiration!
Cool, def check out Arduino, its great for local Instrumentation and Control. There is entire sub section of Arduino users it in local agriculture. Note that it does have some limitations and its not really meant for scaling up to industrial level, but for home projects its pretty great. Especially now that they are adding some cloud functionality for DAS and more wifi boards that allow easier wireless comms.
Also, for the record, Arduino is basically open source, on purpose, so there is Arduino branded HW but also third party equipment which is usually as good and less costly. All the SW and IDE is free from Arduino, their language is a superset of C++. Ironically, given my (surely correct) estimation about Arduino enthusiasts being mostly men and boys, due to inherent temperament and interests, one of the best third party vendors for Arduino HW is Adafruit Industries, headed by Limor Fried (a woman, MIT graduate). They make good stuff.
Very well said. Sadly, I would go further. The present identity based "affirmative action" being directed toward members of protected classes, particularly women, actually has the effect of promoting people who would NOT be competitive on their merits to positions that, we must be honest, they did not earn and do not deserve. Those who still value and act on merit will compensate for this by seeing those promoted by affirmative action as unqualified "DEI hires" and ignore their supposed qualifications in favor of traditional merit based metrics. Sadly, the identify effect will be applied broadly and thus harm those members of protected groups who actually rose to their positions based on merit. This is why the path to a discrimination free society needs must include opposing Ibram Kendi's and feminists' form of discrimination.
IQ is probably the most studied characteristic in psychology. It is also the characteristic most easily measured, ranked etc. IQ studies have consistently produced the curve described herein, with an average that is roughly equivalent between the sexes but with fatter, longer tails - at both ends - for males. This is not going to change however much the fantasists want it to.
Doesn’t mean of course there are no excellent female mathematicians, but it does mean they’re relatively fewer and further between. How this overwhelmingly evidenced is even contentious is beyond me. Hard to avoid the idea that the naysayers are from groups who won’t find themselves at the far right end of the curve and who are therefore incapable of understanding the argument.
I have noticed, over my career, that there are a lot of people who stridently believe that they are MORE worthy or have more value if they are incompetent and/or stupid. And since they cannot compete, they decide that their shortcomings are some sort of indicator of superiority.
The root problem in higher education is that a selection process is required because access is limited. Set aside for an instant here the practical constraints. What if anyone could go to whichever institution they wanted to attend? What if anyone could take instruction from any educator they preferred? The realities of limited spaces and limited time now collapse upon this scenario to make it absurd - but what if it wasn't absurd? Today, and certainly in the near future, it is possible to virtualize teachers by training AI avatars to deeply emulate them. Such software agents could present virtual lectures that would be indistinguishable from the real thing, particularly if presented with 3D VR. Such avatars could respond to questions and interact with students in an individuated way - even more so than in a real lecture hall. After all, in a real lecture students don't generally have to touch the lecturer to be fully in their presence, nor do they get to have lengthy discussions with the lecturer at the expense of the rest of the students. This could be more than good enough for most undergraduates. At some point, once a student has absorbed all they can from the avatar, virtual lectures could be given by the real human lecturer.
We are at a juncture with our universities where some kind of massive change in paradigm is widely considered necessary. We are at a moment when an evolution in education such as this is both practical and socio-politically possible. Really: Why should access to the best education be limited to some select few students. However such a selection is made, it must by definition restrict some and favor others. This is the core problem, and we can now overcome it.
We are slowly self-destructing as a society. In order to undo centuries of scientific progress, a very powerful cultural and philosophical apparatus had to be assembled and enforced. If this persists, we will systematically reverse all of the scientific progress we have made and prevent ourselves from making any more. It is diabolical.
Have the "professors," and "professors of education," no less, ever taught a class of actual students? And they still say that everyone has the same capability?
Fascinating contributions from Dr. Hooven. Anecdotally, I am a female who always tested in the 99th percentile of mathematical ability on standard tests, but I was massively insecure about my ability and terrified of getting things wrong. I never felt discriminated against by any individuals or institutions. Although I often knew the answer, I was so afraid that I didn't that I never spoke up in class. For years I coasted, doing well without having to work hard in math. Then, as so many people do, I got to a level where I was challenged (Trig/Algebra 3) and I started to find it not as easy anymore. I started to fall behind a little, but I was scared and ashamed about asking for help, so I didn't. It got worse and I ended up having to switch to an easier math class. I never recovered from this and ended up focusing on biology instead of math. I till regret that I never asked for help.
In recent years, it has become common for many mathematicians to state their belief in Ardila's axioms https://fardila.com/ It is truly bizarre to see mathematicians use the word axiom in this context.
His axiom says "Axiom 1. Mathematical potential is equally present in different groups, irrespective of geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries."
It would be hard for me to believe that this guy even believes his own axiom, it's so stupid. Is there any kind of human potential, mathematical or otherwise, that is truly "equally present in different groups, irrespective of geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries"?
Every time that I derive Euler's Formula, together with Euler's Identity, I'm convincingly reminded that pure Mathematics is Discovered rather than Invented.
This is a very common impression. If it is incorrect, it is definitely a very convincing illusion. And it is shared with the vast majority of professional mathematicians and other quantitative types.
I am not sure if we should "make all efforts, short of bureaucratic dictates, to make it possible for talented women [...] to thrive in STEM and the hard sciences." Why make any special efforts at all? Didn't you just argue that drive and temperament are two of the most important factors? How many more decades do we have to go on pretending that talented girls are discouraged from doing STEM?
Ultimately, I don't think women should be encouraged to do work that leads to their unhappiness and discontent, especially when such encouragement tends to involve at least covert discrimination against those who are far more suited to it.
I want to recruit more women into STEM. However, not all women (or men) are suited to it.
I think we should provide attractive, welcoming environments for everyone, including women.
But the fact remains is that STEM is incredibly brutally demanding. And if you are not cut out for it, no matter what your identity, it is probably for the best if you do not pursue it.
As an (ex) Theoretical Physicist I have always loved and used (some) maths, but I just can't 'do' what my mathematician colleagues do. When you're teaching 'math' as a service course for Engineers, for example, it might be appropriate to motivate continuity (and differentiation as a gradient) with reference to functions that can be represented graphically without taking your pen off the paper, but then your math friend fries your simpler brain with the notion of functions that are continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere.
"You're just doing this to wind me up, aren't you?" I would ask in jest.
But they're not. This purity, this penetration into the tiniest details, this drive for precision, and through these things to arrive at understanding, is a wonder to behold.
If I differentiate the sine function I will get the cosine function. This is not the 'white' answer, but the right answer. The sine function may well first have been thought about thousands of years ago by Mbobo Compactsupport deep in the heart of the Congo, and I am saddened that he hasn't been duly credited, but it's irrelevant.
In physics terms perhaps we could say that the charge on an electron is supremely indifferent to the race, ethnicity, or culture, of the person who is measuring it.
So it is with mathematical concepts (as pointed out in the article).
I used to give my students a bit of an exercise. Tell me, I would say, without using the concept of number and as precisely as you can, the difference between 2 cows in a field and three cows in a field. How does that change if we're talking about apples instead of cows?
In other words, I was trying to get at some property that 3 cows (or apples) possess that is different than 2 cows (or apples). Apples and cows are very different things. Apples do not tend to walk around, and you can't milk them. Cows, at least live ones, do not possess a satisfying crunch when you bite into them.
Once you have the idea that *number* is a thing, a property, that can be abstracted we might ask whether it is "socially constructed" or a real, objective, thing?
We can go further. We can imagine a father on his deathbed wishing to leave his 3 sons his wealth so that they each get an equal share. The problem is he has 16 cows - how does he do this without some butchery involved? If only I'd had 4 sons, he might think, then this would have been easy.
Think a bit more and you'll soon discover that in this list of 1 cow, 2 cows, 3 cows, 4 cows, etc there are special numbers of cows for which no number of sons (other than 1 son or sons equal to the number of cows) would lead to a fair split. These special numbers, the prime numbers, just sit there in the number line minding their own business until along comes someone else who notices a kind of *pattern* or well-defined relationship in the way they're distributed and writes a white supremacist paper on the distribution of primes and even goes in for a bit of white self-aggrandizement and calls it The Prime Number Theorem.
Is this distribution "socially constructed" or was it 'there' in the list of numbers waiting to be discovered?
So much whiteness in just a simple list of numbers.
As noted in the article, once this pattern has been noticed, does the race, ethnicity, or culture, of the person doing the noticing matter? It might matter to those who are interested in excoriating the attribution failures of one particular culture, but it matters not one jot to the mathematician.
This is just in a simple list of numbers - and it doesn't get much more basic than that. Are we suggesting that this list itself is somehow imbued with "whiteness", or somehow "rooted in white supremacy"?
Are they suggesting that only white people can understand it?
The thing is that anyone, from any race, of any ethnicity, from any culture, can *check* this relationship for the primes nestling in the number line for themselves. All they have to do is to be able to count.
But only those infused with whiteness, or those who uphold white supremacy, can count, right?
This whole attempt to politicize math is unconscionable. But it is a position that has been emoted into and not *thought* into. As wonderful as this piece is, it will not change the minds of those who bleat about whiteness in their emotional, but deeply stupid, way.
Are we using merit as measured by objective tests such as the SAT as opposed to subjective assessments based on measures such as essays which are easily gamed in our decision making to determine who is being admitted to the top universities, hired or promoted to the best jobs or are we currently discriminating against whites, Asians and men in an attempt to compensate for the past discrimination against others?
If we are currently discriminating based on race and sex and recent Supreme Court cases suggest that we are, then don't those currently being discriminated against have the same legitimate grievances that women and blacks had in the past? Just asking.
Many valid points! Your RED is rapidly morphing into another - Radical EQUITY Dogma, a forced equal outcomes nonsense (fully discredited by the recent Olympics!)
But the (post)modern “justice warriors” looking for relevance have gone even beyond the ideologically driven views on the role of science in society. Neither the Nazis (National Socialists) nor the Soviets (International Socialists) squabbled about the definitions of key “constants”, say that of a “woman”. It is time to grab popcorn and watch those who cannot define what a woman is now argue for gender inequality of any kind. Indeed, your conclusion says it all - opportunities await all those with talent and passion!
She writes: “The idea is that even if there’s no male-female difference in average math or physics ability, there would still be more men at the very high (and low) end of the ability spectrum. " " So true! The low end is getting into politics, and that is why the men are dominating there as well!
"Moreover in the tenure-track hiring, arguably the most important metric of all, their analyses revealed “that women applicants have a substantial advantage over comparable male applicants”."
One need look no further to understand the vehemence with which women in STEM push the narrative that they are discriminated against. They have a good thing going; their advantage depends entirely on the perception that they are systematically victimized by the white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy; therefore they must at all costs defend the perception that this discrimination is real.
In the process, young white boys are actually systematically discriminated against. They are disadvantaged in admissions at the undergraduate and graduate level; discriminated against in hiring, particularly at the tenure track level; they have no special scholarships, mentorship programs, or affiliation groups. As a result of this they become demoralized, completing higher education at far lower rates than women.
Of course the feminists never acknowledge this.
I’ve personally been told by a search committee chair that: “You are on the shortlist, but haven’t got a chance as the university demands a woman”. An earlier employer in Germany refused to support male candidates for independent research group funding.
Just anecdata of course, from somebody who no longer has to care about speaking out :-)
I have had friends with stellar academic backgrounds who were told, "We will never ever hire another single male for a faculty position from now until the end of time. It is imperative that males vanish from this field, the sooner the better." And then, in a few years these males were now perceived to be in newly emerging "victimhood categories" and they became highly sought after by the same institutions that previously rejected them. But by then, they had moved on with their careers.
These transient victimhood categories are just nonsense. Departing from "merit" was a bad idea. Of course, "merit" is sort of subjective, but none of these selection systems are "perfect". However, some seem to be "better" than others.
I was separately informed, by two different sources, that the deans of various Canadian universities had gotten together and agreed to stop hiring white men for the foreseeable future, and that in consequence I had no future in Canadian academia.
Before that, I had an experience in which I got to the top of the shortlist, to the point where I was fielding after-interview calls regarding funding package requirements, before it unaccountably went silent. Was later informed that what had happened was "politics", at which point I recalled the interview with the dean. She informed me at the very beginning that women in STEM was her top priority.
Before that, in another application I heard through the grapevine that the department was determined to hire a woman; the shortlist, remarkably, was all women.
Needless to say, in the aftermath of all of this my motivation more or less disappeared.
Great article. Rather than simply insulting asshats like Gutierrez and Rubel, writing reasoned articles refuting their absurd claims is very good, although I am sad to say I don't think it will help. The Cultural Marxists seem to have captured every research and academic institution out there, we are in the middle of mass psychosis, I don't know that we can reason our way out. But keep it up.
I personally think a lot of the reason that males outperform females in math related and adjacent subjects is both preference and temperament. Two years ago I discovered the Arduino systems (for some home-based data acquisition I needed) I had never heard of it before, and as I have gotten into it (hardware and software) it has become clear to me that the vast majority of people doing Arduino (freely available, cheap and open to anyone - and even promoted mostly now to women and minorities) are boys and men. Even though the Arduino organization, like many academic adjacent entities today, appears pretty woke (all its advertising would be woke approved) and their policies include things like renaming Master-Slave actuators to some other more PC label, its pretty clear its a male dominated field. They also will clearly know this internally, via their own stats, though I doubt they would ever admit it. Arduino is a good case study in many ways because it is so free and open, so to get into it is mostly a matter of interest.
And if women and girls are less involved in Arduino than men (my prediction, without knowing actual Arduino user data) it would have to be mostly because they are not that interested. I am almost 60 years old, and I have known maybe only a couple of women in my entire life who would need or want the kind of 'home-based data acquisition' system I needed. 99% of all the women I have ever met in my life wouldn't even know what that was. Or care. A measurable percentage of all the men I have ever met would be keenly interested in a home-based data acquisition system.
You're correct. We will not reason our way out of this, because we are not dealing with reason, but with psychosis.
What do you need a home-based data system for? You piqued my curiosity 👀
Actually I really needed a driver and controller for some DC motors I was using to develop some kinetic sculptures. But when I got the Arduino Uno microcontroller, I realized immediately that I had a need to monitor relative humidity in some rooms in my house, and could also use some air temp readings, and also wanted to monitor barometric pressure. Mainly because I am an engineer nerd type, who just wants to quantify my world. But once I got Arduino, an entire world of Instrumentation and Control opens up to you, that was once only available to professionals in industry. So my plans and projects now are unlimited, at least for prototyping. And then I built this -
https://projecthub.arduino.cc/steven_lightfoot/the-blowhard-hvac-circulation-blower-assist-ef13c0
That’s super cool. I’ve been thinking about how to grow mushrooms in my house and something like that could be immensely helpful, thanks for the inspiration!
Cool, def check out Arduino, its great for local Instrumentation and Control. There is entire sub section of Arduino users it in local agriculture. Note that it does have some limitations and its not really meant for scaling up to industrial level, but for home projects its pretty great. Especially now that they are adding some cloud functionality for DAS and more wifi boards that allow easier wireless comms.
Also, for the record, Arduino is basically open source, on purpose, so there is Arduino branded HW but also third party equipment which is usually as good and less costly. All the SW and IDE is free from Arduino, their language is a superset of C++. Ironically, given my (surely correct) estimation about Arduino enthusiasts being mostly men and boys, due to inherent temperament and interests, one of the best third party vendors for Arduino HW is Adafruit Industries, headed by Limor Fried (a woman, MIT graduate). They make good stuff.
Very well said. Sadly, I would go further. The present identity based "affirmative action" being directed toward members of protected classes, particularly women, actually has the effect of promoting people who would NOT be competitive on their merits to positions that, we must be honest, they did not earn and do not deserve. Those who still value and act on merit will compensate for this by seeing those promoted by affirmative action as unqualified "DEI hires" and ignore their supposed qualifications in favor of traditional merit based metrics. Sadly, the identify effect will be applied broadly and thus harm those members of protected groups who actually rose to their positions based on merit. This is why the path to a discrimination free society needs must include opposing Ibram Kendi's and feminists' form of discrimination.
IQ is probably the most studied characteristic in psychology. It is also the characteristic most easily measured, ranked etc. IQ studies have consistently produced the curve described herein, with an average that is roughly equivalent between the sexes but with fatter, longer tails - at both ends - for males. This is not going to change however much the fantasists want it to.
Doesn’t mean of course there are no excellent female mathematicians, but it does mean they’re relatively fewer and further between. How this overwhelmingly evidenced is even contentious is beyond me. Hard to avoid the idea that the naysayers are from groups who won’t find themselves at the far right end of the curve and who are therefore incapable of understanding the argument.
I have noticed, over my career, that there are a lot of people who stridently believe that they are MORE worthy or have more value if they are incompetent and/or stupid. And since they cannot compete, they decide that their shortcomings are some sort of indicator of superiority.
The root problem in higher education is that a selection process is required because access is limited. Set aside for an instant here the practical constraints. What if anyone could go to whichever institution they wanted to attend? What if anyone could take instruction from any educator they preferred? The realities of limited spaces and limited time now collapse upon this scenario to make it absurd - but what if it wasn't absurd? Today, and certainly in the near future, it is possible to virtualize teachers by training AI avatars to deeply emulate them. Such software agents could present virtual lectures that would be indistinguishable from the real thing, particularly if presented with 3D VR. Such avatars could respond to questions and interact with students in an individuated way - even more so than in a real lecture hall. After all, in a real lecture students don't generally have to touch the lecturer to be fully in their presence, nor do they get to have lengthy discussions with the lecturer at the expense of the rest of the students. This could be more than good enough for most undergraduates. At some point, once a student has absorbed all they can from the avatar, virtual lectures could be given by the real human lecturer.
We are at a juncture with our universities where some kind of massive change in paradigm is widely considered necessary. We are at a moment when an evolution in education such as this is both practical and socio-politically possible. Really: Why should access to the best education be limited to some select few students. However such a selection is made, it must by definition restrict some and favor others. This is the core problem, and we can now overcome it.
We are slowly self-destructing as a society. In order to undo centuries of scientific progress, a very powerful cultural and philosophical apparatus had to be assembled and enforced. If this persists, we will systematically reverse all of the scientific progress we have made and prevent ourselves from making any more. It is diabolical.
Insecure people have a difficult time appreciating the talents of others.
Have the "professors," and "professors of education," no less, ever taught a class of actual students? And they still say that everyone has the same capability?
Fascinating contributions from Dr. Hooven. Anecdotally, I am a female who always tested in the 99th percentile of mathematical ability on standard tests, but I was massively insecure about my ability and terrified of getting things wrong. I never felt discriminated against by any individuals or institutions. Although I often knew the answer, I was so afraid that I didn't that I never spoke up in class. For years I coasted, doing well without having to work hard in math. Then, as so many people do, I got to a level where I was challenged (Trig/Algebra 3) and I started to find it not as easy anymore. I started to fall behind a little, but I was scared and ashamed about asking for help, so I didn't. It got worse and I ended up having to switch to an easier math class. I never recovered from this and ended up focusing on biology instead of math. I till regret that I never asked for help.
Excellent post.
In the Section entitled "A Warning on Interpreting Data (and the Importance of Academic Freedom in Data Analysis)" of my article at European review, I reviewed some of the literature surrounding causes of participation of women in STEM https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/equality-diversity-and-inclusion-in-the-mathematics-community-a-perspective-on-data-and-policy/A840A9848B6421428C26164E71A965CD
In recent years, it has become common for many mathematicians to state their belief in Ardila's axioms https://fardila.com/ It is truly bizarre to see mathematicians use the word axiom in this context.
His axiom says "Axiom 1. Mathematical potential is equally present in different groups, irrespective of geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries."
It would be hard for me to believe that this guy even believes his own axiom, it's so stupid. Is there any kind of human potential, mathematical or otherwise, that is truly "equally present in different groups, irrespective of geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries"?
Every time that I derive Euler's Formula, together with Euler's Identity, I'm convincingly reminded that pure Mathematics is Discovered rather than Invented.
This is a very common impression. If it is incorrect, it is definitely a very convincing illusion. And it is shared with the vast majority of professional mathematicians and other quantitative types.
I am not sure if we should "make all efforts, short of bureaucratic dictates, to make it possible for talented women [...] to thrive in STEM and the hard sciences." Why make any special efforts at all? Didn't you just argue that drive and temperament are two of the most important factors? How many more decades do we have to go on pretending that talented girls are discouraged from doing STEM?
Ultimately, I don't think women should be encouraged to do work that leads to their unhappiness and discontent, especially when such encouragement tends to involve at least covert discrimination against those who are far more suited to it.
This is a brilliant statement.
I want to recruit more women into STEM. However, not all women (or men) are suited to it.
I think we should provide attractive, welcoming environments for everyone, including women.
But the fact remains is that STEM is incredibly brutally demanding. And if you are not cut out for it, no matter what your identity, it is probably for the best if you do not pursue it.
Excellent and interesting article.
As an (ex) Theoretical Physicist I have always loved and used (some) maths, but I just can't 'do' what my mathematician colleagues do. When you're teaching 'math' as a service course for Engineers, for example, it might be appropriate to motivate continuity (and differentiation as a gradient) with reference to functions that can be represented graphically without taking your pen off the paper, but then your math friend fries your simpler brain with the notion of functions that are continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere.
"You're just doing this to wind me up, aren't you?" I would ask in jest.
But they're not. This purity, this penetration into the tiniest details, this drive for precision, and through these things to arrive at understanding, is a wonder to behold.
If I differentiate the sine function I will get the cosine function. This is not the 'white' answer, but the right answer. The sine function may well first have been thought about thousands of years ago by Mbobo Compactsupport deep in the heart of the Congo, and I am saddened that he hasn't been duly credited, but it's irrelevant.
In physics terms perhaps we could say that the charge on an electron is supremely indifferent to the race, ethnicity, or culture, of the person who is measuring it.
So it is with mathematical concepts (as pointed out in the article).
I used to give my students a bit of an exercise. Tell me, I would say, without using the concept of number and as precisely as you can, the difference between 2 cows in a field and three cows in a field. How does that change if we're talking about apples instead of cows?
In other words, I was trying to get at some property that 3 cows (or apples) possess that is different than 2 cows (or apples). Apples and cows are very different things. Apples do not tend to walk around, and you can't milk them. Cows, at least live ones, do not possess a satisfying crunch when you bite into them.
Once you have the idea that *number* is a thing, a property, that can be abstracted we might ask whether it is "socially constructed" or a real, objective, thing?
We can go further. We can imagine a father on his deathbed wishing to leave his 3 sons his wealth so that they each get an equal share. The problem is he has 16 cows - how does he do this without some butchery involved? If only I'd had 4 sons, he might think, then this would have been easy.
Think a bit more and you'll soon discover that in this list of 1 cow, 2 cows, 3 cows, 4 cows, etc there are special numbers of cows for which no number of sons (other than 1 son or sons equal to the number of cows) would lead to a fair split. These special numbers, the prime numbers, just sit there in the number line minding their own business until along comes someone else who notices a kind of *pattern* or well-defined relationship in the way they're distributed and writes a white supremacist paper on the distribution of primes and even goes in for a bit of white self-aggrandizement and calls it The Prime Number Theorem.
Is this distribution "socially constructed" or was it 'there' in the list of numbers waiting to be discovered?
So much whiteness in just a simple list of numbers.
As noted in the article, once this pattern has been noticed, does the race, ethnicity, or culture, of the person doing the noticing matter? It might matter to those who are interested in excoriating the attribution failures of one particular culture, but it matters not one jot to the mathematician.
This is just in a simple list of numbers - and it doesn't get much more basic than that. Are we suggesting that this list itself is somehow imbued with "whiteness", or somehow "rooted in white supremacy"?
Are they suggesting that only white people can understand it?
The thing is that anyone, from any race, of any ethnicity, from any culture, can *check* this relationship for the primes nestling in the number line for themselves. All they have to do is to be able to count.
But only those infused with whiteness, or those who uphold white supremacy, can count, right?
This whole attempt to politicize math is unconscionable. But it is a position that has been emoted into and not *thought* into. As wonderful as this piece is, it will not change the minds of those who bleat about whiteness in their emotional, but deeply stupid, way.
The question that everyone needs to be asking is:
Are we using merit as measured by objective tests such as the SAT as opposed to subjective assessments based on measures such as essays which are easily gamed in our decision making to determine who is being admitted to the top universities, hired or promoted to the best jobs or are we currently discriminating against whites, Asians and men in an attempt to compensate for the past discrimination against others?
If we are currently discriminating based on race and sex and recent Supreme Court cases suggest that we are, then don't those currently being discriminated against have the same legitimate grievances that women and blacks had in the past? Just asking.
Many valid points! Your RED is rapidly morphing into another - Radical EQUITY Dogma, a forced equal outcomes nonsense (fully discredited by the recent Olympics!)
But the (post)modern “justice warriors” looking for relevance have gone even beyond the ideologically driven views on the role of science in society. Neither the Nazis (National Socialists) nor the Soviets (International Socialists) squabbled about the definitions of key “constants”, say that of a “woman”. It is time to grab popcorn and watch those who cannot define what a woman is now argue for gender inequality of any kind. Indeed, your conclusion says it all - opportunities await all those with talent and passion!
She writes: “The idea is that even if there’s no male-female difference in average math or physics ability, there would still be more men at the very high (and low) end of the ability spectrum. " " So true! The low end is getting into politics, and that is why the men are dominating there as well!