Comments on: Mathematical Aptitude https://partnews.mit.edu/2012/03/21/mathematical-aptitude/ Treating newsgathering as an engineering problem... since 2012! Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:20:25 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2 By: Ethan Zuckerman https://partnews.mit.edu/2012/03/21/mathematical-aptitude/#comment-311 Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:39:04 +0000 http://partnews.brownbag.me/?p=454#comment-311 Neha, you’ve taken on a truly thorny problem here. As you note, Summers is offering three hypotheses – the high powered job, the high-end aptitude, and the socialization hypothesis. You’re right to point out that they are interconnected – socialization of women away from STEM careers may leave fewer motivated to compete for jobs in the field, as well as rational choices about jobs. But where this gets really interesting is, as you note, the questions of high-end variance.

What might be worthwhile is taking Summers’s idea to its logical conclusion – if there’s a major disparity at the .01% level in mathematical talent, just how much of the disparity could that represent? What additional factors do we have to posit to explain disparities? The influence of very visible male STEM figures who are somehow skewing the rest of the distribution? What social factors explain the different results in Asian-American populations?

What’s challenging, I think, about the graphs you’ve put forward are that the SAT and ACT disparity looks like a good defense of Summers’s case – would be very interesting to think about what visuals could complicate or counter that narrative…

Excited that you’re digging into such a rich question in a serious and sustained way.

]]> By: Helen Shariatmadari https://partnews.mit.edu/2012/03/21/mathematical-aptitude/#comment-297 Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:20:25 +0000 http://partnews.brownbag.me/?p=454#comment-297 Hi Neha – I like what you’ve done – i wonder if you can find any STEM stats for Iran – I know every one of my female cousins (about 6) is an engineer of some kind there – a result of the country having to manufacture most of their own hardware over the last few decades and of the oil industry. Its only anecdotal, but there may well be more equality both in the pipeline and at the highest levels there.

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