"The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry... The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it."
– Richard Feynman
Are you upset because a man said it? "Math is too male and we need to come up with more female ways of teaching it" is a pretty standard feminist idea. In fact, replace "math" with a wide variety of things.
Recall he's not working under modern PC strictures, not that he necessarily would have subjected himself to them anyhow. He gets to say it directly, not cloak it in endless verbiage.
That said, I actually disagree. Math is what it is and everybody regardless of gender must bend their brain to the subject and not the other way around. I think its fundamental inhumanity is dominant. But you seem to me to be casually implying that his statement is un-PC, and I think it's actually rather shockingly PC, just also very blunt.
No, I'm "upset" because the rest of the article makes it clear that Feynman really did think that women were inherently useless as math -- and even "rational thought" in general:
>Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something.
This is a bit rich for my tastes (but it will no doubt go down very well on this forum). I just don't see why it would be someone's favorite quote, unless they liked making fun of women's intellectual abilities.
I'm genuinely curious if anyone has studied the differences in the sexes when it comes to math.
Why is it no woman has won the fields medal? Why do many talented women stop their academic career at the bachelor and masters level when it comes to mathematics?
I think you would of been able to say that sexism in academia was a reason in the past, but I just don't think that really flies anymore.
Is it possible the genuinely is a difference between mathematical ability between men and women or do people this this is purely cultural?
Two recent studies directly address the question of whether greater male variability in mathematics is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Machin and Pekkarinen (19) reported that the M:F VR in mathematics was significantly >1.00 at the P < 0.05 level among 15-year-old students in 34 of 40 countries participating in the 2003 PISA and among 13-year-old students in 33 of 50 countries participating in the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). However, these data also indicated that the math VR was significantly less than or insignificantly different from 1.00 for some of the countries that participated in these assessments (e.g., Table 2), a finding inconsistent with the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis.
...
Similarly, Penner's cross-nation analysis of the 1995 TIMSS data (20) showed that the proportion of girls scoring above the 95th percentile positively and significantly correlated with several measures of female equality and status, including equity in educational opportunities and representation in the labor force and political offices.
Best I could find in 5 minutes
Consequences in High School and College of Sex Differences in Mathematical Reasoning Ability: A Longitudinal Perspective
Camilla Persson Benbow and Julian C. Stanley
The Johns Hopkins University
Between 1972 and 1974 the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) identified over 2,000 7th and 8th graders who scored as well as a national sample of 11th and 12th grade females on the College Board’s Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Mathematics or Verbal tests. A substantial sex difference in mathematical reasoning ability was found (Benbow & Stanley, 1980b, 1981). The consequences and development of this sex difference over the following 5 years were investigated longitudinally. Over 91 percent (1,996 out of 2,188 SMPY students) participated. This study established that the sex difference persisted over several years and was related to subsequent sex differences in mathematics achievement. The sex difference in mathematics did not reflect differential mathematics course taking. The abilities of males developed more rapidly than those of females. Sex differences favoring males were found in participation in mathematics, performance on the SAT-M, and taking of and performance on mathematics achievement and Advanced Placement Program examinations. SMPY females received better grades in their mathematics courses than SMPY males did. Few significant sex differences were found in attitudes toward mathematics.
Well, I can do better than that in 5 minutes but that's because I have paid a lot of attention to this question.
I think the most conclusive evidence that M/F math gaps are cultural in origin lies in international studies, where the gap ranges from negligible in progressive countries (eg. Scandinavia) to massive in less equal societies (eg Turkey).
Generally the anglo-saxon socities (UK, USA, Australia) are "middling" in this.
Of course this only covers "normal" math abilities (ie the ability to understand school/college math). "Genius" level ability is a lot harder to quantify, partly because it is such small number statistics and there are many confounding social variables to do with access to and selection pressures of post-graduate education.
Wanted to do more than upvote this - after a quick read, the linked paper seems an unusually useful resource on this subject, and I certainly recommend others take a look. Thanks for the link!
The "obvious evidence to the contrary" was the math gender gap, which was very real at the time. If you actually read the story, it's quite clear that Feynman is telling the story at his own expense (showing how wrong he had been about girls + math). There's no question he was sexist, but see _debug_ and blackguardx's tandem quote to see that he regarded them as equals mentally: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197382
I did read the whole article, but did not get the impression that it was meant to be a joke at his expense. That's just not supported by the text. The most he's willing to say is that "if it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it [the female mind]." Hardly a U-turn.
Also, the quote you referenced does absolutely nothing to show that RF regarded women as his mental equals. It just shows that he sometimes explained stuff to them -- not surprising, given that he presumably had some female students/colleagues.
In any case, whatever the merits of Feynman's position at the time, I'm bemused that anyone could find his views on this topic quoteworthy.
Although, in Feynman's defence, practically no-one that he met in his life was his intellectual equal, man or woman... I think it's just that he was more willing to actually say that for women, whereas he obviously felt a social need to keep that thought to himself when it concerned men.
I think that "math is what it is" is a false statement, at least in the way you intended it. The way math is represented is not at all inherent to mathematical structure (i.e. left to right, the characters you use, etc.) and I'm sure many procedures we use to solve math equations could be done in different ways (long division vs. short division, for example).
It is possible that the way we represent math and the way we solve mathematical problems is somehow inherently more difficult for females, and that a different system might better.
But I have no idea what system that would be, and practically I don't think it's worth it.
If such a system could be created then it would be invaluable. It would help open up mathematics to literally half the population. That would help more advances to be made in mathematics, and it should be trivial to translate from one system to another once the two systems were created.
With all that said, I do not think it is true. I very much doubt anything about our approach to mathematics is inherently gender biased and as a current grad student in math I find the gender ratios in the classes I am taking are biased towards males, but only minutely. (5 males, 4 females in my Comp Func Theory class for instance, 6 males, 5 females in another I am taking).
While our representation and symbology is of our choosing, the concepts of mathematics are what they are and we must approach them on their terms if we hope to make progress.
For what it's worth, Richard encouraged his sister Joan to earn a Ph.D. in physics. She worked for years as an astrophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. I had the good fortune of having Joan present at my first scientific talk way back in 1994. I was confused on one point, and she patiently explained to me how a magnetotail extending to infinity could still satisfy div B = 0.
"The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry... The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it." – Richard Feynman
http://www.phy.ilstu.edu/pte/310content/nature/feynman.html