News on the math gap
We interrupt these long essays on religious belief to bring you a tidbit of news about math education!
Back at the beginning of the month, the MIT News Office reported on a recent paper by economics professor Glenn Ellison and econ PhD student Ashley Swanson regarding the gender gap in math performance. Their research showed “not only that girls are a small minority of elite high school math students, but also that the prevalence of high-achieving girls in math varies from school to school.” It’s a very interesting result.
This extreme concentration of talent strongly indicates the crucial role that environmental factors, not just innate ability, play in shaping the accomplishments of students. “It’s significant that the top girls are coming from a very, very small subset of schools with strong math programs,” says Ellison. “That suggests most of the girls who could be doing well, aren’t doing well. The thousands and thousands of other schools in the United States must have a lot of talent, too, but it’s not coming out.”
I’m really happy about this work because so much of the dialogue about gender disparity in STEM fields centers around anecdotes, or on assertions of trends which, while convincing, are still assertions. And I think that’s part of why it’s still such a contentious issue. If we’re ever going to reach a consensus about the extent of the problem and what, if anything, should be done about it, we need to roll up our sleeves and crunch some numbers. (And okay, I’ll admit, I’m also happy about this paper because it makes me feel a little more secure about not having done so well on the AMC back in high school.)
There’s a PDF of the paper online, so give that a read if you’re interested in more details.
Tragedy at ASU
A most tragic and unfortunate wake-up call to anyone involved in university education, particularly graduate studies:
A male graduate student committed suicide in front of a professor at around 11:40 a.m. Monday [October 26] in the College of Design South building on the [Arizona State University] Tempe campus.
David Solnick, a 59-year-old student in the graphic design program, was talking with Associate Professor Mookesh Patel inside Patel’s office when the student pulled out a handgun and shot himself, ASU Police spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina said.
I don’t know anything else about the story other than what’s covered in the link above, but the whole situation is certainly something worth pondering. Graduate school is a real pressure cooker pretty much everywhere, and while suicide is obviously not a healthy response, I can’t honestly say it’s an entirely surprising one to me. Can anything be done about it? I don’t have the answers, but for a thought-provoking discussion about the balance between the kind of struggle that’s a genuine challenge to learn from and the kind of struggle that makes you feel hopeless, go check out this post by Isis the Scientist as well as the comments that follow.
Our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends of Mr. Solnick as well as Professor Patel.
Questionable Ethics #4
A couple times in this series we’ve responded to articles where Randy Cohen simply seemed to be unnaturally definitive and certain when faced with issues that had lots of gray area. This time, though, I really think he’s just outright wrong. The letter in question:
My listing on ratemyprofessors.com has a few positive ratings, but the majority are from students who gripe about the workload and the density of my lectures. May I suggest to my more-satisfied students that they post a rating on the Web site? NAME WITHHELD, CALIFORNIA
No, says Cohen. It’s “skewing the results” and it’s not ethical. He at least is a little less definitive than usual, quoting a professor who thinks it’s necessary and saying that he “sympathizes” with the position. But really, I think he’s missing the whole point of how the internet works.
How much respect ratemyprofessors.com (or R.M.P., as it’s called in the article), is not clear. To many, posting negative evaluations of your professors on the site is about as worthwhile as writing graffiti about them on a bathroom wall. To others, it’s an honest effort to evaluate professor’s teaching, helpful when many departments ignore teaching in favor of research and other achievements when evaluating professors. I did a little bit of research to try to see which is more true. Looking up professors I know, both from classes I took as an undergrad and those I’ve TAed for as a grad student, I found the ratings correlated pretty well with what I thought of them. On the other hand, the site has a category for rating whether the professor is hot, and whether the class is easy (though they aren’t included in the overall ranking). It’s badly designed, the search function doesn’t work, and the front page sensationalizes bad reviews of famous professors.
If you really do see the site as complete junk, then obviously it’s fine to defend yourself against slander and gossip. That could justify actually lying and creating false users to submit fake reviews. Asking some of the students who like you to say so on the site really is really not so bad.
Even if you think these are good, worthwhile reviews, Cohen seems to not understand how internet polls work. People who have a vested interest in them try to get others to go and vote. You can bet that someone who hated your class put up a facebook status update asking all their friends in the class to submit negative reviews. This doesn’t make the results bad—it just means they measure enthusiasm of those who like/dislike you at least as much as the measure the number of such people. No one would tell presidential candidates that “getting out the vote” was “skewing” the results. You’re supposed to do that. If the reviews submitted represent real positive opinions, there is no way in which anyone is lying.
I think the bigger problem, which Cohen doesn’t even mention, is that such a suggestion coming from a professor to a student won’t appear entire voluntary. No student tells a professor they really hate their teaching. If a student’s view of the class isn’t as positive as the professor thinks, it puts them in a really awkward situation. That is maybe not such a fair way to treat a student. I could imagine, though, that this could be done in a sensitive and reasonable-enough way to prevent this issue. If so, I see no problem with it at all.
Philly libraries closing?
The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that the city’s library system plans to shut down on October 2.
The Free Library of Philadelphia has posted notices at its branches and on its web site advising users that all libraries will close at the end of business on Oct. 2 if the state Legislature does not act on the city’s budget request.
The notices also say that all material will now be due Oct. 1 and that nothing can be borrowed after Sept. 30.
Besides closing libraries, the Nutter administration’s so-called Plan C doomsday budget includes eliminating court-system funding, shutting down all recreation centers and laying off up to 3,000 workers, including police and firefighters.
Layoff notices could go out on Friday if the Legislature does not approve the city’s request for a temporary sales-tax hike and a two-year deferral of payments into the pension fund.
I admit I don’t know the whole back story, and this does sound a little bit like an attention-grabbing stunt meant to pressure the legislature. Even if it were a stunt, though (which I doubt), it’s such an extreme one that it still means the situation is very dire. I mean, it’s not necessary to cut funding for libraries and fire departments and police departments and rec centers and courts (?!) in order to get people’s attention. Any one of them would be plenty if that were the only reason. The city government has posted this PDF showing the service changes possible under “Plan C.” It includes more cuts, such as reduced trash collection and the closing of the entire Fairmount Park system.
The whole thing sounds dreadful, but I admit it was the library system closing that really tugged at my heartstrings. When I was growing up, the highlight of my week was biking to the local library with my family to return the picture books that filled our backpacks, and to fill our bags up again with new ones. Libraries contribute so much to public literacy, even just by insinuating the expectation that people be literate, and that they ought to value literacy and information availability. I can’t imagine a major city like Philadelphia going on without them, especially considering their longstanding history of free libraries. It’s always sad when people lose their jobs, but cutting back on a particular service (as many of the budget cuts would do) is different from cutting it out entirely.
It’s Thursday already, and I haven’t been able to dig up any news about progress on this budget. Here’s hoping that things turn around soon.
End teacher tenure
The American education system needs fixing in a lot of ways. It’s a complicated issue, but one relatively simple reform that I think would result in significant improvements is the elimination of teacher tenure.
I’m not convinced that tenure is ever the best idea, but at least for professors, I can see some positive utility. In colleges and universities, professors are teaching and discussing new ideas at the forefront of research and understanding. These may be controversial and objectionable to some, but because they’re where the current advances are being made, they have to be discussed in the classroom. In order to protect the ability of professors to challenge conventional wisdom and to expose students to new ideas, it might be necessary to guarantee them a job with virtually no strings attached (i.e., give them tenure).
In elementary, middle, and high schools, however, teachers are working from curricula, the details of which they usually have little control over. Teachers are not in a position to be able to assert sweeping challenges to the conventional wisdom, and even if they were I’d argue that that’s not a good thing for them to be doing. Primary and secondary education is a time for students to be learning the basics, the well-established and essential background. (Of course, there is some grey area here about what counts as “objectionable” and “controversial,” given the recent disputes about teaching evolution. I’d say that’s more related to a separate issue of who determines curricula; I currently lean towards preferring a nationally standardized one, but that’s an issue for another post.)
So, why have teacher tenure? I really can’t think of any good reason. And with stories such as this one out of New York City, it’s clear that there are major downsides. When the city closes failing schools, they’re required to keep paying the salaries of the tenured teachers who worked there, even though they’re no longer working. Other schools looking to hire teachers are wary of hiring out of that pool, since the stigma of having taught at a failing school hangs over their heads. Hiring brand new teachers and continuing to pay the old ones puts severe strain on their already-strained budget, so the city instituted a hiring freeze, telling principals they could only hire teachers out of the pool. The principals would rather leave the positions vacant. There’s no winning scenario for these principals, these schools—these students. Either they get bad (or at least unconvincingly good) teachers, or they get no teachers at all.
A better solution, but one which I’m sure would require arduous renegotiation with the teachers’ union, would be to allow the district to terminate the contracts of teachers who had remained in the pool for some certain amount of time. If they can’t convince any other school to take them on, even when there are many vacant positions, it doesn’t make sense for the district to continue supporting them. They’re not teaching!
It would also make more sense for schools in general to be able to get rid of teachers who weren’t teaching, even if they were performing their lack of teaching in a classroom, under the pretext of educating. I’m talking about bad teachers. Yes, they exist. And for all the hubbub every politician loves to make about improving the quality of American education, it’s surprising that this simple measure hasn’t yet been instituted.
As I see it, the bottom line is that teachers are getting substantially more job security than everyone else, in exchange for no real benefit to society. Sure, that job security is pleasant for them, but why do teachers in particular deserve such unique protection? If your company decides to close the branch office where you work, unless you’re fortunate enough to get transferred elsewhere, you get laid off. That’s sad, but people live through it. And if you’re bad at your job, your boss can fire you. Tenure makes teachers immune from these outcomes, and it merely serves to protect bad teachers and thwart the efforts of teachers who are more qualified and competent. It ought to be eliminated.
Dear Prudence
No, not the Beatles’ song, the advice column on Slate.com! I love Emily Yoffe’s advice, and the sense of humor in her columns and videos, but I have to say I found something lacking in the answers she gave regarding this math grad student who wrote to her during a Washington Post chat a few days ago. Here’s the student’s original question and her reply.
Philadelphia, Penn.: I’m a graduate student in mathematics, and my particular area is very abstract. When people ask me what I do, or see me with a textbook and ask what I’m reading, no matter how simplified an explanation I give them, inevitably the person remarks that my area is “way beyond” them or that they’d “never be able to grasp that”. I always want to tell them, “You definitely won’t with that attitude.” To me, all of these concepts are perfectly intuitive, and while I’m certainly aware that not everyone has my capacity for, or interest in, mathematics, I am still annoyed by all of these people putting themselves down to me—did they ever try to understand the subject? At least some of them might find it easier and more interesting than they expected! For some reason, they all seem to take pride in how poor their math ability is, or at the very least they aren’t troubled by it. Should I be harsher and just say “Yes indeed, this is much too hard for you”? How do you suggest I respond to these kind of comments?
Emily Yoffe: A few years ago, in an attempt to help my daughter with her math homework, I enrolled in the elementary school math prep program, Kumon. I scored at the first grade level. Even if I tried, I probably couldn’t truly understand what you’re doing. But I would be interested if you could explain what this math is used for—modeling subprime mortgages? Global warming? Then we’d have something to talk about. So ignore the self-put downs, and don’t add any of your own. Instead think of it as an opportunity to show that what you do is interesting and can—on some level—be grasped.
Later in the chat, someone else wrote in to say exactly what I’d been thinking. If I didn’t know better (I didn’t even know about this chat thing until yesterday), I’d have sworn it was actually me.
“Math? That’s over my head”: I think this writer deserves more of an answer. I’m a woman in physics, and nearly everyone makes a self-deprecating comment when I say so. The point really is this: there is a cultural pride in innumeracy that doesn’t exist for illiteracy—no one will brag about not being able to read, yet feel free to essentially brag about not being good at math. This is not people being candid about their abilities. It actually is a way of dismissing the importance of the field of study by implying that it has no cultural necessity or meaning. There has to be a way of responding to this, but subtly encouraging people to believe that it can be understood (with perhaps some effort—but what doesn’t take effort?). Most people can do math to at least the calculus level with time and effort, not talent. And most people can understand even high mathematical concepts, if not perform them, if they’d get past the mental block. This hurts everybody!
Emily Yoffe: I’m sure most people could change their carburetor with some time and effort, too. Instead of lecturing people about how their innumeracy hurts everyone, understand that people are complimenting you on your impressive skills. So come up with some things to say about your field that can engage even the innumerate, like me, in conversation.
I get what she’s saying here. In terms of polite conversation, certainly it’s inappropriate to lecture and berate someone who was just trying to make small talk with you. And people in math/science fields should certainly work on a simplified, clear description of their job so that they can explain it to people without four hours and a chalkboard. That part, I buy.
What I think Emily doesn’t understand, though, is that it’s quite possible (really, extremely probable) that this math grad student is not doing anything that is useful for anything, in a way that could be explained without four hours and a chalkboard. There’s a whole lot more to math than calculus and statistics. She asks, “But I would be interested if you could explain what this math is used for—modeling subprime mortgages? Global warming?” I can easily imagine the answer is, “Nothing.” Nothing like that, at least. Maybe it’s just used for solving other problems that pretty much only exist in the world of mathematics.
That’s not to say that it will never be used for anything else. There are plenty of theorems proved long ago by mathematicians that were only recently discovered to be useful for describing physical systems. The thing is, that’s not the point. We don’t expect all occupations or fields of study to be “useful” in some way that drastically betters the course of human history. Sometimes, they’re just interesting or enjoyable. Sometimes, it’s not useful in the sense of building a better mousetrap or curing the common cold, but useful in the sense of adding to our understanding of what we are made of and how the universe works. Even if we can’t build tiny computers out of that understanding, it’s good that people are developing it.
My advice to the math grad student would be: tell people how interested you are in your research. Tell them how much you love solving puzzles, and how satisfying it is to complete a proof. Then ask them about their job, and move the conversation along elsewhere.
I was saddened to see that our Dear Prudence doesn’t give any advice to the people approaching math grad students everywhere and saying things like, “Pshew, math! That stuff is way over my head.” My guess is, from the way she answers, that she has on occasion been that person. I would hope that people who make those kind of comments learn two things. First, it’s incredibly other-izing; second, it kills the conversation and puts the burden of recovery on the person you’re speaking to. Those two things make it rude, so you should find some other way to respond.
Let’s deal with the first issue. Comments like “Oh, I could never do that” and the like make it sound as though the mathematician (or scientist) is some kind of alien being imbued with freakish abilities. You may think it sounds like a compliment, but it doesn’t feel like one. It’s usually said with a tone of surprised disdain—it’s not just that you don’t know the math, but also that you would never, ever want to—so it sounds like you’re saying, “You could never be a normal person like me.”
Secondly, when people say things like, “I could never do that”… we already know. We operate under the assumption that most of the people we interact with outside the university do not have graduate degrees in math or science. You are saying something as obvious as, “Occasionally, it is cloudy outside.” Additionally, the natural responses to a statement such as this are either self-aggrandizing, insulting, or patronizing, and that is an awkward position to be put in. We struggle to find a way to respond to your remarks—hence the letter to an advice columnist. Good small talk doesn’t just mean saying the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how inane or impossible it is to answer. If you’re going to kill the conversation, do it in such a way that places the burden on yourself, and transition to a new thing to talk about.
There are bigger issues here—as we’ve said before, they encourage the already-widespread belief that it’s fine to be bad at math—but I thought it was worth pointing out that, in addition, they make for really unpleasant conversation.
No stupid questions
Marketing guru Seth Godin wrote today about what to do when smart people are hard to understand. His first suggestion—a great one—is to ask for a definition or an explanation right away. “You’ll be amazed,” he writes, “at how smart and engaging this makes you seem if you say it at the right time.”
As a student and a sometimes-teacher of science and math, I cringed a little. I think Seth is right in general, but I think that statements such as this one perpetuate people’s fear of asking questions, which runs rampant in my classes and seminars. Sure, I could look brilliant if I ask at the right time, but … what if it’s not the right time? I could look like an idiot! Then the expected value calculation is something like, (big reward [positive payout] x small probability) + (big embarrassment [negative payout] x big probability), which probably comes out to zero at best.
I’ve been in those situations where the question I thought was stupid turns out to be really crucial. And (I think) I’ve impressed a professor or two at those times. But I’ve also been in plenty of situations where I didn’t know something everyone expected me to know, or my question betrayed a fundamental lack of understanding of what we were talking about in the first place. That made me feel pretty stupid.
The fact is, it’s always important to ask. Not knowing doesn’t mean you’re not smart—intelligence is different from knowledge. That means that asking the question can only make you look as though you don’t have the knowledge required to answer the question (which is true); it does not reflect on your personal intelligence. That’s why we like to say that there are no stupid questions. In order to help people feel comfortable asking when they need or want to know, it’s important to separate these concepts as much as possible. I think that the seemingly-reassuring “It might make you look smart!” just reinforces the connection and reminds you that you might not.
Secular, not atheist
For the third post of Atheist Week, I want to talk about a common complaint I hear and read with regard to rules that restrict things like teaching creationism (or “the controversy”) in science classrooms, or singing Christmas carols at school assemblies in December, or including an invocation at government events. Some people argue that failing to mention or include religion is equivalent to teaching children to be atheist or enforcing atheism upon the nation. Steven Novella’s recent post rebutting Michael Egnor includes an example of this. (Responding to a blogger, Egnor writes, “Perhaps Mr. Sandefur desires to indoctrinate children in atheism, perhaps he doesn’t.”)
This complaint is incredibly misguided. I think it’s fairly obvious why, so this post will be relatively short. It’s not an explanation I usually see given, though, so I think it’s still worth putting out there.
A lack of prayer or a lack of Christmas carols is not equivalent to forcing everyone to chant together, “There is no God.” It’s merely an omission of something which applies to the beliefs of some but not all. Very few people actually incorporate religion into every moment of their lives. Even people who would describe themselves as devout don’t continually sing hymns or thank God aloud in a speech before every action. Ten more minutes of the day spent not praying or not singing hymns or not talking about how awesome God is doesn’t actually make much difference.
The fact is, “secular” does not mean “atheist.” From Merriam-Webster’s:
1 a: of or relating to the worldly or temporal <secular concerns> b: not overtly or specifically religious <secular music> c: not ecclesiastical or clerical <secular courts> <secular landowners>
While it may be true that atheists aren’t interested in an alternative or supplement to the secular aspect of life, it’s clearly also the case that religious people’s lives do involve the secular aspect too. The secular is what we all have in common. Because of that, common events we all share in such as public schools and government functions should be restricted to secular activities.
Surprising as it may seem, religious values and secular values do not have to contradict each other. In the vast majority of cases, religion teaches, “X is good because God says so,” and secular reasoning says “X is good because it promotes general welfare and is socially expedient.” Secular values aren’t the negation or antithesis of religious values. Unless proponents of religion really want to argue that they absolutely don’t care at all about their (or anyone else’s) well-being in the here-and-now, they have secular concerns. Secular events allow the religious and nonreligious to be represented, but once you include religion, you make your event exclusive.
More on words
As it happens, I’ve been rereading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and I thought this paragraph was worth quoting after yesterday’s post. If you don’t know the story, it’s about a mentally retarded man who receives experimental brain surgery to drastically increase his IQ.
Am I a genius? I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I’m exceptional—a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.
(Emphasis is original.) That was written in 1966.
Entertainment, meet science
Although I felt a little guilty at the time for not sitting in technical talks at every opportunity, I’m really glad I stopped in at the Physics and Culture session at the APS March Meeting. (Professor Natelson, I agree with your student — it’s too bad you missed it!) There were several talks that discussed the (typically low) accuracy of science in popular movies and television, and how scientists ought to feel about it. The general consensus among the speakers was that, though we should try for greater accuracy, even bad science was all right because it got people interested in science and it provided a springboard from which we could begin conversations about how to do it right.
One of these speakers was Jennifer Ouellette from the National Academy of Sciences, explaining the NAS’s Science and Entertainment Exchange program. Basically, they match up directors and producers with scientific experts, so that whatever they’re directing and producing can be informed by the scientist’s expertise. This isn’t just about sci-fi flicks. Any time you have special effects, you have to make decisions about how you represent physics on-screen. (Of course, even when you live in a fantasy universe, there are some things we have trouble suspending our disbelief about.) Maybe you just want someone lecturing on math or science in the background of a scene, and you want to make sure what they’re saying is at all coherent. There are many contexts in which the Exchange can make, and has been making, valuable contributions.
I was really excited to hear about this program, and I think it’s great that the NAS is coordinating it. As Ivan Schuller (who spoke later) pointed out, people get bored if you tell them you’re going to “educate” them, but they can’t wait to be “entertained.” It’s good for scientists to make friends with Hollywood, because they can help us teach people things without making them feel like they’re being taught… but it’s next to impossible to do alone. An organization to act as an interface is a brilliant idea.
If you want to be in SEE’s database of scientists they can contact, let them know! (Contact information is on their website.) Jennifer told us that they’re actually looking for more condensed matter / materials science experts… but maybe she was just catering to the March Meeting crowd.