Hi Sarah (and all),
On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:31:43 -0400
Sarah Stierch <
sarah.stierch@gmail.com> wrote:
> Nice article, thanks for sharing Lennart!
>
> "She was consistently told by teachers in adolescence
> then later by colleagues, that the things she was interested in were
> things women didn't do, and that there were no good female
> mathematicians," Dr. Pippenger said.
>
> It's reasoning like this, and the one that you quoted below about
> stereotypes, kept me from pursuing a degree in computer science. I
> remember looking into the school when I was a young undergrad and I felt
> so intimidated, and then was told that I'd have to take certain math
> classes. Which frustrated me, as I could do basic language coding and
> write html off the top of my head. I flunked the math classes I had to
> take, and 10 years later found out I had a math disability. (And it
> wasn't my parents who were telling me not to do it, it was professors,
> etc. Regardless of my poor math skills, almost every single person I
> know who codes jokes that "you don't /need/ to know math." Someday I'll
> take some classes in something (just for fun, I suppose)..or perhaps
> there will be a "N00bs super simple MediaWiki fun day that even your
> grandma could learn to code at!" event.
>
The perpetuation of these stereotypes is often geographical, as in Israel, for
example, many female high school students graduate with 5 points of maths,
5 points of physics, and other such "Realistic Sciences"-oriented subjects,
and when my sister studied in the Technion ( http://www.technion.ac.il/ ),
which was close to when I graduated, there were 30% of female students studying
Computer Science there. That put aside, I studied Electrical Engineering (which
in the Technion can easily end up as something close to what Americans know as
Computer Engineering[1]), where only 10% of the students were female, and
it's most likely due to a low percentage of female students who applied there.
In any case, there is no good reason to propagate these stereotypes, or for
girls and women to feel intimidated from studying maths. Like you, I also feel
that you don't need too much mathematics for most of the daily work involving
programming, but it does crop up in various contexts in computer science. I
wouldn't encourage completely getting rid of mathematics from the CS
curriculums (or even from software engineering ones) because then we end up
with a similar syndrome to what is described here:
http://xkcd.com/547/
We can still teach programming to people without a good knowledge of
maths, and many children (or pre-teens or teenagers or whatever you wish to
call them) have been studying programming before they even studied Algebra.
<footnotes>
[1] - one should note that in the Technion, Computer Engineering is a combined
Electrical Engineering/Computer Science specialisation, which is more
demanding than either degree, so an Electrical Engineering proper graduate is
not allowed to say he has a degree in Computer Engineering, but this is a
different (and somewhat sad) story.
</footnotes>
> I'm not disappointed with how my path curved and turned thus far, but,
> after reading /Unlocking the Clubhouse/[1] and every time I read an
> article like this, it just reminds me more and more of the experiences I
> had as a young person that kept me out of the lab. The odd thing, is
> that I ended up entering into a field that is upwards of 80% dominated
> by women. I wonder of computer science can take any cues from museum
> studies.
>
> On that note, I'm sure I'm not the only person on this mailing list that
> took a different path than the one they wanted due to popular and
> personal pressure.
>
Well, as a teenager, I planned on becoming a mathematician (I had somewhat
different interests as a younger child). Then after high school I got a few
jobs as a software developer, and decided to study something related. After a
failed attempt at studying Mathematics and Computer Science in tau.ac.il (I
freaked out completely, due to silly misconceptions), I worked for a few
months in a different workplace and then started studying Electrical
Engineering (like I said, more like what Americans call "Computer
Engineering") there, while being more mentally prepared for that, and after a
bumpy and eventful ride, graduated. Even in the Technion, there were several
things I initially wanted to specialise in, which I didn't because they seemed
too intimidating, counter-intuitive (at least for me) and/or difficult (I
still have a trauma from Maxwell’s Equations).
I've contemplated getting a post-graduate degree, but I've been thinking of
getting one in Linguistics instead of in something more technical. However,
I'm a little afraid of needing to cram a lot of Latin and/or Greek vocabulary.
Regards,
Mr. Shlomi Fish (sorry for the brain-dump).
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