Word: mathe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...well known that teen-age boys tend to do better at math than girls, that male high school students are more likely than their female counterparts to tackle advanced math courses like calculus, that virtually all the great mathematicians have been men. But why? Are women born with less mathematical ability? Or does society's sexism slow their progress...
...Johns Hopkins University researchers tried to settle the eternal nature/ nurture debate. Julian Stanley - who is well respected for his work with precocious math students of both sexes - and Camilla Benbow had tested 10,000 talented seventh-and eighth-graders between 1972 and 1979. Using the Scholastic Aptitude Test, in which math questions are meant to measure ability rather than knowledge, they discovered distinct sex differences. While the verbal abilities of the males and females hardly differed, twice as many boys as girls scored over 500 (on a scale of 200 to 800) on mathematical ability; at the 700 level...
Benbow and Stanley's findings, which were published in Science, disturbed some men and not a few women. Now there is comfort for those people in a new study from the University of Chicago that suggests math is not, after all, a natural male domain. With Researcher Sharon Senk, Professor Zalman Usiskin, a specialist in high school mathematics curriculums and an author of several math texts, studied 1,366 tenth-graders. They were selected from geometry classes and tested on their ability to solve geometry proofs, a subject requiring both abstract reasoning and spatial ability. Says Usiskin...
...from twelfth grade (in contrast to 75% in the U.S.), despite a demanding academic agenda. By the end of third grade, children must master 881 of 2,000 essential Japanese ideograms; by sixth grade they should know 1,000 more. During high school, the Japanese must cover far more math and science than their American counterparts. By the time they take their college entrance exams, students are prepared to handle questions in English grammar, as well as Japanese, and in subject matter not generally approached until college in the U.S., such as calculus, probability and statistics...
...revised test will eliminate a section of multiple choice grammar and syntax problems, replacing it with a 30-minute essay that will not be scored by the testing service but instead sent directly to colleges. In addition, a math section will be replaced by an abstract reasoning section that will better represent the type of skill a law student would have to possess, Barher said...