DailyDirt: Cheering For Mathletes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Mar 24th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

It's a no-brainer that math is a critically important subject. Okay, a lot of people probably don't remember much calculus from high school -- or how to do "long division" -- but the exposure to advanced math and encouraging everyone to appreciate math is still laudable. And making sure kids aren't turned off by math will hopefully lead to more people involved in STEM fields in the future.

Amazon's Education business unit is aiming to get teachers and students to improve their math skills and attitudes towards math. This "With Math I Can" effort is an attempt to encourage girls (and boys) who aren't confident with numbers to stick with math and math-related subjects. [url]
A study of nearly half a million boys and girls (14-16yo) from 69 countries shows that there's a negligible gender gap when it comes to math skills. A few countries favored boys over girls in math tests, but a couple of countries also had girls beating the boys. So the differences are chalked up to effort and teaching, not any innate ability differences between boys and girls. [url]
Apparently, girls seem to do more homework and play less with computers than boys do. According to an OECD report, boys test better at math than girls in many countries -- but girls in Shanghai seem to be really good at math. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: education, homework, learning, math, stem, teaching
Companies: amazon

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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2016 @ 5:19pm

"time debt" for girls is different because house chores...
https://nphr.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/the-nphr-on-the-gates-foundation-letter-2016/

Melinda Gates has been promoting the idea that girls have more housework to do than boys.... so there's less time for them to do their homework. how does that mesh with the "girls do more homework than boys" stat?
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- JoeCool (profile), 24 Mar 2016 @ 5:33pm
  
  Re: "time debt" for girls is different because house chores...
  She's thinking of her own childhood (maybe) and projecting that on modern society. My sister rarely if ever did any housework. My mom, either. My dad was the cook and cleaned the kitchen. My mom did laundry, but little else. Us kids had to clean our rooms and the living areas, but my sister always found ways to avoid the work.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2016 @ 5:42pm
    
    Re: Re: "time debt" for girls is different because house chores...
    Yup, she is probably thinking all girls are just like she was.
    
    Everyone is different. I get very skeptical of claims which pigeon hole people into stereotypes.
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TRX (profile), 25 Mar 2016 @ 12:33pm

The several elementary and junior high schools I went to assigned extra math problems as punishment. And if you completed your schoolwork early, you got assigned math punishment for that, too.

As a combination of punishment and busy-work, it soured any attraction I ever had for math.
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