Comments on: Gaming is Not a Genetic Trait (Part II)

By: Tommi

Tommi — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:23:25 +0000

There’s also some studies that indicate the following: Suppose there are two groups of students, A and B. (Boys and girls, long and short people, red-haired or not, …). If teacher assumes that A are better than B, then A will fare better than B.

So, if teachers assume boys to be better than girls at maths, then boys will, in general, fare better than girls.

From what I remember, girls do have a higher average and lower variation, so that there are more boys who are really good or really bad at math. This all applies in Finland, maybe elsewhere.

By: dovearrow

dovearrow — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:25:12 +0000

Thank you for the link. You don’t happen to know the name of the study do you? I’m curious because as I stated in my blog, the research I looked at stated that men’s scores are both higher and lower than the highest and lowest scores of women in math. I’d therefore be interested to know if men still have the lowest scores overall, or if that gender disparity has also disappeared in this new study.

By: diningphilosophers

diningphilosophers — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:49:11 +0000

Hi–
This analysis is interesting. However, you’ve made the assumption that there is something to the idea of innate mathematical talent being more common in men than in women. For this reason, I wanted to bring the following article to your attention:
Math study finds girls are just as good as boys. The upshot of this recent study is that the imbalance in mathematical ability which was found 20 years ago is no longer evident in the results on standardized math tests in even high-school aged public school students. The effect seems to have vanished, which forces one to conclude that it was not biologically based in the first place, as a change in such a short time span would be improbable in that case.

By: dovearrow

dovearrow — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:38:14 +0000

Thanks for commenting on my blog. I’m glad you enjoyed my entries on this subject. Meanwhile, I would be honored to have you link to my blog.

By: lizzard

lizzard — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:32:39 +0000

Brilliantly done – again, thank you. I’d like to link up to this tomorrow with some commentary from the FeministSF blog.

By: Tommi

Tommi — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:38:57 +0000

Good post.

Another use for visual-spatial skills in roleplaying is simply imagining what the fiction looks like. This is often useful, relevant and actually done outside combat, too.