Study Shows Good With Math Means Bad With People 479
Sylentmode writes "A recent study by Brookings Institution's Brown Center shows that students who are good with math are less likely to be happy, and are likely to have low confidence.
From the article "In essence, happiness is overrated" says study author Tom Loveless.
I wonder if Loveless is just a nickname, because he is so good with math."
according to my calculations... (Score:5, Funny)
What nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)
I know this is just anecdotal, but maths professors and those who are doing pure maths tend to be some of the most well rounded and happy people I know. Its actually struck me before, since I never really applied myself to in depth mathematics, but I always noticed how those guys seem to be fairly relaxed about life.
Re:What nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
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The study is correct, it's just what it means is misunderstood. There is no correlation between good/bad happy/unhappy students, only between averages on nations. If a nation is successful in math and has the best students, the overall level will be higher but also most students, for which that level is a bit too much, will be unhappy with it. And since worse students make the majority (gauss curve), the average will be "unhappy".
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Re:according to my calculations... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignorance is bliss.
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it's a learned disability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it's a learned disability (Score:5, Insightful)
But I don't think many perl hackers want dumb women. Speaking as an English major, I don't like dumb women. I have met women who pretended to be dumber than they were, but without exception these women wanted to date a type of guy who wanted that in a woman. They ignore all the men who like strong, intelligent women, and then conclude that society painted them into a corner. It's sort of like men who date strippers--it's not that women are that way, but that women you like are that way. A woman having bad taste in men doesn't make me a pig. And all the smart women I know are respected by those around them. Yes, some are called "the B word," just as some rude, pushy men are called assholes. People are people, and no one gets a free pass.
Re:it's a learned disability (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up in a small rural town. I was IQ tested in kindergarten because I was 'different', and after that was told to just deal with the work that I was given, cos I was too smart for the underfunded rural school system to deal with. (And my mum is a single mum, on welfare, and my younger brother is intellectually disabled. You wonder where the money went?)
Primary school was pretty good. I sat in the library and learnt about whatever I wanted to. I did activities with the other kids, but mostly I was self-directed.
High school things changed. I was put into the top stream for all the classes, but very soon I was confronted with the idea that 'Boys are Smarter', in particular 'Boys are Better at Maths'. Math wasn't my strong point in comparison to English and Science, so I was coming second. The person coming first was another GIRL.
In the 10th grade I was the ONLY Student in the school to get an A (between 90-100%) on the school certificate state exams for Science.
When I tried to enrol in Chemistry for year 11, I was told that Biology is the 'Girls Subject', and that I shouldn't study Chemistry because it was too hard for me. (None of the boys I asked had been warned off studying chem).
I went to the principal who happened to be a woman, and she had me enrolled anyway.
Since I left that little town and enrolled in University, I haven't dealt with that sort of crap. My boyfriend loves intelligent women, my friends love intelligent women, I know other intelligent women.
But heaven forbid I offer an opinion on a topic such as the current political climate, or the economy when I go home for a weekend. They don't want to hear it, not from me.
People that have not lived in a situation where it is just easier to act dumb cant understand.
Even educated men can expect a woman to be stupid. My Boyfriend and one of his friends did their MBA together, and they used to love setting up some arrogant twat in an argument with me, and then pounce on him the moment I won.
Ah, good times, good times.
But with out the support of those guys telling my opponent not to talk over me, because I know what I am talking about, I would never have had the confidence to argue down men a decade my senior, with half an MBA under their belts.
Or maybe they just think I am dumb cos I am young and cute and blonde.
Maybe being female has very little to do with it.
Some women don't get that support.
Re:it's a learned disability (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easier for anyone to act dumb. Doesn't matter if you're male or female. I get made fun of for having a decent vocabulary, for reading, for not watching TV and sports, and so on. I'm not saying "guys have it worse," only that much of the flak women think they're getting because they're female isn't really because they're female--we get it too.
what are you talking about? (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's" means "it is." That aside, which herd are you herding me into? Accusing me of hyperbole might have been warranted, but I'm honestly puzzled at your assessment of herd mentality. I actually do get shunned and ridiculed for saying "torture is wrong." Or is that very sentiment the "herd" mentality to which you object? I'm unclear on whether you're objecting to my opposition to torture, or to my perception that such opposition puts me in a rather unpopular (in cert
you have it bassackwards (Score:5, Insightful)
An attractive woman can be a dunce and someone will still laugh at her jokes, hang on her every word, carry her luggage, and give her a job. For the wrong reasons? Absolutely. I sometimes think that's part of the reason that some men do find intelligent women frightening. Add the power they already have via their sex to their intelligence, and it can be daunting. The guy can be left wondering if she's thinking "I could sleep my way to the top and beat you anyway, but I'll play it your way just because I find this way more amusing for now." Even when a person has too much character to win that way, the fact that they have the option can be irritating.
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more than just the two (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, well, I think there's 10 types of people in this world. People who are good at binary, and
Re:more than just the two (Score:5, Funny)
Nominative determinism (Score:3, Funny)
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Overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Didn't anyone stop to think that maybe math is overrated?
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From a purely economic standpoint, it definitely is [greenspun.com] as Philip Greenspun shows. So we should absolutely let these foreign kids move over and take the science and math jobs. The pay (mostly) stinks.
However, as I'm sure many will point out, there are
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Re:Overrated (Score:5, Informative)
No I read the article (at least partially), but I was responding to the summary. The article seems more to be a rebuttal of education theory that started being implemented about 10-20 years ago. People kept focussing on making kids feel good and increasing their self-esteem, but they're finding that making kids feel good about math doesn't help them do well at math. If anything, it's the kids who worry about doing well enough in math that succeed.
Not too surprising, if you ask me.
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That's because math, like computers, functions on logical operations. Math doesn't care how you feel just as the computer doesn't hate you. In cases where people say things such as that, a lot of tech support people mutter PEBKAC under their breath. Some people are naturally inclined to be logical, and some aren't. Maybe it is somet
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Food for thought.
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Why might that be? Math is critical to functioning in today's world -- from figuring out whether you have enough cash in your bank account to both pay the rent AND buy that new shiny iPod to determining how to modify your recipe to accommodate the unexpected arrival of 5 more dinner guests to averaging the scores of your english students to... you name it.
I really doubt math could ever be overrated. At least not in general.
Now... TOPOLOGY
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Oh I see, you're from those that think that our kids are forced to learn 12 years of adding two numbers together and the multiplication table. All needed
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As a physicist, everyday. ;)
I agree with you that for kids it's a good idea to show them how they can apply the math, etc. Leave the hard theory for college or whatever. But math is certainly not overrated, which was the point I was trying to make, and I'm sure you agree with that.
Mike.
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So what you are saying is anything above 3rd grade math is pointless?
Re: Overrated (Score:5, Funny)
According to my calculations, it's overrated by a factor of about 2.7
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I have refined your calculations and computed it to 10 significant figures: 2.7182818285.
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Do you honestly believe I can't post to slashdot unless I have perfect understanding of the math used to design the computer I use?
What kind of math did you do to post your message?
And this is why math is overrated. Yes, math is used everywhere around us, but fortunately we can use most of everything around us, and even do a good job, and even make good money, and even have a great l
Quite True (Score:5, Insightful)
One guy turned to me and said "I wish we could be as confident as you Americans are."
Struck me dumb. This is a bright guy who I highly respect and yet his focus, despite his strengths, was on confidence.
So I kicked his ass.
(Just kidding.)
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I would say that there is a character, at least in Finland, of a practicality that almost borders on pessimism. On one hand, this is good. You don't have people suing the school because there child got a 'F', you don't have people wanting to ban all guns because some crazy person shot someone else. You don't have this crazy idealism that forces people to want to make radical, sweeping changes to society.
I have read somewhere
ignorance is bliss (Score:4, Funny)
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AH! AH! AH! AHH! (lightning and thunder)
I LOVE counting them!
Completley misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
H1 (Score:5, Funny)
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Signed,
The Happiest Man on Earth
If you thought New Math was bad... (Score:2)
You really can't be Harvard Calculus [mathematic...orrect.com]. That was a learning nightmare if there ever was one. The semester before they introduced it at my local university, they gave a talk on the "new" calculus. One old man in back was rapping his cane against the chairs screaming, "This Harvard Calculus violates 200 years of tradition!" Needless to say
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I understand why they do it. You can "do calculu
Sounds bogus to me (Score:5, Funny)
If that were true I'd be much better at math.
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Not necessarily.
Let us rephrase the original statement to read, "If one is good with math, then one is bad with people." This can be represented more generally as "if p then q".
Since we know q to be true if p is true, we can also say that if q is not true, p cannot be true--this is the contrapositive, which is always true if the original statement is true. You have attempted to assert that if you are bad with people, you must be good with math--in effect, if q then p. This is the converse of the original
Re:Sounds bogus to me - Conditionals (Score:2)
Assume: If I read Slashdot, I am male.
Contrapositive: If I am not male, I do not read Slashdot. This is true.
Converse: If I am male, I read Slashdot. This is false.
That's easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Common Sense? (Score:2, Insightful)
So what?
I used to think I was pretty good at tennis, until I got my butt kicked by someone who can play against me sitting in a chair, and then I saw that guy get his butt kicked by someone else who competed on a national level
And then I saw the light: I suck at tennis and I will have to put in a lot of time to g
Doh! Fewer equals! (Score:2)
Without correction for intelligence, this study merely shows that people better at math (highly colinear with intelligence -- you can't be good at math without being intelligent, but not all intelligent people are good at math) -- so obviously have fewere peers within whatever IQ range makes for a good friendship (1 sigma?
Rubbish! (Score:2)
I am an African man from very humble roots, who excelled in maths, beating folks in rich and priveledged societies. As such, I landed a scholarship to a prestigious university where I came on top of the class, amazing my professors.
I even learnt the German and French languages and even got myse
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You do not in any way disprove the findings of the study. However, you do demonstrate that even some of the brightest people do not bother to Read The Fine Article before posting an expression of their misdirected outrage on Slashdot.
Please read the article first, then decide whether you are offended by its content.
The Summarry is Misleading (Score:2, Informative)
Culture not the math. (Score:2)
No kidding! (Score:5, Funny)
The more you know the more you don't know (Score:2)
I find that the more math I learn the more I understand that there is a lot out there I don't know. (pull out the socrates qoute)
Article mentions (Score:2)
Most of the advanced concepts in Math such as algabra, trig, geometry, analytic geometry, differential and integral calculus, vectors, etc. are not taught until high school. I would like to see a study where 12th graders of all countries were compared rather than the younger crowd.
It's a question of focus (Score:3, Interesting)
"Happiness" is a bit hard to make quantitative, so studies will be a little hard to evaluate or reproduce, but since human beings are designed to be social I would expect that a lack of social interaction would have a negative impact on their "happiness." There are fairly good survival reasons for people to prefer being with the group, although that is less true now than throught most of human history (where being the odd loner would most likely earn one the title "Box Lunch.") Modern civilization opens up opportunities for specialization, and in doing so also introduces relative isolation into the human social framework. How this will play out is not clear, but it's not surprising that there will be changes - human social controls and group socializations depend on knowledge of individual people and personalities. They don't scale well to cities of millions of people.
Ignorance... (Score:2)
Article summary is wrong (Score:2)
Personally I think that the focus on math is all wrong - people are trying to increase enjoyment in math by making things "relevant" or "fun", when it should place more of a focus on logic and solving puzzles. Math is inherently a lot of fun once you realize that it's not all ab
Hmmm (Score:2)
Is this an issue of correlation vs. causation? (Score:2)
In other news ... (Score:2)
Blurb misrepresents the actual study (Score:5, Insightful)
Ban on retarded studies (Score:2)
Instead, I leave it up to you, to do the math and come up with the conclusions.
The Slashdot Headline is Inaccurate (Score:2)
The purported reason is that methods of teaching mathematics that emphasise student enjoyment of the subject, or confidence with it, is less effective than more unpleasant teaching methods.
Ben
Conferences (Score:2)
I have a lot of interest (to the extent of doing original research) in pure math, though my primary field is computer science. By far, the most interesting people I've ever met, and the ones I've got along with most, were at mathematics conferences. I would recommend attending conferences to anyone who is interested in math, to meet other mathematicians if for no other
Yet Another Mangled Headline (Score:2)
But it seems that making poor headlines is endemic. Even the article gets it wrong.
Compare the headline: Confident students do worse in math
To what you find in the article directly contradicts the headline:
Correlation v. Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times do I have to say this? Slashdot keeps making this mistake. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean that one causes the other.
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How many times do I have to say this? Slashdot keeps making this mistake. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean that one causes the other.
What part of that: "A recent study by Brookings Institution's Brown Center shows that students who are good with math are less likely to be happy, and are likely to have low confidence." states a causation?
What is stated as the cause, and which is the effect? I only see a statement of correlation here.
Re:Correlation v. Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nations that try to teach math in terms of daily life have the lowest test scores."
"Countries reporting higher levels of enjoyment and confidence among math students don't do as well in the subject"
Which seem to indicate a broad-level study ignoring individual people - in fact they are studying the entire country, and saying, "Okay well US students have high levels of confidence and enjoyment, and they do badly at Math. Chinese kids are less confident and happy, and they do well at math." Well okay yes, perhaps, but maybe US kids are just more confident because they don't get lambasted so often. And maybe Chinese kids are good at math because of the high pressure. At least, that's the explanation I've been given to understand. As another reply to my original comment says, there's not even necessarily a correlation here. Statistics lie, especially when you use such broad brush strokes, and ignore the statistics of individual people. For instance, in the US alone, do students with higher math skills correlate to lower confidence? The study does not say.
The causation problem I have is this:
"Study Shows Good With Math Means Bad With People"
Which indicates causality. It's not a problem with the article, but a problem with slashdot. Unfortunately, slashdot postings do not imply editor comprehension. There is absolutely NO sense of journalistic integrity on slashdot. Sure, it's a news re-posting site, but the blurbs are very important, since most people don't RTFA. I admit, I didn't until you complained at me
content (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's look in the dictionary...
Main Entry: 2content
Function: transitive verb
1 : to appease the desires of
2 : to limit (oneself) in requirements, desires, or actions
They're content, so they're not pushing themselves.
The ones that are unhappy about their math skills are still striving to improve them.
Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
Truths (Score:2)
"Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." - John Stuart Mill
(Slasdot's fortune's take on the article
Headline all wrong... (Score:2)
Being happy and confident about doing mathematics does not imply compentency in mathematics. In fact, they have a reverse correlation (not to being confused with causality).
There is not a sentiment of "being good at math makes you exhibit anti-social behavior", or anything of the type in the article.
Kirby
grrr... (Score:2)
Just because you can't do math, you f***in business major party whore!!!
Obligatory Simpsons Reference (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat after me... (Score:2)
Or, straight from TFA: "Correlations do not prove causality." (p.14)
Imagine coding as sloppy as therse headlines.
Misread article (Score:5, Informative)
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title is all wrong about what the study says (Score:5, Informative)
This reminds me... (Score:4, Funny)
"FUD" does not mean "bullshit" (Score:5, Insightful)
American confidence (Score:4, Insightful)
the overfed confidence of americans is an artifact of their education system.
this article talks about the special case of math education and associates math failure
with high confidence.
I guess it applies to many other fields, like politics, e.g. ppl feel confident about their great country and dont feel the need to sit down and think what their leaders may be doing wrong.
Also this whole attitude creates the PHB corporate culture. Since confidence is such a highly valued attribute, the more confident u are, the more likely it is that confident ppl end up in important positions. But confidence, especially in the US, is not positively correlated with actual skill. As a result, idiots become managers and CEOs.
I have a gut feeling that the Americans who created the first parliamentary democracy, won the WWII and sent ppl to the moon, drew confidence only from achievements not by having teachers or psychologists teaching them how to be confident. It may be time that America went back to the basics
ENFP (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Um, yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
They have numbers in bars?! I'm not sure about "turning it on" whatever that means, but I'd probably be able to factor it and recite it as a multiple of pi.
Re:Um, yeah? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's "Mensa", and smart people don't pay Mensa to tell them they are smart.
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I was invited to join Mensa and attended an event to meet others in the Ann Arbor area.. I lasted 2 hours before I found an excuse to leave. These people were social misfits for the social misfits! blatent rudeness, strange behaivoir, to the point that I was extremely uncomfortable around these people. Most of the men were bus
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heh (Score:2)
There's lots of timewasters for social-skill deprived undergrads - D&D, WoW, etc.
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Or put another way, if you specialize too far down one field of human endeavor, you may not be generalized.
This is becoming one of the most hideously overdiagnosed diseases right now because of the media play it is getting. Much like ADD, expect to see a lot of over medication in response to this rapidly spreading syndrome.