[madiathomas]

> as a woman I was always better with words than numbers

This is really concerning to me as a father to a daughter. Is this a research finding? This can be decoded as saying women have lower IQ than men because people who are good with numbers generally have higher IQs.

[elliekelly]

Yes, it is concerning. Fortunately the research actually says the exact opposite.[1] It is a strongly held stereotype (in the US at least) and natural ability or natural interest is often pointed to on HN as the reason for the lack of women in STEM. I personally don’t believe it has anything to do with nature and is entirely attributable to nurture.

However, I wrote “whether by nature or nurture” because my ultimate goal was to let OP know that teaching logic might be a good avenue to spark the interest of high school girls who were like me - interested in CS even though they might have been discouraged from participating and feel like they don’t have the “natural” ability because they’ve been pushed toward language skills for most of their academic career. My message would have been brushed aside (at best, I likely would have been, and perhaps will be, berated) had I written “as a woman although I was interested in numbers I was encouraged to focus on words”. And so, like women often do[2], I held back my true thoughts on the matter because I hoped that doing so would be for the greater good if it meant OP would be the CS teacher I wish I had as a high school girl.

[1] https://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/sunday/girls-scho...

[mcv]

It's an old cliche, and I personally suspect it's more a case of the cliche informing cultural expectations and behaviours than this being an inborn thing. I think I've seen some research in the past that women and girls perform just as well on math and numbers as men and boys, as long as you separate them from those cultural expectations.

Of course there's a lot of individual variation. Some people simply are bad at math. But I think more people allow themselves to be intimidated by it when it's not necessary.

In any case, my mother and sister were/are better with numbers than words (which is also true for the men in my family).

As for IQ, it's about a lot more than just being good with numbers. There are many aspects to it. Though it also depends on how you define it. Different IQ tests can sometimes measure different things.

[username90]

> I think I've seen some research in the past that women and girls perform just as well on math and numbers as men and boys, as long as you separate them from those cultural expectations.

Stereotype thread studies doesn't replicate that well.

https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...

[viraptor]

Or it's a reflection of what kind of skills the IQ measures.

[marcosdumay]

Just a few decades ago the western society expected girls to be better in math than boys, and both complied. It got reversed around the 50's and 60's.