[JamesArgo]

>It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that a front line, if not the trench of the global gender war, is in Silicon Valley. In that sense, Silicon Valley culture echoes the Wolf of Wall Street culture in the ’80s and ’90s.

Signal the right politics and even this nonsense gets upvoted. Scott Alexander wrote about why differences in outcome in highly technical fields might not imply a vast economically-counterproductive misogynistic conspiracy here:http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required...

Reality is under no obligation to live up to our ideals.

[logn]

I like that article a lot. GRE Quantitative and SAT Math skew heavily toward men. And the SAT covers very basic reasoning skills that would be related to programming aptitude. GRE Quantitative covers topics essential to surviving a CS major.

We should figure out where the educational system is failing women here. And we should also consider a new curriculum focused on programming, because traditional Computer Science isn't necessary for success as a tech worker. I've seen some colleges offer both a BA and a BS in Comp Sci which I think is smart, because in the BA they strip out physics, chemistry, calculus, etc which in my experience cause most CS majors to drop out.

[wyager]

>We should figure out where the educational system is failing women here.

How does "women do relatively poorly on quantitative tests" imply "the educational system is failing women"? This could be do to any number of factors, many of which having little/nothing to do with the education system.

And, of course, there are more female college students than male college students, so there are other areas where you could just as (in)accurately claim that the education system is failing men! In reality, it's probably (again) due to external factors.

[logn]

> "women do relatively poorly on quantitative tests" imply "the educational system is failing women"

I said we should figure out where it's failing women. If we figure out it's not failing women, then the question is answered. And I didn't mean this to the exclusion of men either. Or children and adolescents.

Edit: I think it's a given anything can be improved, especially education. So in the constant discussions about fixing education, the article about math scores should certainly be on people's minds. And I'm also curious about verbal scores for men. And I agree there are a variety of factors at play, but that doesn't mean we can't investigate some of the factors in lieu of a comprehensive investigation/reform of everything in society, culture, and biology.

[learc83]

What CS degree requires physics and chemistry ?

Also I don't think a degree without calculus can really be called CS. How are you going to understand analysis of algorithms without at least a basic grasp of the concepts of calculus. A person who failed out of calculus definitely wouldn't have survived the rest of my CS program.

I wouldn't advise anyone to do a CS degree with all the math stripped out. Sure you can build CRUD apps all day long without an understanding of math, but you don't need a degree to build CRUD apps.

I think people who are happy doing that kind of work should skip college all together (or get a degree in something other than CS) and learn on their own or maybe do some kind of bootcamp.

[logn]

Personally I think you can understand algorithms knowing only algebra and finite math. However, I should clarify the BA programs I'm aware of still required a semester or so of calculus versus others which require a few semesters.

At my college, almost every CS major ended up being 1 credit short of a minor in Math. I don't think that much math is necessary.

[learc83]

>Personally I think you can understand algorithms knowing only algebra and finite math.

How are you going to understand the growth rates of algorithms without calculus?

Are you just going to keep it at the level of: in f(n) = n^2 + n, n^2 grows much faster, so it's like comparing an elephant to a goldfish.

Intuitive explanations work fine as an introduction, but again I don't think you need a college degree to understand algorithms at this level.

It seems like what you're looking for would be better implemented as a 2 year programming degree at a community college.

[Kalium]

> What CS degree requires physics and chemistry ?

Uh. Mine did, actually. Calculus too.

[learc83]

Yeah, they pretty much all require calculus, and most require 2 semesters of physics. Some let you take another science class instead physics.

Mine required 2 semesters of physics + labs and then a semester of any other science class.

But yours required physics and chemistry? I can't imagine why chemistry is required for CS.

[Kalium]

Artifact of organization. My degree came through the college of engineering, which required physics and chemistry for all grads. And some technical breadth electives, too.

[learc83]

That makes sense. My CS department came out of the math department, I wasn't thinking of the ones that emerged from engineering.

[webehere]

> Reality is under no obligation to live up to our ideals.

I think we should make a T-Shirt of that!

[Apocryphon]

On the flipside, our ideals have no obligation to be constrained by reality.

[vinceguidry]

> differences in outcome in highly technical fields might not imply a vast economically-counterproductive misogynistic conspiracy

Even if there isn't a misogynistic conspiracy, there's still plenty of bog-standard human herd-behavior sexism telling girls they shouldn't even try to be good at computers because they can't be. It would be a shame if we ignored the latter just because we figured out the former doesn't exist.