Thursday, January 16, 2014

"The Maths" R Hard, Even for STEM Gurlz

I know, "The Maths" r hard gurlz.

Just make sure all the bridges I drive over were designed by men please.

Thank you.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Leah Culver is a female programmer who gets trotted out in the media sometimes. She even has a Wikipedia page for some insane reason.

Well, years ago she posted on her blog a solution for implementing an algorithm for rounding star ratings. I can only conclude that since she posted it she was proud of it, but alas it was the most ridiculous thing that a lot of people found hilarious.

She's long since deleted the embarrassment from her blog, but it's saved in various places -
http://pastebin.com/eW582J51

So thanks to Leah Culver whenever I see a self-promoting female programmer in the media, I assume that they are also kind of an idiot.

aerodawg said...

that mirrors my experience in aerospace. There were no mediocre women in the program. They were either wastes of classroom space or they were superstars.

Anonymous said...

Yeah. all true.

As the article says, there is the occasional exception, but it's the way to bet.

There are bunch of other professions like that too.

Also in engineering women disproportionately go for Chem Eng, Civil Eng and are more rarely seen in the "hard core" things like Engineering Physics, Electrical Eng.

There were a lot of Mining Eng girls at my school, but I suspect it's because Mine Eng offers you a pretty stable life, at least for the jobs they generally take on in that industry.

magilson said...

I never got this impression when I was in college pursuing a STEM degree. Were there women who "coasted" and perhaps were given preferential treatment? Sure. But I met a lot of guys who had no business there and were also coasting and being constantly guided. And although my school may have been different, and there were certainly group projects with disproportionate work being done by some over others, we all had to take the same exams. We all had to take the same FE exam, etc.

Again, maybe other schools were different. But I don't know of anyone who graduated with an engineering degree that somehow did so by some other means than taking the same tests the rest of us did.

All of the people I knew who really didn't have any interest in STEM, didn't have the self-motivation to complete the program, or didn't have the skills necessary were quickly and efficiently weeded out by the program itself.

I'm just not buying the author's interpretation. The outrage seems personal and not based on some concerning reality.

Anonymous said...

You might be interested in a phenomenon PMAFT identified called vagina software:
http://www.antifeministtech.info/2014/01/vagina-software/