Off the top of our heads, we can't name one woman in a prominent position at a quant shop. Maybe this is why.
Math 55 is advertised in the Harvard catalog as "probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country." It is legendary among high school math prodigies, who hear terrifying stories about it in their computer camps and at the Math Olympiads. Some go to Harvard just to have the opportunity to enroll in it. Its formal title is "Honors Advanced Calculus and Linear Algebra," but it is also known as "math boot camp" and "a cult." The two-semester freshman course meets for three hours a week, but, as the catalog says, homework for the class takes between 24 and 60 hours a week.
Math 55 does not look like America. Each year as many as 50 students sign up, but at least half drop out within a few weeks. As one former student told The Crimson newspaper in 2006, "We had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester." Said another student, "I guess you can say it's an episode of 'Survivor' with people voting themselves off." The final class roster, according to The Crimson: "45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male."
Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man? [The American]
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 12:49PM
Weird. 3 of the 4 smartest people in the math department my year at MIT were female.
Of course they also doubled in majors such as spanish, finance and econ. And proceeded to pursue phds/masters in those fields.
Posted by Suits , Mar 07, 2008 12:50PM
Color me unimpressed. I'm no math genius, but I took Lin Alg in high school. I feel like the marginal benefit of solving for the 200th eigenvalue just isn't that high.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:00PM
I am a TA for this Math 55 course. If you're a hot female, I think I can help you excel in the course with some "extra" tutoring. Cram sessions if you will....And researchers have found that studying nude increases comprehension because your mind and body are more free.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:00PM
Well, I'm a guy working in finance, and I sucked in linear algebra, while my girlfriend's doing a math Ph.D and could kick my butt at finance if she chose to, but she wants to teach math instead.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:04PM
Math 104 @ UCBerkeley. Hardest class. Ever.
Posted by girl , Mar 07, 2008 1:08PM
This is ridiculous, there is no "institutional bias" against women studying math- its a matter of conditioned inclination toward certain subjects.
At the risk of sounding dorky this remind me of a study I just read about in which men and women were asked to remember how they'd felt a month prior and both respondents had equally intense emotions. However, when asked to think about their gender before answering, women recalled stereotypically more intense emotions and the males recorded stereotypically less.
What this means, and how it translates to this article, is that our perception of our strengths, by gender, informs our pursuit of certain studies. It isn't that women are incapable of performing just as highly in mathematics as men do, but our propensity toward the social sciences and arts are probably a result of our ingrained feelings about our potential and areas in which we believe we can excel. Similarly, more men probably force themselves into quantitative subjects out of a belief that this is what they "should" be doing.
So it's really far more accurate to look at this on an individual level as opposed to labelling it a structural problem, which the article seems to suggest.
Posted by HAM05 , Mar 07, 2008 1:11PM
i dissagree - Womyns Studies 102 at my small liberal arts school was by far the most perplexing class ever
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:11PM
How many Indians were in the class?
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:13PM
100% virgins...
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:14PM
For 1:08 (just so wrong on so many levels):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1eAhVmKQBc
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:15PM
Where is the Jesse Jackson of the math/gender community on this one?
-Nominate me
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:20PM
A better question is how many of the students in that class were Americans? Yes, Harv-vard is free to accept who they want, but don't come crying to me when India, China, and Russia OWN the USA.
Posted by mrpink , Mar 07, 2008 1:21PM
This is strange, because it's the reverse at SAC - they're taking hormones to be more like women!
-mrp
Posted by AJ , Mar 07, 2008 1:23PM
Either Harvard is racist and doesn't let in Asians or the Crimson gets confused between Asians and Jews. There is no way it was only 18% Asian. What kind of school are they running up there?
Posted by Lowly Assistant , Mar 07, 2008 1:23PM
girl=smart
The roles we're appointed shape our very core. Preferences are learned, not innate. Genetics obviously play a large role in all abilities, but whether we wish to pursue these things is mostly dependent on our personal histories/socialization.
Posted by Anal_yst , Mar 07, 2008 1:24PM
@ Pink
with the cool temperature they keep the trading floor at just imagine how many NHO's they'd have then...
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:25PM
Arlene Rockefeller, head of quant strategies at State Street Global Advisors
Posted by girl , Mar 07, 2008 1:25PM
1:20 i'm guessing none...their rigorous schedule of finals clubs, sailing and boning each other's girlfriends doesn't leave time for 66 hours/week of linear algera
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:27PM
Speaking generally (not about this particular course), if you eliminate students born in the U.S. the gender ratio is far less out of whack. And female foreign students seem do well compared to their male counterparts. At least that's what I've seen.
Math is hard and takes a lot of work. Just compare the undergraduate workload at even a middling engineering program to the requirements for a psych or communications major at the same university. Yet they get what is perceived outside of their fields as the same degree. American woman don't study math because they don't have to. They have other options.
It's certainly possible than men are better at math. But I don't think the preponderance of men in mathematics necessarily proves it.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 1:33PM
Math is hard, let's go shopping!
Posted by mrpink , Mar 07, 2008 1:54PM
@ Anal_yst
Hee hee ... Man oh man
I'm enjoying the tan I'm getting from watching Mozilo on TV now... And it's cloudy out!
-mrp
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 2:20PM
LOL...linear algebra and "honors" calculus are supposed to be challenging? what a joke. maybe all the women there start off their college careers with multivariate or differential eqs...otherwise, they must really be that bad at math. ouch.
Posted by Yo , Mar 07, 2008 2:32PM
Math 55 is advertised in the Harvard catalog as “probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country.” That is just SO Harvard! I guess they really institutionalize the self-love God-complex thing there.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 2:33PM
Whatever happened to the article abt sucking up to Carney and his Dragon & Dungeon mastership?
Posted by mrpink , Mar 07, 2008 2:34PM
I'm wondering the same thing too 2:33...
I found it amusing!
-mrp
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 2:39PM
If you don't think gender roles are innate, you obviously do not have children of both genders to compare.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 2:41PM
same here, mrp. where's the D&D post, dealbreaker?
Posted by girl , Mar 07, 2008 2:49PM
@ 2:39, You're right, but i have many siblings upon which to base my learned assumption.
@ 1:27 v. interesting
I too thought the Dungeons and Dragons was hilarious- don't be so sensitive JC!
Posted by RamblinWreck , Mar 07, 2008 3:01PM
Unless its an advanced math class (i.e., differential equations) at a top tier engineering school, there is no way it can be that hard. Also, haven't there been studies showing that females are much less capable of spatial thinking than males, which would support the fact that there were no females in a linear algebra class?
Posted by To The Hilt , Mar 07, 2008 3:02PM
Pretty sure D&D went the way of MHL.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 3:12PM
@2:20: The course title suggests that it's an Analysis class and obviously covers multivariate.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 3:24PM
@ everyone- what was the D&D article? can someone clue me in?
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 3:25PM
@2:20 & anyone else who thinks "linear algebra" and "honors calculus" can't be difficult, obviously you didn't pay much attention to these subjects in school - any good prof or textbook would gloss over details, saying its "beyond the scope of this course" or the like... a good course like this doesn't assume anything, but still covers more than you would have seen in any engineering program. I'm a 3rd year mathematical finance major at a top-tier math school, the stuff they're learning 4 months into the year is what we do in 3rd & 4th year.
Posted by RamblinWreck , Mar 07, 2008 3:32PM
After looking over the course description, the honors calc lin. alg. title doesn't seem to do it justice. It sounds like quite a bit of proof-writing, which is not something undergrads are normally expected to do.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 3:36PM
I'm successful and very well educated in the traditional Wall St way. At the same time, I can't comprehend a good deal of my daughters junior year HS honors calculus. Believe me, its difficult.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 3:52PM
What about Pattie Dunn, former CEO of Barclays Global Investors? BGI = Quant, Pattie = 100% woman, y'all
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 4:10PM
tanya styblo beder, caxton, tribeca
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 4:24PM
Well, Math 55 might be hard by American standards but it's not exactly Cambridge Part III Maths Tripos.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 5:09PM
This is bullshit. Asians are much better at math than Jews.
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 5:56PM
Harvard and Math (at least challenging math) is a pure oxymoron.
The place stinks to the high heavens with grade inflation. Though I've never met a Princeton grad who wasn't a pussy- they do trump the Red Palms at maths.
Please note below THE most difficult undergraduate math course in existence in America. I dare any wannabe 'quant jock' in the making to go fuck with it. Look people this school last I checked ranked #1 for both Microsoft and Google in terms of number of hires into "technical fields". And do consider where ol' Mr. Softy himself did his undergrad and what his major was- nuff said. Behold byaatchs:
http://www.uiuc.edu/
MATH 286
Intro to Differential Eq Plus
Credit: 4 hours.
This course satisfies the General Education Criteria for a
Quant Reasoning II course.
Techniques and applications of ordinary differential equations, including Fourier series and boundary value problems, linear systems of differential equations, and an introduction to partial differential equations. Covers all the MATH 285 plus linear systems. Intended for engineering majors and other who require a working knowledge of differential equations. Credit is not given for both MATH 286 and any of MATH 284, MATH 285, MATH 441. Prerequisite: MATH 241.
So you wanna be an engineer eh?
Fly High
Posted by AJ , Mar 07, 2008 8:08PM
@5:56: [Insert generic insult noting that Illinois is not an ivy and is therefore automatically inferior and not relevant to this discussion]
Posted by guest , Mar 07, 2008 9:11PM
@5:56 pm:
Good to see UIUC engineering getting some props. I didn't take Math 286, but I did take 415, 441, 442, 446, and 447.
I'd like to see any of these Ivy leage frat douches with their Vineyard Vines ties and popped collars even be allowed within a 1000 feet of a respectable engineering program.
Quant this, biatch.
Posted by guest , Mar 08, 2008 10:34AM
Carney, you don't know about Anne Dinning because you're a glorified gossip columnist.
Posted by John Carney , Mar 08, 2008 11:47AM
That's totally true, 10:34. Except the "glorified" part.
Maybe next week we'll run a Women in Quant feature. Starting, of course, with reader nominations. As we admitted, we're quite dense on this subject.
Posted by guest , Mar 08, 2008 11:11PM
Girl, I appreciated your comments though I don't fully agree.
Posted by guest , Mar 09, 2008 7:44PM
The notion that Harvard has a world beating or even excellent program in applied mathematical fields is laughable. Do they even have an engineering program? Paying attention to MIT would have made more sense.
Anywho, as a mathematics major (Rice) from many years ago perhaps I can help explain why so few women pursue quant fields in a way that finance people will understand. First, women have less of an aptitude for math than men and at the positive tail of the distribution are very rare. No less a person than the President of Harvard was fired for stating this but it is true. Second, math is a difficult and lonely profession; which is why I didn't pursue it after my B.A., nerd that I was. Women are generally sociable. Third, anyone who has listened to men's conversations should realize that they are all about communicating information (however inane) while women's are all about talking as a way of socializing. Math is the epitome of information in the absence of socialization.
Finally, in terms of purported discrimination,we are to believe that (despite women succeeding in so many other fields) men have kept them out of the very difficult and financially unrewarding field of math professor?!
Posted by guest , Mar 10, 2008 1:42AM
Guest @ 7:44pm -- I can believe you went to Rice many years ago. "Women have less of an aptitude for math than men ..." "Women are generally sociable." "Women's [conversations] are all about talking as a way of socializing ..." Do you have any more cliches and stereotypes to contribute to the discussion? Commenters have supplied the names of various women who are excelling right now in the quant fields.
Posted by guest , Mar 10, 2008 10:06AM
guest, Mar 10, 2008 1:42AM wrote: Do you have any more cliches and stereotypes to contribute to the discussion? Commenters have supplied the names of various women who are excelling right now in the quant fields.
Sure, the Irish drink a lot. Do you know what this has in common with "women are generally poor at math"? First, truth and second finding a few counter examples (e.g. teetotaling Irishmen or women with math skills) does not disprove the general observation.
Posted by guest , Mar 10, 2008 7:47PM
Perhaps it's not appreciated that Math 55 is not a class that an "engineer" would take but rather one that someone interested in theoretical math would take (or perhaps theoretical cs or theoretical physics). So it's not particularly representative of the quant world (which isn't to say there aren't math 55'ers who become quants, but that type of student is not very typical in the quant world).
No doubt Harvard's engineering record is lousy, but they are great for theoretical math, and that is the purpose of Math 55. And don't be fooled by the name, calc and linear algebra are not the central theme of the course. The course is a proof-based class that touches on virtually all areas of theoretical math today (algebra, geometry, topology, differential equations, and all pairwise combinations of those words), most of which most of the commenters here have probably never heard of if they're talking about diff eq classes being hard. . . .