Science is linguistic as well as numerical

O'Reilly's Nat Torkington has some good commentary on a Scientific American article on gender bias in science and math, in which he makes a great suggestion for getting more girls involved in science in school:

And we do select "the best at math"--the article talks about kids choosing disciplines based on what they're best at. In general, boys and girls look at their abilities and if they're better at numbers go into sciences and if they're better at words go into arts. So there are girls going into the arts that have better math skills than the boys going into sciences (the girls just happened to have even better verbal skills). This will always be true in individual cases, but the studies show this is an overall tendency rather than anecdotal evidence from specific cases.
What does this mean? I think it shows we need to do a better job of emphasizing that science and technology can be verbal as well as numerical: Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, is a linguist by training, and there's a similar elegance in great code as in great poetry. If we finally acknowledged that science and technology are fields where words are critical and a keen mind for meaning can go far, rather than pretending it's all math with syntactic sugar, we might get better computer programmers not to mention a better gender balance. And finally, first year classes should have catch-up skills-building options for those boys and girls who weren't at the top of the curve.

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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pallas_marisa

People can say science is linguistic all they want, but when it comes down to how science is taught and the kind of work involved in getting an advanced degree is scientific and technical fields, linguistic skills are highly backgrounded.

It’s all well and good to say there is poetic elegance in science, but that’s not what the fraternities of most technical fields are looking for in their workers.

-A girl who excelled in math and science and opted for an English degree instead.
membeth

I am perfectly capable of university level economics and calculus, but I cannot do simple math, which resulted in my being discouraged from pursuing my interest in biology as a child. CTY, one of the biggest gifted and talanted programs in the US, ties admission to it’s science programs to math test scores. I got a special award from CTY for having one of the highest verbal SAT scores of the 7th graders who took the test, but they wouldn’t let me in their marine biology course when I missed the math cutoff by one question. My younger sister, a bio major, is similarly lopsided–strong verbal skills, good at science, and awful at 4th grade level math.
pjcamp

In his biography of Niels Bohr, one of the creators of quantum mechanics and one of the 2 or 3 great physicists of the 20th century, Abraham Pais reports his experience reading Bohr’s research journals. He says there was essentially no math at all. Bohr’s thought process was almost entirely verbal.
noen

Science is linguistic as well as numerical

Well of course it is. Science is at heart our description of the Universe. The World is that which is outside any description of it. The antiquated notion that mathematics is ‘Nature’s Own Language’ is so TwenCen.
Saul Mine

Boys and girls are different. Get used to it!
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Dang. I wish this guy had been around when I was in high school. If there’s a kind of dyslexia that only effects your ability to deal with equations, I’ve got it. I can learn them, but I’m slow at it. Statistics and geometry and proportion I can scarf down like popcorn.

One day in math class we were studying the Pythagorean Theorem. I could see that it made perfect sense, but when the teacher invited me to come up and write out the proof, I froze. Then I asked if I could do it in words, and when he said yes, I rattled off the entire proof verbally, in perfect order, precisely described. And my teacher, bless him, gave me full credit for it.

I gave up all hope of a career in the sciences because I “knew” you had to be able to do advanced math as fluently as I could sling language, and that just wasn’t going to happen. It’s frustrating to know that I didn’t have to make that choice.
noen

You’ve just noticed Saul? How old are you, 14?
Bazilisk

Yeah, science might be linguistic, but colleges still accept students and teach courses based on mathy assumptions. I absolutely love science but I went into journalism instead because I was, frankly, “best at” english but way better at math than the average person (Hey, this clipping described me: “So there are girls going into the arts that have better math skills than the boys going into sciences (the girls just happened to have even better verbal skills).”)

I am saddened by the fact that I do not get to study ecosystems like I wanted to. But in order to get that degree I would have to pass many, many classes based on math. Which I could PASS. Just with C’s and B’s instead of A’s, and I wanted A’s, so I am acing Journalism classes…sigh.

The things you only understand after you made the decisions you make. Regret sucks. Should have gotten B’s due to my math ‘deficiency’ and become a biologist.