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From: slag@charm.UUCP (Peter Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: sex, mathematical ability, style
Message-ID: <364@charm.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-May-84 11:32:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: charm.364
Posted: Fri May 25 11:32:50 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 31-May-84 23:56:23 EDT
References: <493@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Physics Research - AT&T Bell Labs MH
Lines: 15

eatthis.

	I don't see how we could ever write a test that measures
IQ, mathematical ability or anything that would separate upbringing
from phenotype.  To show that environment has no contribution
to innate mathematical ability we would  need a pool of
people who were raised in a nondiscriminatory society.  I've
never seen this.  In my own family,  my sister was the
one with the sharpest mathematical skills and aptitude, yet
she chose not to enter a mathematical field.  She copped
out and went to med school :-).  She knew she was good at
math, and she loved physics more that anything else she
studied, but something inside always turned her away from
it.  She will be a great doctor,  but I wonder how free
her decisions really were.