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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!mmm!mrgofor
From: mrgofor@mmm.UUCP (MKR)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: career vs. relationships
Message-ID: <529@mmm.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Feb-86 16:41:46 EST
Article-I.D.: mmm.529
Posted: Wed Feb 19 16:41:46 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Feb-86 05:49:06 EST
References: <11785@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <660@rti-sel.UUCP> <1677@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrgofor@mmm.UUCP (MKR)
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Lines: 34
Xref: watmath net.women:9128 net.singles:10349

>>>...
>>>My experience after about 10 years in that role is that {male|nonblack}
>>>students are far more likely to be excited about mathematics,
>>>really gung-ho over the subject matter.  ...
>>>I have an internal
>>>guesser-daemon who assigns differing probabilities to the student's
>>>chances of being gung-ho, according to the student's {sex|race}.  ...
>>>And besides, I couldn't make the guesser-daemon go away if I
>>>wanted to: it's based on experience.
>>
>>I've inserted a reference to blacks in addition to your reference to
>>women to make a point: if you had made your comments about nonwhites,
>>most people would agree that it reflected a racist reaction to a
>>situation (note I'm not saying anything yet about your handling of the
>>racist reaction).


	Thought experiment for the day: There are two people standing
before you, one is female, the other is male. They are both about the same
age. The only thing you know about these people is that they were randomly
chosen from the University population at large, and that one is gung-ho
about mathematics, and one is not. I offer to give you $1,000,000 if you
can correctly guess which one is the gung-ho mathematician.

	Which do you choose? If you choose the male, are you being sexist?


-- 
					--MKR

"I've heard you say many times that you're better than no one,
 And no one is better than you.
 If you really believe that you know you have nothing to win
 And nothing to lose."   - B. Dylan