Math Questionnaire

Throughout the years, I have been told a few times that it is rare that I am good in math. People used to tell me not to let the boys get ahead of me and keep striving to be the best. While I am not the best, I thought it was odd to hear them say it was "rare" that a female was good in math. I have heard when public schooling was still fairly new that math was the "boy subject," whereas English was the "girl subject." In my EDF315 class this semester, I was shocked to see people still view girls as somewhat below the boys in mathematics. So, I decided to make my questionnaire about mathematics to see exactly what other people think about gender differences in mathematics and if times have actually changed or not. My results:

Everyone (25 people) who participated in the survey said they had at least fair skills in math. No one said they were horrible at mathematics during grades K-12.

84% of the people who took my survey had at least one parent good in math. Of this 84%, 62% said the parent that was good in math was the Dad rather than the mom.

Only 12% (3 people) said they felt that males were superior to females in mathematics. Everyone else agreed that neither gender is superior.

Of the 25 people surveyed, 56% said they took at least one extra math class in high school, and 36% of those surveyed said when they do well in math, they feel it is due to hard work rather than intelligence. 52% agreed that mathematics is like a different language.

I was definitely happy to see that the math stereotype (boys are better than girls in math) is fading away!