DailyDirt: Cheering For Mathletes

It's a no-brainer that math is a critically important subject. Okay, a lot of people probably don't remember much calculus from high school -- or how to do "long division" -- but the exposure to advanced math and encouraging everyone to appreciate math is still laudable. And making sure kids aren't turned off by math will hopefully lead to more people involved in STEM fields in the future.

• Amazon's Education business unit is aiming to get teachers and students to improve their math skills and attitudes towards math. This "With Math I Can" effort is an attempt to encourage girls (and boys) who aren't confident with numbers to stick with math and math-related subjects. [url]
• A study of nearly half a million boys and girls (14-16yo) from 69 countries shows that there's a negligible gender gap when it comes to math skills. A few countries favored boys over girls in math tests, but a couple of countries also had girls beating the boys. So the differences are chalked up to effort and teaching, not any innate ability differences between boys and girls. [url]
• Apparently, girls seem to do more homework and play less with computers than boys do. According to an OECD report, boys test better at math than girls in many countries -- but girls in Shanghai seem to be really good at math. [url]

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