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Despite Push From Tech Giants, AP CS Exam Counts Don't Budge Much In Most States
theodp (442580) writes "Well, the College Board has posted the 2014 AP Computer Science Test scores. So, before the press rushes out another set of Not-One-Girl-In-Wyoming-Took-an-AP-CS-Exam stories, let's point out that no Wyoming students of either gender took an AP CS exam again in 2014 (.xlsx). At the overall level, the final numbers have changed somewhat (back-of-the-Excel-envelope calculations, no warranty expressed or implied!), but tell pretty much the same story as the preliminary figures — the number of overall AP CS test takers increased, while pass rates decreased despite efforts to cherry pick students with a high likelihood of success. What is kind of surprising is how little the test numbers budged for most states — only 8 states managed to add more than 100 girls to the AP CS test taker rolls — despite the PR push by the tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and, Facebook. Also worth noting are some big percentage decreases at the top end of the score segments (5 and 4), and still-way-too-wide gaps that exist between the score distributions of the College Board's various ethnic segments (more back of the envelope calcs). If there's a Data Scientist in the house, AP CS exam figures grabbed from the College Board's Excel 2013 and 2014 worksheets can be found here (Google Sheets) together with the (unwalkedthrough) VBA code that was used to collect it. Post your insight (and code/data fixes) in the comments!"
Took the Comp Sci AB test (more advanced form of AP test, doesn't exist now) in 2001; skipped to sophomore level classes. My anecdotal experience counters your citation free claim :)
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The problem with this brand of feminism is that it promotes the creation and expansion of 'female spaces', while telling men it's not ok for them to have theirs, or that they have to 'tolerate' the inclusion of women until they become a large percentage, which effectively kills it. There's a reason military service (until recently thanks to the same shitty politics) was strictly regimented: Coed group dynamics trigger different behavior in both sexes. It's apparently ok for women to do this everywhere:all female run companies, clubs, scholarships, hell, there's even a push to force fraternities to include women. This of course ruins the whole point of having both fraternities and sororities in the first place.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...
I'd link the hartford courant article but it's behind a paywall.
Life isn't fair. I'm sure there are plenty of CS sorts, here, who would be 'outliers' in other fields' social circles, and if they wanted in, they'd have to initially overcompensate by showing off elite skill in order to earn respect. Humans are naturally tribal. They organize themselves, by sex, by race, by culture, by trade, and by interest, and do so willingly. They prefer it. By all means, as an individual or as a group, mix it up if you want, but, as outliers, don't be surprised if you're met with hostility at times when trying to bring others in or imposing yourself on them. As far as the sexes go, with the one glaring exception of sexual pairing (which has its own separate dynamics), the two different spheres of mentality have their own spaces whose dynamics become less compatible as the stakes go up. Men and women work and think differently and that is due to radical differences in biology. They both need and deserve their spaces. For the same reason it is childish to think race ends with skin color because it ignores cultural differences, it is childish to think that men and women are the same except they have different genitals, and that any differences in performance are due to 'socially constructed' oppression. This 1970s era feminist mentality is not applicable in today's society, at least in western culture.