56 Comments
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Mary Pat Campbell's avatar

As a woman in a math career (actuary), gonna warn her & others it's not like the logic lets up at any point. Perhaps it would be better not to do a bait & switch.

If you think it would be wise to lighten up on the precision and logic in math and calculation, how about trying that with the IRS, and let us know how that goes. Best wishes!

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Dan Chesler's avatar

hear hear.

these arguments are horribly flimsy and tortured logic (illogic)

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Richard's avatar

No problem, just blame it on TurboTax.

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Mary Pat Campbell's avatar

Yeaaaah that doesn’t protect you

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Richard's avatar

Worked for Greither

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Mary Pat Campbell's avatar

Ah, Geithner, and yes. It helps to be of the "correct" party and having the right friends. Not just -any- Democrat would get to lie about underpaying their self-employment taxes! And taking deductions you shouldn't!

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/01/geithner-blames-.html

Not everybody gets to lie about their taxes and get away with it.

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Christopher Messina's avatar

Worked for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner!

Gold star reference for you, sir!

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Christopher Messina's avatar

Yes! I love that!

"Dear IRS, I find your masculine insistence on the definition of 'percentage' to be alienating. Herewith find my tax return informed by feminist pedagogies of math. You will find that while YOUR alienating, cis-masculine 'math' says that 33% of the $100,000 I made last year is $33,000, my feminist math says it is closer to $2,500. I say 'closer to' rather than making a definitive masculine precise statement because a hard number from your 'objective' calculations makes me go wobbly inside and makes me feel unwelcome in your calculation space."

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Samuel Gaines's avatar

😂😂😂😂😂

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James Waite's avatar

Let me see if I understand..... Women need an irrational and untruthful environment to feel good and succeed?

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Toni Airaksinen's avatar

Thanks for reading and replying! I didn't realize how many comments this got!

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Christopher Messina's avatar

Be careful not to count them, or anything so alienatingly masculine! :) Just have a general sense that a lot of people were supportive of you!

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Gamma002's avatar

2 + 2 doesn't have to equal 4, if that answer doesn't make women feel good, or if they're on their periods and feel that 4 isn't BIG enough at the time.

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Mark Brittingham's avatar

his team of "researchers" conclude...

Talk about gutting an institution and then wearing its skin to claim the status it once held...

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Mark Weinburg's avatar

Math is hard; ideology is easy. These mediocrities do nothing more than churn out professionally uneducated men and women and destroy the institutions which they infest.

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Kevin Menard's avatar

Yeah, math takes work, especially when you get to the more advanced topics. And pure math? That seems to eat all your processing power.

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Mark Weinburg's avatar

I could not agree more. I was a double major in college - Chemistry and Math, magna cum in both. This was at Tufts U in 1970 before grade inflation really took off. I was a whiz at advanced, applied math, but abstract algebra nearly was the death of me - barely managed to scrape out a B-

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Margaret's avatar

So much balderdash. I was a woman in 1963 when I scored the highest in my school's history in the nationally standardized trigonometry test.

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Robert  Hill's avatar

I trust you still are one?

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Margaret's avatar

Yes, but still 18 in my mind.

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Christopher Messina's avatar

Math is easy. It's the ageing that's hard.

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Sid's avatar

Rather than challenge the BS she is peddling, simply ask her to apply her paradigm to female-dominated majors.

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Mark's avatar

She's way behind the times-- yes the educational system developed catered to men's tendency to emphasize rationalism over emotionalism.

That education system was completely revamped in the '70s to prioritize women's tendency to emphasize emotionalism over rationalism. You'll not in survey's of female college students- 60-70% believe it is better to suppress truth if it makes some people uncomfortable.

Both men and women are completely capable of rational and logical thought-- despite innate tendencies. Engineering and the other hard sciences rely on math and truth and rational reasoning. You can't just go by how you feel metal should behave, you need to deal with it's actual quantifiable properties in a design.

"“Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is.

And you must bend to its power or live a lie.”

― Miyamoto Musashi

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Toni Airaksinen's avatar

Thanks for reading and taking the time to reply, Mark!

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Christof Stehpinkler's avatar

This is how civilization ends.

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Paul Serrano's avatar

I see the idea that mathematics education should serve a "more holistic sense of truth" as akin to the "New Math" educational fad. Among other things, it taught the use of Venn diagrams, so beloved of Vice President Harris. New Math was famously satirized by singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer (Professor of Mathematics and Music at UC Santa Cruz was his backup career). I'll never forget the line "... in the new approach ... the important thing is "to understand what you're doing," rather than "to get the right answer."

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Mr. Ala's avatar

Note the emphasis on "rather than."

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Mike Zorn's avatar

That is of course nonsense. There have been fine women mathematicians, And scientists. Just not as many, mostly because they aren't pushed in that direction.

The professor is falling into the "All X are Y" trap.

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Gamma002's avatar

No, mostly because male and female brains and tendencies are different. Nature sorts organically, Woke ideology is forced and insane.

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Mr. Ala's avatar

You think it's nature; Mike Zorn thinks its nurture. Do you have evidence, or is it just a hunch? (I am asking him the exact same question.)

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Mr. Ala's avatar

You think it's nurture; Gamma002 thinks its nature. Do you have evidence, or is it just a hunch? (I am asking him the exact same question.)

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AlabamaSlamma's avatar

I can't help but think any self-respecting 1970s feminist would be outraged by this.

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KevinWLCD's avatar

This seems insulting to the women who have STEM degrees and successful STEM careers.

There are quite a few women with highly popular YouTube channels, for example, discussing Math and Physics. Sabine Hossenfelder and Vi Hart easily come to mind.

Marxist-feminism has driven men out of most university departments where logic and rational thought aren’t prerequisites for success. Now it aims to damage the few departments where logic and rational thinking are crucial to success.

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Avery Burns's avatar

The conclusions reached are baffling to me. Either you choose to take the more difficult path or you don't. The knowledge itself has no gender. It is knowledge and exists apart from silly political ideals. Like the huge percentage of people; if you don't want to learn it then go elsewhere. You don't get to be a mathematician, physicist, engineer, etc. just because you want to. Gotta earn it.

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Mr. Ala's avatar

"There is no royal road to geometry." --Euclid

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Gamma002's avatar

Wow. Just WOW. Truth is OBJECTIVE, it cannot be changed by women's FEELINGS. Using feelings as a 'tool' for STEM understanding is no different than using a blow torch to make water into ice cubes.

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Richard's avatar

The operative word in the headline is "Professor" That is where all the DEI nonsense comes from.

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awindowcleanerme's avatar

This could all be a covert way to accrue more financial benefits. Contrary to what she says, when you actually get into stem the amount of lucrative women's only benefits programs and general preference to women over men is pretty surreal. We have to say the opposite because that's a prerequisite to justify that type of self dealing in the academy.

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Toni Airaksinen's avatar

One reader's thoughts on "black feminism" in mathematics:

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