STEM

Tarzana2

The Rodgers wrote: »

The coding thing has jumped the shark imo, see it everywhere, bank ads, people I know who have never had an interest in tech starting degrees to learn code.

We can't all be codin' lads.

And loads of job specs looking for it as a desirable skill, even in non-tech roles. What up?

jimgoose

Stheno wrote: »

STEM is a massive focus due to the likes of Watson from IBM and it's ability to replace people, Gartner predict that self aware tech will take away a lot from the need for people by 2020, I suspect it will be longer



I'd be considered an uber nerd in the area I work in, I spend loads of time thinking how what I do and how I work can benefit people so why would you say that?

And btw I'm female, I've been the only SME in orgs who was and it never made a difference that I was

Watson will never replace people. I'm one of his psychiatrists.

jimgoose

Tarzana2 wrote: »

And loads of job specs looking for it as a desirable skill, even in non-tech roles. What up?

The usual. Gobsh1te recruiters rugby-tackling the latest buzzword.

Stheno

Tarzana2 wrote: »

And loads of job specs looking for it as a desirable skill, even in non-tech roles. What up?

That's usually BA/Quant roles IME

I'm wondrering though if requesting a women in IT forum as a subforum of the ladies lounge is worthwhile?

I work in IT and am a minority, I'd be considerd fairly senior and use groups like girl groups to chill out?

jimgoose

Stheno wrote: »

That's usually BA...

I ain't goin' on no plane, Hannibal!!

Nucular Arms

zeffabelli wrote: »

Someone who is not a systemiser is going to suck at most levels of IT.

Most left brain products will be outsourced to Bangladesh.

What you are trying to create here is an aspergers nation. (Silicon valley.)

zeffabelli wrote: »

Well I can tell you, if I had chosen IT I'd never get a job, and if I did get one, I'd be fired and end up a drain on the exchequer anyway, because I just don't think like a systemiser.

People need to do what they CAN do.

I'm sorry but the whole whole empathiser-systemiser theory is based on shaky science at best. As is the 'left brain right brain hypothesis' which has been widely debunked.

Baron cohen seems a good enough sort but his work seems more geared toward grabbing headlines than acknowledging the vast body of evidence supporting neuroplasticity as the primary mechanic of cognitive development.

People can pretty much learn any skill given enough time and energy devoted to doing so. That's one of the most empowering abilities we have as a species, and deserves more recognition from the general population. This whole "I'm just not a maths person" or "I just don't have any musical ability" attitude is just patently wrong for most people (who might consider themselves as such). The truth is that your brain will dynamically rewire itself to promote synaptic pathways that are more utilised than others, while simultaneously allowing less utilised neural pathways to atrophy. We can, and do, adapt constantly to new information and new stimulus in our environment. If you do more maths or keep practising your musical instrument / portrait drawing or whatever... you will get better at it. Your brain will change to accomodate the activity.

Sure it's easy to infer that people often have preferences for one thing, subject, activity or another, but that doesn't mean that they can't do those things that they don't prefer. That they won't do those things is a far better observation.

Sorry to single you out but i'm just sick of hearing people going on about these outdated / unsubstantiated theories as if they are fact when they just aren't.

I do admire your ideal of promoting science (and education in general) as being best served by catering to the inherent curiosity and wonder in the young though so kudos for that!

zeffabelli

Nucular Arms wrote: »

I'm sorry but the whole whole empathiser-systemiser theory is based on shaky science at best. As is the 'left brain right brain hypothesis' which has been widely debunked.

Baron cohen seems a good enough sort but his work seems more geared toward grabbing headlines than acknowledging the vast body of evidence supporting neuroplasticity as the primary mechanic of cognitive development.

People can pretty much learn any skill given enough time and energy devoted to doing so. That's one of the most empowering abilities we have as a species, and deserves more recognition from the general population. This whole "I'm just not a maths person" or "I just don't have any musical ability" attitude is just patently wrong for most people (who might consider themselves as such). The truth is that your brain will dynamically rewire itself to promote synaptic pathways that are more utilised than others, while simultaneously allowing less utilised neural pathways to atrophy. We can, and do, adapt constantly to new information and new stimulus in our environment. If you do more maths or keep practising your musical instrument / portrait drawing or whatever... you will get better at it. Your brain will change to accomodate the activity.

Sure it's easy to infer that people often have preferences for one thing, subject, activity or another, but that doesn't mean that they can't do those things that they don't prefer. That they won't do those things is a far better observation.

Sorry to single you out but i'm just sick of hearing people going on about these outdated / unsubstantiated theories as if they are fact when they just aren't.

I do admire your ideal of promoting science (and education in general) as being best served by catering to the inherent curiosity and wonder in the young though so kudos for that!

I get what you are saying, and I know Baron-Cohen's theories on empathy are widely debated-I'm not a disciple of them myself and the wholly current accepted wisdom on empathy hold significant doubts for me, and I am aware of neuroplasticity and the science around it {I am not a scientist though] even though many so called scientists{by this I refer to psychiatrists} are happy to ignore it.

Leaving empathy aside for a moment because that isn't really what I am talking about....

What I am not aware of is that left/right brain divides were entirely debunked. Do you have any reading on this? I came across an article not too long ago talking about this, but it seems that article was misleading and did not carry too much weight.

You might get 'better" at a specific skill, but you still might not get good enough at them to hold down a job doing it.

No amount of practise is going to make me good enough at Calculus for example to be hirable. No amount of pracitise at this stage in my life, will make me a good enough cellist to get hired, though I could probably whip off twinkle twinkle.

NI24

I have to say, this a great thread and I'm learning a lot. And while I don't think being pushed to do pursue a career you're generally not interested in is a good idea, the fact remains that a lot of Western nations lack highly trained and/or educated individuals in sciences and maths, particularly applied. I remember having a conversation with my Calculus teacher in high school about this very subject. My school had German exchange students every year since he taught there(he worked there over 20 years) and he said that the German students' math and science skills got worse every year. The last year I attended was the worst, he said (almost equal to the American students).

I also have to concur with ScienceNerd when he/she says that Maths, Physics, and Engineering courses are almost always dominated by men-- unlike, say, biology or medicine. The fact is, men generally outperform women in these areas, which also might explain why so many all-girl schools don't supply courses in said subjects.

Adamantium

We shouldn't have to push anything to do anything, if it's so great then we 'll have more than enough people, if someone enjoys working in the hospitality/travel sector and the results are apparent and real to them, then great.

Maybe people don't want to do STEM work because they're smarter than we give them credit for. Common sense for their own self preservation dictates their actions not the propaganda that society spews (I say this as one who fell into it in 2008).

jimgoose

Adamantium wrote: »

We shouldn't have to push anything to do anything, if it's so great then we 'll have more than enough people, if someone enjoys working in the hospitality/travel sector and the results are apparent and real to them, then great.

Maybe people don't want to do STEM work because they're smarter than we give them credit for. Common sense for their own self preservation dictates their actions not the propaganda that society spews (I say this as one who fell into it in 2008).

I couldn't agree more. We certainly need to get a little more interested in the "hard" disciplines, before the Asian Kid hands us our collective ass - some would say he/she's already doing just that - but it's no use beating people into it either. Anyone can do it, but it is colossally more difficult to apply yourself to something if you're not interested in it naturally. I certainly find that as I get older I have no patience with stuff I don't ruddy-well like! :pac:

Calina

NI24 wrote: »

I have to say, this a great thread and I'm learning a lot. And while I don't think being pushed to do pursue a career you're generally not interested in is a good idea, the fact remains that a lot of Western nations lack highly trained and/or educated individuals in sciences and maths, particularly applied. I remember having a conversation with my Calculus teacher in high school about this very subject. My school had German exchange students every year since he taught there(he worked there over 20 years) and he said that the German students' math and science skills got worse every year. The last year I attended was the worst, he said (almost equal to the American students).

There are ongoing messings with teaching people maths in a lot of western countries to be honest. If you look at the UK, there was a huge kerfuffle about the idea of teaching people 12 times tables. While this is not a simple matter to discuss briefly, there has been a move to getting people to work stuff out from first principles rather than just knowing certain base knowledge.

The other point is there are major motivational differences for kids in the Asian countries and cultures (viz, Tiger moms and that sort of movement in the US).

My view is that most subjects demand a certain amount of work to get to grips with and how easy that work is is linked to how motivated you are to do it. Put simply, no matter how easy something is, if you don't want to do it, it's a hard task to complete.

I've seen a lot of change in the commands for attention for western children in the last 20 years. When I went to school, the choice was books or TV and the TV was not typically to hand but had to be negotiated with parents. Today, kids have a dozen or more social media channels, TV in their hands, Youtube, kindles. I think there's a certain amount of thin spreading going on. They are not necessarily seeing the relevance of basic education to their lives.

When I was 15 - which is more than 25 years ago - there was a lot of "When will I ever need to prove Pythagoras" in my class. Now I was fortunate in that I went to a girls school which did make higher level physics, chem and maths available. But there was a lot of "I don't need this" going on as well. I'd be stunned if that had changed much in the intervening years.

The NYT had an interesting article on maths teaching a few months ago - I'll see if I can find it again to link - on the subject of views of teaching maths in America versus Japan. The point which was raised is that much of what Japan does is based on research that was done in America some time ago. The ultimate conclusion is that every so often, a lot of work is put into improving maths teaching, tested using extremely teachers who have very good classes, turns out well, is rolled out to the general system without providing the relevant tool kit to your average high school teacher. It was quite interesting because I feel something similar was done here with Project Maths a few years ago. It was tested on 21 schools before it was rolled out as far as I remember. I didn't think it was very indepth.

That article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?_r=0

NI24 wrote: »

I also have to concur with ScienceNerd when he/she says that Maths, Physics, and Engineering courses are almost always dominated by men-- unlike, say, biology or medicine. The fact is, men generally outperform women in these areas, which also might explain why so many all-girl schools don't supply courses in said subjects.

My personal hypothesis on the subject of why girls get access to higher level biology (but not the rest of the hard sciences) is that women have traditionally needed it to get into nursing which was an appropriate career path whereas the others, sure they won't be doing engineering anyway. I'd argue it's incumbant on the system to give them the choice either which way and I should hope that availability has improved.

I heard, prior to when I was a secondary school student, there was a de facto arrangement for girls from my school to take higher level physics classes at the local CBS but I don't know if that's true and by the time I got there, the subject was available in the school. My higher level maths teacher did point out at the time that while his classes tended to be smaller in number than the corresponding class at the local CBS and significantly so, their average marks tended to be higher. Again, though, that anecdote is 25 years old now.

jimgoose wrote: »

I couldn't agree more. We certainly need to get a little more interested in the "hard" disciplines, before the Asian Kid hands us our collective ass - some would say he/she's already doing just that - but it's no use beating people into it either. Anyone can do it, but it is colossally more difficult to apply yourself to something if you're not interested in it naturally. I certainly find that as I get older I have no patience with stuff I don't ruddy-well like! :pac:

I don't think it's as you get older. I think it's a feature of humanity. If you look at the changes in points for the Leaving Certificate, there is a trend that higher points courses align with "likely to make me a load of money per current fashion" subjects. And you only have to look at what happened to the take up of higher level maths when the points tally for the subject made the payback more worth the effort.

*********************

I do believe that motivation is a key driver of effort. My concern is that we don't know what the actual best motivators are. Some people try fear, some people try reward systems. I'm not sure how many people go for self esteem which may help as well. There is research around that children who are praised for effort rather than success tend to do better in the long run because they associate more value with work rather than innate skills.

One of the core issues in education at the moment is evaluation. Currently, the UK and the US are going down the road of huge data gathering exercises and levels and constant testing. I'm not sure this works but I see evidence of it happening here as well in certain places.

In my view, children like challenges. It's just that they don't necessarily like the challenges that come with education sometimes. Many kids will put serious effort into something like computer games, particularly storyline driven ones. What we need to do is find a way of getting the same motivation into maths or science or languages. I think there needs to be a wholesale reorganisation about how we look at education and what we want its outcomes to be.

Most of the time we just talk about "oh we need more stem" or "our language skills are poor".

I'd add that the way we test certain things doesn't lend itself to acquiring skills in them. I know David McWilliams wrote a really stupid piece the other week on Finland and removing subjects. I'm not wholly in favour of what he suggested they were doing in Finland (which they aren't actually doing in Finland as it happens) but I do think it needs to be recognised that there is overlap and collaboration between various subjects, and stuff you learn in one might be applied in others, and stuff you learn in one place might enhance your access to stuff in other places.

To take one simple example: a core subject on Europe would bring economics, languages, history, sociology, maths and communications into play and how they interact. But it doesn't work if you don't also build into the basic components of that subject.

Ultimately, I've always seen education as a tool for living and growing and not something which ends at the age of 18, 22, 24, 27 or whatever time you get out of full time education.

zeffabelli

THing is these new generations are used to ipads and windows and the computers doing everything for you.

We had DOS and basic. We HAD to get under the hood of the machine, even though I am not in IT, just by necessity had to learn this stuff.

Newer generations wont have to.....there is an argument for putting it in curriculums for secondary options.

jimgoose

zeffabelli wrote: »

THing is these new generations are used to ipads and windows and the computers doing everything for you.

We had DOS and basic. We HAD to get under the hood of the machine, even though I am not in IT, just by necessity had to learn this stuff.

Newer generations wont have to.....there is an argument for putting it in curriculums for secondary options.

"It's obvious that the world has three distinct classes of people, each with its own evolutionary destiny:

* Knowledgeable computer users who will evolve into godlike non-corporeal beings who rule the universe (except for those who work in tech support).

* Computer owners who try to pass as knowledgeable but secretly use hand calculators to add totals to their Excel spreadsheets. This group will gravitate toward jobs as high school principals and operators of pet crematoriums. Eventually they will become extinct.

* Non-computer users who will grow tails, sit in zoos and fling dung at tourists."

-- Scott Adams

Nucular Arms

zeffabelli wrote: »

What I am not aware of is that left/right brain divides were entirely debunked. Do you have any reading on this? I came across an article not too long ago talking about this, but it seems that article was misleading and did not carry too much weight.

What is debunked is the notion that all of a particular cognitive capability resides in one hemisphere or the other. I.e. language exists solely in the left hemisphere and visiospatial processing occurs solely in the right.

While there is a certain pattern of increased activation in either hemisphere for a particular aspect of cognition, it is massively overplayed in the popular imagination.

In fact it appears that cognitive ability in one aspect or another is actually increased when the pattern of brain activation is more highly spread across the entire brain as opposed to more generally confined to one hemisphere or another. So for example in musical ability it would appear that one hemisphere excels at governing the chord patterns and scales required to play the music but that the left hemisphere will invest the sound with more emotional weight and nuance. So the best musicians exhibit high levels of cross brain activation when they play. One theory postulates that da vinci was simply exhibited an unusual level of cross brain activation allowing him to excel in so many apparently disparate disciplines!

The idea that 'creativity comes from the right brain' and 'logic comes from the left'... this kind of thing is just simply misleading though.

As regards reading on the subject I would simply google cerebral lateralisation studies or meta studies and browsed the results. A decent meta study from columbia university can be found here and a paper with a lot of links to other studies can be found here

As for whether you could learn the skills at this stage well.. that's up for debate really. My own experience is that I grew up hanging around with musicians, fully and firmly believing that I had no innate musical ability. At the age of 27 I bought a drumkit after having some mighty fun playing guitar hero on the xbox and reasoning that it wouldn't be too hard to pick up. After that I started playing bass guitar since it is a similarly rythmic instrument. Now that I can play both i'm looking at learning regular guitar, a more melodic instrument. I'm sure I won't be playing wembley any time soon but I do have a little band I play in.

Similarly I grew up thinking I couldn't do maths. Got a D in pass in the leaving cert. However when I went to college to do computer science I found that I took to it quite well since I was now focused and determined to do it, and ended up outperforming lads just out of honours level in secondary school, despite my not having done an ounce of maths for about a decade. I am now making a living from that... And I wanted to be a writer when I was younger!

AndonHandon

Stheno wrote: »

I'd be considered an uber nerd in the area I work in, I spend loads of time thinking how what I do and how I work can benefit people so why would you say that?

And btw I'm female, I've been the only SME in orgs who was and it never made a difference that I was

For a lot of jobs you could say that you spend loads of time thinking about what you do can and how it can be applied to benefit people (clients). That's clearly a useless definition of what constitutes a nerd. I mean actual nerds doing nerd jobs and nerds doing non-nerd jobs. Think, Google.