But it says that the variance is greater for boys than for girls. That means, pace what the NYT reports, that there are more boys in the upper tail (and presumably in the lower tail, too) of the distribution. When it comes to the most gifted mathematics students, in other words, and presumably the most incapable as well, the boys are overrepresented.
BB
BaseballDad brought up a very good point. At High school level or even AP level, girls match up with boys very well. They are probably do slightly better in such classes as AP Calculas, AP statistics in most schools.
But at more elite level, boys still rule. If you go to any state or national level math competition, you will notice the absense of girls at top 10. No amount of sugar coating can hide that.
I just check the statistics of AMC 12 (a test that many high school boys and girls take). Doing well in AMC 12 is first step towards Math Olympiad. AMC webside lists average AMC 12 score is 60.8 for girls and 69.3 for boys in 2008. That difference is pretty significant. In addition, the gap did not close in last 5 years.
My younger D is in this year's PROMYS program (a pretty elite math camp by Boston U) where they spend 6 weeks stuying number theory. The boy to girl ratio there is 3 to 1. Out of 18 girls there, some 15 are asians and rest are white people.
Don't get me wrong, I root for girls (I have two daughters). It is great news that girls are closing the gap (at least at lower level), but it is bottle half empty or half full thing. In my opinion, girls still have a long way to go to catch up in Math.
