“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” – Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, is one of those books that seems to be everywhere and yet barely anyone I know has read it. I've been doing a lot of walking lately (in preparation for the 20 mile London Night Hike, please donate if you can!), and decided to grab the audiobook of Outliers to entertain me.
One of the more prolific statements that he makes is around the 10,000 rule: the concept that the key to success is practicing for at least 10,000 hours. Gladwell claims that it's true for everyone, from the violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music, to chess players, to Bill Gates. If you believe his theory, then you also have to agree with corollary. It doesn't matter if you're naturally a genius in the area - the 10,000 hours is still required to be successful.
Unsurprisingly, this all made me think about gender demographics in technology. Remind me, why don't we have many women?
They got lost, when they didn't get their 10,000 hours of practice during the 10 years of schooling that their male counterparts did. They were too busy being told to take English instead of Maths and trying to fit in with their peers.
They got lost, when they went to university for 4 years and ended up being put in the role of organiser and presenter and report writer instead of doing technical work during projects.
They got lost, when they took that career break to raise children and missed thousands of hours of technical and management experience.
The first two are things to be remedied, things that have been identified time and time again, and have a million and one projects in the works in the hopes of addressing them.
The last issue is something we have to learn to deal with. Women bear children; this is way things have always been and will remain for a very, very long time. The choice of whether to stay at home with your children is a personal one, but the key word is choice. It should be a fair choice, where there is no undue bias because your job doesn't suffer and neither do your children. Technology is important, but so is the next generation.
But now we know that taking that break automatically puts you behind the competition, because it doesn't matter how good your company's maternity policies are and it doesn't matter how good you are. You will still lose the advantage because you have to make up that time somehow, and that can only be done by working harder and longer, which new mothers usually aren't in the market for. So it will take longer to make that time up. The determined ones will make it, as they should, and the ones that decide it's not that important to them, won't.
My gut instinct tells me that career breaks will continue to be taken by women. I don't think this is an issue that needs to be tackled on that front.
Instead, the shoe has moved to the other foot. As men campaign for better paternity rights and start taking longer breaks themselves, will we ever reach a point where the playing field evens out across the genders?
“Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.” – Ernest Hemingway
My generation spawned many things, including the birth of ‘ladette’ culture. Despite the stereotypical image of young British women downing pints, I still associate wine with a woman’s drink.
You can imagine my surprise at being the only woman in the room when I joined my other half for a wine tasting a few weeks ago, organised by his firm’s trading technology department (where he works). Where did all the women go?
It’s easy to come up with superficial reasons behind this phenomenon:
- They signed up but couldn’t make it due to work issues
- They have to run home and take care of the kids
- They like wine but they don't care about it that much
- There aren’t that many of them there in the first place, so proportionally you wouldn’t expect (m)any anyway - unfortunately I wasn't able to get hold of the percentage of female employees in that department to confirm what the expected figure would be around.
The first three points all lose ground when you take Women Inspired by Wine into account. The group was only launched in April of this year, and it's exactly what you would infer from the name: an organisation that provides educational and social opportunities around wine for women. One would assume that they have a number of members, or it wouldn't exist. Who are these women? I think it's safe to say that they don't work in trading technology at investment banks, or maybe they do and that's why they eschew the work events for the superior women-only ones!
However, for anyone that thinks perhaps the women attending these events are something other than city professionals has it wrong because one of Women Inspired by Wine's partners is none other than Women in the City. But how many of those women attend the wine events?
Women in the City was created when Gwen Rhys, a serial networker if there ever was one, decided that there should be a forum to gather city women together. This resulted in a 'one-off' lunch that has become the annual flagship event for the organisation. In addition to the lunch, they now have an annual symposium, an awards scheme and produce a magazine with items of interest to both men and women.
The network is currently focused at senior women, with a target age of 35-45, but I'm pleased to see that future endeavours include a Rising Star award for the 25+ age range. I remain convinced that while networks are good in the current atmosphere, the only reason they are necessary is because women are in the minority. The only way to bring this situation to an end is to increase the number of women, and that will naturally occur by fostering younger talent.
Maybe then, the day will arrive when wine events are open to both genders, and both will attend. What a novelty!
“First of all, I have always dreamt of being an astronaut, even if this might be obvious.” – Luca Parmitano
Anyone that follows me on Twitter will have been inundated with tweets last week when the ESA finally revealed their 6 new astronauts. The varied group consists of 2 Italians, 1 German, 1 Danish, 1 French and the one I was waiting for – 1 British.
There was thankfully one woman in the group, the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, who the BBC News website called ‘ESA’s first female astronaut’ until they realised that the ESA has in fact had two female astronauts in the past. One was Claudie Haigneré, who was the first Frenchwoman in space and left the ESA to go into politics. The other was Marianne Merchez, a Belgian that married a fellow astronaut but then resigned from the ESA before ever going into space. So that leaves Cristoforetti on her own in the ESA Astronaut Corps, and she’ll most likely remain like that until the next round of recruitment in 15 years (if past precedent is anything to go by) but I’m more than confident that she can hold her own.
Earlier this week, ESA remained in the news with the launch of ESA astronaut Frank De Winne to the International Space Station. It’s a significant mission for many reasons. Firstly, De Winne and his two crewmates will remain with the current inhabitants of the ISS to form the first six person crew of the ISS. That crew will mark the first time that representatives from all five ISS partner agencies will be in space together: 1 Belgian ESA astronaut, 2 Russians, 1 Japanese, 1 Canadian, and last but not least, 1 American NASA astronaut. Of course, De Winne himself is going to be the first European commander of the ISS, a role he will take over after four months in space.
But what’s so good about space, apart from the fun vibe that one gets after watching the new Star Trek movie? The ministers in charge of space activities in the ESA's 18 Member States and Canada met today for the Sixth Space Council. The ministers noticed the contribution of space to leading economic recovery through innovation, with key points including the potential of satellite communication technologies for broadband in rural areas. This is a remarkably simple concept that anyone visiting a rural area can understand, and yet we are not in a position to do anything about it.
I understand the need to generate excitement around space and astronauts at a basic level – and if we have things like new astronauts to announce, then by all means, that should be maximised for media attention – but I find that more often than not, the practicalities and usefulness of space exploration is sidelined, especially the role that the people down on the ground play. Things might be changing, though. It’s still the International Year of Astronomy, and the She Is An Astronomer project is going strong in the UK with Maggie Aderin working on projects with Blue Peter and arranging for short items about women in astronomy to be broadcast on the BBC Radio 4’s Women's Hour.
I also remember part of the astronaut application asking the candidate for their opinions on the role that an astronaut should play as a public face. It’ll be interesting to see what Maj Timothy Peake will be doing on the media front in the months to come – especially given that the UK has yet to contribute financially to the ESA’s human spaceflight programme.
“What’s the point in pouring a fortune into educating girls, watching them exceed boys, when it comes to appointing leaders, these are drawn from just half the population” – Ansgar Gabrielsen
Last week, yet another article popped up asking, Why don't more women work in IT? It covers a lot of the familiar arguments, including not enough girls taking the right A-levels (despite performing well at GCSE level), which I’ve discussed enough on this blog, and a lack of role models. That's a concept that’s hopefully going to be blown out of the water on March 24th aka Ada Lovelace Day, when Suw Charman-Anderson's 1300+ army of bloggers, myself included, all hit Post and write about a woman that they admire in technology.
The nice thing about this article is that it links this to the issue at the forefront of everyone’s minds – especially men. How are we going to get out of the current economic situation? By not ignoring this fabulous talent pool at our disposal, by looking at the evidence that shows that companies that have gender-balanced executive management teams perform better.
The New York Times published an article a couple days ago titled Mistresses of the Universe, pulling together studies looking at women in the banking sector in particular and how external factors affected decision making in both genders. Men unsurprisingly take higher risks when under financial pressure and surrounded by other males, while women are unaffected in this way. At this time of extreme financial pressure, which would you like at the top?
But it's not a recent phenomenon by any means. The FT has an article from a year and a half ago, succinctly saying Top women tip the scales. Research from McKinsey showed "better-than-average financial performance by European companies with the highest proportion of women in influential leadership roles".
The study also showed something that seems like common sense, but perhaps needs to be articulated to be realised: it takes at least three women to sit on a board in order to lose the token-woman 'female director' association. It is only when they are viewed as proper directors in their own right, and not as women that are conspiring with each other, that they can move on to enhance the boardroom environment and bring the diversity of experience that they have to offer to the table. This is what eventually leads to improving the performance of the company.
With that in mind, you can almost understand the rationale behind Norway. Norway, of course, introduced legislation in 2006 requiring that 40% of all boardroom positions in companies listed on the Oslo stock exchange are held by women. They gave the ~500 companies that didn’t have any women 2 years to balance their boardroom. In 2008, there was only a handful left that hadn’t complied.
Does that mean that Norway’s businesses are the most successful? The next interesting thing to throw out is that positive discrimination has been shown to hurt a company’s profitability. Again, it’s common sense why: if people are being hired based on gender rather than ability in order to reach a target (so that their company isn’t shut down, in Norway’s case), then it’s likely that the most capable candidates are being missed out and thus a lower performing group of individuals are at the top.
Where does that leave Norway? Who knows. After all of the media coverage when the law was enacted in 2006, there’s barely anything analysing the results in 2008. I'm sure research will eventually surface, but in the meantime, I’m going to stick to looking at why women don’t make it on their own. Government may mean well, but sometimes these things have to happen a bit more naturally in order to ensure that a fully developed talent pool is at the ready to take the helm, rather than everyone who just happens to be in the right place at the right time.
“As scientists we are doing amazing and quite mind-boggling things.” – Dr Maggie Aderin
2009 has been designated as the International Year of Astronomy, in honour of the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first astronomical observations using a telescope. Despite the official figure of 'participation of 140 countries worldwide', it seems that the UK is taking centre stage on this one. The UK's website unsurprisingly has a dedicated Calendar of UK Events. If you live in the UK, then take a look because there are events on up and down the country, without any London bias for a change. There's also excellent information for beginners that don't know where to start with astronomy, as well as key dates and events to be looking upwards on.
I'm quite interested to see how the 'She is an Astronomer' project manifests - while it's all well and good to say that they're promoting gender equality and empowering women in line with the UN's Millennium Development Goals, let's see what they come up with in reality. The official launch for the project is going to be part of the UKRC's 2009 conference, 'Tomorrow's Women, Tomorrow's World', and I'll probably attend for that alone.
The keynote speaker for the launch is Dr Maggie Aderin, and the more I learn about her, the more impressed I get. Apart from being a successful scientist, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from Imperial College London, she now works on systems for future ESA satellites and her next project is for a subsystem of the telescope that will eventually replace Hubble. Not content to leave it there, she set up her own company, Science Innovation Limited, which focuses on engaging the public with space, particularly ethnic minorities (Aderin has a Nigerian background) and girls.
If you can't wait until March for your fill of female astronomers, then in the meantime the UKRC has launched its Astronomy Blog, featuring women posting one-off blogs on astronomy. January's edition was completed by Dr Lucy Rogers, an amateur astronomer by her own description.
In other words, there's plenty to keep you busy. Despite having just bought a Galileo thermometer, I'm quite tempted by a telescope now - but I suspect it'll be far more expensive!
“It has been amazing to watch a buzzing Launchpad every single day and see how much people enjoy it and how much they learn.” – Anthony Richards
After missing the Science Museum's lates night last Wednesday for adults only (i.e. no kids allowed - finally time to take over the dance mat!), the other half and I went this afternoon.
We started off by Exploring Space, which had lots of interesting displays and fun interactive parts. Pretending to be an astronaut never gets old, although wearing the gloves they use and attempting to manipulate nuts and bolts proved to be much harder than you'd expect. I was also rather surprised at how small Helen Sharman's spacesuit was, especially given that you apparently become a bit taller in zero-g.
One of the perks of the Science Museum is the IMAX 3D cinema they have, so we ventured into the Wellcome Wing to see what was on. Unfortunately, we missed the space show, and managed to get lost in the wing! There was an incredibly cool looking exhibition about Patterns, but as we attempted to step in we read the notice that it was for under-8's and their carers 
After that, we found ourselves in the middle of a madhouse of children in the Launchpad. The Science Museum says it's their most popular gallery, and it's understandable why. It's interactive and plain fun. I was particularly excited by a display that had metal rods coming out of a black box, with instructions to take a straw (for hygiene reasons), place it over the rod, bite it, and block your ears. I was shocked to hear music - rap, for some reason - playing clearly.
What is this miracle? How does it work? What's its name?
My problem with the Science Museum is this. Because there was nothing around to give me even a bare bones explanation or a name for me to Google later. I can't even find it listed in the items On Display in that gallery on the website. If you're going to get that far in exciting kids about science, might as well throw in some learning when they might actually take it in, too.
From there, we headed up to Computing and Mathematics. I was sadly very disappointed to see limited interactive displays - Computing only had some of the first addition machines to play with that I, with my Masters degree in Maths and Computer Science, couldn't operate. Perhaps I was over-thinking it, but seriously. I wouldn't call it the most accessible for 8 year olds.
Moving across the floor to the Mathematics side, we saw a Japanese Abacus. I managed to follow the display enough to 'write out' a number, but again, doing some simple addition seemed rather complicated and was left mysteriously unexplained. It might just be me, I'm willing to admit it, but it didn't instill any confidence. The following displays felt boring and dry and there were no other interactive exhibits.
And we wonder why student numbers are decreasing in maths and technology.
For an institution that decided in 1920 (thanks to the then-Director, Colonel Sir Henry Lyons) to focus on the needs of the 'ordinary visitor' instead of the technical specialists it previously catered for, this is particularly saddening. The museum itself says, "The aim was to stimulate the interest and curiosity of children in science and technology using simple and attractive displays and a large number of working models."
Where is this now? Why has maths and computing been excluded? I appreciate that we're in a poor economic climate now and that funding will be less than likely to come by, but even a year ago I'm willing to bet that one of the billions of software houses (IBM, Google, HP, to name a few) would have been interested in sponsoring something that would truly motivate children.
Unfortunately, we ran out of time at that point and had to leave with a quick stop at the store. I found a Galileo thermometer, which I've wanted for ages. Multi-coloured baubles with a top temperature of 26 degrees, it was possibly one of my best buys this year.
“Computing is too important to be left to men.” – Karen Spärck Jones
The day before yesterday, I had a mini-rant about how the number of women accepted into Computer Science at Cambridge had decreased unproportionally to the number of men.
The thing that I forgot was that statistics always lie. You can make them show whatever you want, and if you let yourself get lost in the numbers behind the numbers, then sometimes you'll even forget what it is that you wanted to know in the first place.
At least, that's what happened to me when I tried to get to the bottom of the Cambridge story. Here are the facts:
| 2000 | 2007 | % decrease | |
| total applicants | 499 | 223 | 55% |
| total accepted | 88 | 71 | 19% |
| male applicants | 436 | 200 | 54% |
| males accepted | 71 | 64 | 10% |
| female applicants | 63 | 23 | 63% |
| females accepted | 17 | 7 | 59% |
What does this tell me? (And what do I want to know?)
I could write paragraphs comparing the percentages, but ultimately, it isn't a quota system, and it shouldn't be. The number of candidates accepted from either gender should be based on ability and potential, not on which box they tick or how it compares to the years before.
Given that, there's only one number that I care about. The number of female applicants dropped 63%. This is significant because it's a larger drop than on the male side, which only fell by 54%. Why were women turned off the subject even more men in those seven years?
If I could answer that question right now, I'd save a lot of people a lot of time and research.
Companies and professional associations and non-profits are all working to raise awareness to girls. But is it enough?
Headstart runs a number of courses to encourage A-level students into various engineering and science degrees. In 2006, they asked the same question before and after the courses – “What engineering degree do you intend to read at university?” 34% of the participants were female. The response for computing and software was 3% before the course, and 4% after. Is that really a significant difference? They also claim that 87% reported that Headstart had confirmed or encouraged their decision to study engineering and 76% reported the course confirmed or helped their choice of discipline.
My cynical question to them is this: what proportion of these students go on these courses to benefit their UCAS applications?
This type of education will only work if everyone has the opportunity - including when they don't even know that they're missing anything to begin with.
“Sir, Su Doku puzzles should carry a warning. It’s only Day 1 and already I’ve missed my Tube stop.” – Ian Payn
Earlier this week, the National Audit Office released a report into Mathematics performance in primary schools. The full 53-page document is available on their website, but every major news source has a summary available. The key points are:
* We are not quite on track to meet the 2011 target "that 84.5 per cent of pupils make at least two National Curriculum levels of progress in mathematics"
* £2.3 billion is now spend on primary school mathematics
* Girls are making less progress than boys between Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2
* There is a 20 percentage point gap in attainment at age 11 between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers
Maths has received quite a bashing in the media over the past few months, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. It is more than acceptable to say that you are useless at maths. I couldn't begin to count the number of times that people have given me a double take when I said that I have a Masters in Mathematics, followed by an exclamation of how smart I am, followed further by a statement of how they 'were never very good at maths'. I have yet to hear anyone say that they 'were never very good at reading'.
I've never been one to follow fads. Before you wonder where that non-sequitur came from, I offer it as backstory to why I had never played sudoku before the summer of this year. I ignored it when it reached it's height in 2006, and even when I had a Constraint Programming assignment during my degree, I devised a sudoku-solver without having ever playing the game. It wasn't until I went on holiday to the Caribbean this summer (with the now bust airline XL.com - good timing), and my friend brought along two sudoku books for the eight hour flight, did I finally give in.
So when that recruitment campaign for maths teachers hit the UK last year, bearing images of the ever-so-popular sudoku puzzles and enticing salaries, I was somewhat amused that a friend of mine - who happened to be a maths teacher - complained about how sudoku wasn't maths, at least not as the general populace understood it. It's a grid of numbers, where you fill in more numbers. How could it not be maths, I thought.
Having played it numerous times on that eight hour flight, I now understand. It's logic, but it's not arithmetic. Those numbers could be any symbols - it's just a matter of having a set of nine. To say that it's not maths would be a lie, because as I stated above - I created a solver for a computer science assessment. It's an excellent example of a constraint satisfaction problem, which was proven to be NP-complete (simply put, there is no efficient way to find a solution) five years ago. That's a very mathematical concept. Having said that, I don't see anything like it turning up at the school level, if my own experience was anything to go by, but then again, they claim to be spending all this money revamping the curriculum, so who knows.
It's so mathematical that two sessions of the Mathematical Association’s annual conference in 2006 were devoted to it. Wikipedia has a rather long article going on about it. The number of papers published regarding the most obscure details is astounding.
Even more interesting is the number of things left to learn - now that's almost enough to make me consider doing a PhD. What's the fewest number of given 'symbols' required to render a unique solution? It doesn't stop there though, as research has been done in the biological science arena to show that sudoku can trigger dormant "survival genes" in the brain and generate new brain cells altogether.
It's a shame that this is the bit that people don't see or care about. I wonder if it would enthuse students, if they understood how much maths and science is related to this successor of the crossword puzzle. It certainly got to me during the course of writing this. That's the beauty of pure maths - it doesn't always to be useful or practical (although it's nice when it is); but sometimes it can just be fun.
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