> > And I have to say, any girl saying "My best event is base-12 math" has got *my* attention. :-)
> >
> > Trav"didn't read the whole transcript, but that line caught my eye"holt.
>
> This got me thinking a bit. Why does this get my attention?
>
> Well... I'm a boy. (Well, I'm 27, but I count myself as a boy. I don't want to be a *man* man, if you know what I mean. I want to be a boy, to be able to play and stuff.) I'm interested in programming. I'm not much of a programmer, really, although I've been toying with it a bit before and am playing around with a Java these days.
>
> Through programming I've learned about the concepts of different base number systems. I've also learned that most girls aren't interested in programming *at all*. Most guys I know aren't, either, but the people I know who are into programming are invariably guys, but still wouldn't know what the expression 'base-12 math' means. I'm over average interested in math, but I still had kind of a hard time getting these concepts in the start, so that's understandable.
>
> So a *girl* who knows what base-12 math is, is not as much impressive as it is surprising and unusual to me. (I don't mean to say it's not impressive, I would be a bit impressed by *anyone* saying that, really.)

::grins widely:: Reminds me of my CS class so far. The whole spiel at the beginning of the class was how it was not a survey course, and we'd be getting into programming right away, so anyone who wasn't a major, or at least a math major - and he stares right at me - might consider dropping it and taking the survey course instead...

I'm one of two or three girls and two or three nonmajors (minoring - music performance major) in a class of roughly 15. And I was the only one who could explain the mystical workings of math in other bases. :-) I think his opinion of me rose a bit after that...

> I think girls are just as good as math as boys, if not better. But I also think that most girls just aren't interested enough in it to pursue that line of education. Girls are mostly drawn towards social jobs, I think. While guys like to put numbers in system and make it all work out to be zero in the end, girls like to juggle people, feelings, social situations etc. and make it all work out nicely. Guys like to put material things in order, while girls care about the immaterial stuff. Or am I wrong?

You're wrong! Alright... in general, you're right. But not always. According to Keirsey, of Keirsey Personality Test fame, *most* women and most men are like that. And then you have the freaks - the women who test as thinkers, and the men who test as feelers. On the INTP and INTJ-lists (which I subscribe to but never post to anymore) there are actually quite a few female programmers/techie geeks... very few who aren't at least interested in it. I'm a geek, and so are most of my female friends. And I know a lot of guys who are better at social situations than I'll ever be. ::shrug:: Freaks of nature, perhaps, but none of us seem to mind... It comes down more to the thinking/feeling split than gender, I think.

-Fob"can drag personality type into anything, is just finishing up her Java applet, and is now taking off for another Percy Grainger Festival event at Stetson... woohoo"ulis