{"id":53274,"date":"2018-10-29T16:09:53","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T23:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=53274"},"modified":"2018-11-02T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T17:40:19","slug":"szal-statistics-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/szal-statistics-research\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU study finds women, while trying to keep up, actually earn better grades in statistics classes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, thinking you\u2019re bad at math can really help your grade in a math class.<\/p>\n

\"Future<\/a>
Kinsey Ottaway, second from right, with the NAU Future Business Women of America at a conference<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s not a magic bullet or a trick, said Rick Szal<\/strong>, a statistics professor in The W. A. Franke College of Business at Northern Arizona University. Rather, the phenomenon that he has witnessed anecdotally and data has backed up has consistently yielded the same result, and it\u2019s one that has a gender divide: Women are less confident in their abilities to do math than their male counterparts. Women are also more likely to get a higher grade than their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy conclusion from that is women get more out of the class than men,\u201d Szal said. \u201cThey tend to work harder in the class because of that anxiety they feel in the outset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Szal and a couple of students through the years have studied how students use supplemental instruction (SI) in their statistics class, typically one of the hardest classes for business students and one that all FCB students, major and minor, are required to take and pass with at least a C grade. The trend follows a similar pattern: Men are more confident than women going into math classes. Women express fear of the subject and worry they won\u2019t do well. Because of that inferiority, whether real or perceived, women go to more SI sessions, stay after class and go to Szal\u2019s office hours to ask questions and learn the material.<\/p>\n

What all that extra effort translates into is a higher grade and a better understanding of the material.<\/p>\n

It did for Kinsey Ottaway<\/strong>, a junior accounting major who has taken Szal\u2019s class\u2014and worried about it, worked hard, got extra help and earned an A\u2014and now is helping him with the next step of this research. Ottaway, who is funded by the Interns-to-Scholars Program<\/a> in NAU\u2019s Undergraduate Research, is designing and distributing a survey among Szal\u2019s business statistics students that will ask questions like how they feel about STEM courses and whether they were encouraged or discouraged from taking such courses; what resources they have to help in those courses; and other demographic questions. The hope is to break down even further what leads to students\u2019 feelings about \u201chard\u201d classes and how to overcome that self-doubt.<\/p>\n

Ottaway, who initially approached Szal about being a grader for him, grew interested in his research reading the paper he and another undergrad published two years ago about SI.<\/p>\n

\"Rick<\/a>
Rick Szal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt resonated with me because I went into this very class anxious and very scared because of the uncertainty of the coursework, the grading, the professor, everything,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting to see how it personally affects me and my female counterparts. But, while it\u2019s a little unfair that we have more anxiety going into certain academic courses, it helps us to be stronger and have better time management.\u201d<\/p>\n

The purpose of this research isn\u2019t to say one gender is better at math or one gender is better at learning. Rather, Szal said, it\u2019s to highlight inconsistencies he sees and where he sees men are not keeping up with the work in class, in part because of a feeling of superiority. He wants all of his students to understand the material and get a good grade, but semester after semester he sees women students being far more likely to seek out additional help. At least some of that is to make up for their (again, real or perceived) lack of knowledge coming into the course.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want people to recognize this is what\u2019s happening,\u201d Szal said. \u201cI would like women to recognize their position, that they\u2019re not imposters or lucky, they\u2019re intelligent, and they need to just keep working the way they\u2019re working.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"NAU<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, thinking you\u2019re bad at math can really help your grade in a math class. It\u2019s not a magic bullet or a trick, said Rick Szal, a statistics professor in The W. A. Franke College of Business at Northern Arizona University. Rather, the phenomenon that he has witnessed anecdotally and data has backed up has…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}