Discussion about suggestion of ICM talk focusing on making math more diverse, inclusive, and equitable - 2020-08-10

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6:56 PM

Hi everyone. This is my first time using chat. I actually don't have much more to add to the conversation beyond what I've already written, but it seemed clear to me that it was getting too long for a normal comment thread.

@JoshuaGrochow, about GRE being used to "weed out" rather than to "admit": With student positions mostly constant, there isn't that much difference. If you're worried that kids from worse schools will (relatively) flunk the GRE: how will the same disparity not show itself even stronger in reference letters (which, to my knowledge, often come from schoolteachers), transcripts (lack of honors classes, etc.), and personal statements (obvious opportunities for coaching here)?

Of course, you can view this all (badly written reference letters, lack of specialized classes, awkward personal statements) as evidence of students' disadvantage; but then you can't tell it apart from actually bad and/or unmotivated students. Loss of signal cannot be balanced out by filtering. We're actually in the middle of this experiment, and I'm looking forward to seeing its results in 1-2 years as a less tested (and less prepared) generation of students makes its way through undergrad.

I don't know much about bias in the GRE, though I did read the Atlantic article that I shared on the other thread, and I did read the ETS statement here about how the GRE alone should not be given too much weight: ets.org/gre/institutions/admissions/using_scores/…

I've thought a bit more about the SAT and ACT, and a lot of my thinking about whether or not we as a society should use them was shaped by Paul Tough's book: paultough.com/books/years-that-matter-most

I do agree that the cost of GRE (not just the nominal cost; also the cost of getting to a far-away test center and booking overnight stays nearby!) is a problem; I wish something would be done about it short of ditching it altogether. The latter option (just as "defund the police", as will be obvious in 1-2 years) will backfire, and compromise the standing of reformers for foreseeable time.

One important point was that the SAT was meant to be predictive of a students' success the first year of college, but actually the data shows it's not predictive of that at all. Similarly, we would assume the GRE is meant to be predictive of one's success on the qualifying exams, but the Atlantic article cited research (published in Nature, iirc) that says it's not

Your ETS reference is mostly truisms: >A review of all components of an applicant's file, in which GRE scores are considered as one piece of information among many, enables each applicant to be evaluated as fairly as possible.

More data is almost always better than less data; this is all they are saying.

7:04 PM

One interesting point is that most of our evidence that the GRE is biased actually comes from ETS itself. It seems they are trying hard to make it less biased. Sadly, they are not succeeding.

@darijgrinberg what time zone are you in? I'm kinda in the middle of a work day here, but it seems if I post in the evening in Chicago you don't see it till several hours later. Is that right?

Where is the data for its bias?

I'm in Germany

I read this bit about the data coming from ETS here: psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/201909/…

I'm not sure if it's public or not. You could imagine they wouldn't really want it to be (or perhaps couldn't due to confidentiality)

Sorry for skimming, but your link is mostly saying that the GRE is the least biased of measurements. What did I overlook?

I think I also only skimmed it. Like I said, I never asked myself if the GRE was biased until someone asked it on the comment thread. I've thought more about the ACT and SAT

(And I absolutely agree that reference letters are bias-prone; in grad admissions, they are also often not taken seriously unless someone in the admitting committee knows the writer, because different writers cannot be compared; but that's opening every gate to quasi-nepotism. People are aware of it, so applications don't live and die by their references. If a policy would now force them to, it will likely hurt everyone whose reference writers are not widely known.)

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7:10 PM

BTW, you asked me before about Steele's work. Essentially everything I know about that work comes from Steele's book, and my own observations about grades in my classes.

When I rebranded "tests" as "quizzes" and made the point to students that they were not testing innate ability, grades of minority students went up, and grades of other students stayed the same. Not a randomized controlled experiment, but it was enough to convince me (well, along with the zillions of published papers confirming stereotype treat)

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Yes, I keep hearing about ACT and SAT a lot, but most of what I'm hearing is that these are rather unbiased and hard to prep for.

(I'd rather avoid discussing them, though -- with the GRE at least I've taken it once (both Gen and Math), while ACT and SAT are just acronyms to me.)

I think the bias in the SAT is much more well-studied than the bias in the GRE. Paul Tough's book contains a lot of research on that. I think the ACT is meant to be less biased.

Your experimental evidence is interesting even if it isn't an RCT; can you say more about your level of students? Early undergrad?

Anyway, I was glad to read the links you shared about attempts to reproduce Steele's work. I am well-aware of the reproducibility crisis in psych. But my read of those blog posts was that Steele's work survived, except maybe that one bit about whether or not a triggering phrase was needed when the task was already diagnostic in the area where the stereotype exists

Yeah, early undergrad. Mostly in intro computer science. Our classes are capped at 24, and I might only have 2 minority students per section (data from about 12 sections over the past 6 years).

From what I'm seeing (thanks for your comments too!), it appears to be not as broken as the IAT, let alone power poses and the likes; but I wouldn't bank on it keeping its significance in real-life academic settings (i.e., coursework that gives students credits, not random tests administered by some psychologists for an experiment). I'd love to hear more before building educational dogma on top of it.

7:16 PM

By the way, I also tried the other tips from Steele's book, about visual cues in classroom spaces, stories of famous (non white men) computer scientists, and affirmations. And, our retention of students from underrepresented groups going from CS 1 to CS 2 did get better.

What is the visual cues part about? (Sorry -- my familairity with the book is fleeting.)

But of course that could be because of larger social reasons, the desirability of a CS degree, or a whole host of other reasons. My view is that it costs me nothing to do these interventions and they seem to work

Basically, the idea is that if a student tries to summon an image of a mathematician, they will probably picture a white male. For students from underrepresented groups, this might make them feel like they don't belong. If my classroom is full of portraits of white men, I'm implicitly supporting this image. So, we redecorated to put up photos of our (pretty diverse) majors going to conferences for women in math and the like

Jonathan Beardsley

@DavidWhite thank you for proposing this idea. I think it's clear that we have a representation issue in mathematics, and I think the ICM would be a great place to stir up some discussion of it.

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You might say "hey, wait, won't that make the white male students think they don't belong?" But, no, it turns out they already have such a strong sense of belonging that they don't need the visual cues. Whereas, for the underrepresented students, the visual cues help. Steele even quantifies it in terms of letter grade differences (like, giving cues is worth 1/3 of a letter grade for underrepresented students and doesn't hurt white students)

Ah, that. Yeah, this is probably a good thing to be aware of, though it hasn't really come up in my teaching as I have never found the time to include anything biographical at all in my classes -- maybe it will at some point. (The portraits on the wall, though -- that's more something for math departments rather than for teachers.)

7:21 PM

@JonathanBeardsley Who knew this would be what finally brought me to chat, even though homotopy theorists have been using the chat feature for years. Is there some way to "like" a comment? Or do I have to be old fashioned and just type that I liked your comment?

That said, I have seen it being overdone to the point of cringe. ("Name 10 female mathematicians" does not a good homework exercise make.)

You can star it

Hover your mouse over the comment, and see that little star in the bottom-right corner.

Hey David, I'm also so glad you're opening up this discussion, and showing a lot of grace in your answers! I have a lot of thoughts, but am unsure where to begin here...

@JonathanBeardsley: I'm still unconvinced by this. I'm seeing at least two elephants in the room:
1) American speakers would make it all about blacks, and everyone from outside would see it as a waste of time (this is the ICM, not the AMS JMM).
2) Diversity activists uninterested in mathematics will get excited about ICM, and will start stalking it on social networks; experience shows that they will get disappointed in a matter of months and there will be a major blowup, with everyone getting called a nazi and angry letters flying around. I know this isn't how it should be from a logical pe…

(This is all in addition to the issues I've been bringing up before, such as the field not being sufficiently rigorous/finished for a plenary talk, and such as this whole subject being more relevant to a teaching-focused conference which the ICM is not.)

I definitely don't think it's only a teaching issue. I tried to point this out in the comments about how mathematicians from underrepresented groups probably get refereed more harshly, and certainly get a harder time from the audience when giving a talk. I've seen both, but I don't know of research proving it on a large scale.

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I also don't know how to fix either issue. It's tempting to say we should be double blind, but immediately a zillion problems arise, many discussed here: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8891/…

Do you have evidence of harsher refereeing? Unlike many of your other claims, which I think are true to some extent but not as reliable or relevant as you make them sound, I think this one is just a plain non-thing.

7:31 PM

Yes, but I probably can't share in any public way.

Have you refereed a lot of papers yet? I think I've refereed about 20. Sometimes the editor writes with an opinion already in mind about whether the paper should be rejected. In my experience, this ONLY happens when the authors have a "funny" name

Let me be more precise: I think there is a "quod licet Jovi" effect in refereeing that reinforces existing inequality. If you are a known name, you can get things through the system that would otherwise be desk-rejected. The main victim of this are PhD students. The diversity lens doesn't make any of this clearer.

Interesting. I think I've refereed some 15 papers, and I would mostly ignore whatever signals editors try to send me in their email -- however, I don't recall seeing any such signals to begin with.

Yeah, that's another point. I've also refereed some papers by big shots and tried to get them to give more details, with varying levels of success. And I've also seen in my own career, how my early papers got a lot more push-back than my later stuff, once I was "trusted"

Jonathan Beardsley

I don't really understand the comment that "American speakers would make it all about blacks ."

Another point that someone raised in the comments was about access to big shots. Back in 2015, I was invited to give some lectures about model categories to a summer school in Morocco. Then I stuck around for the annual conference. I was struck by how far away from the main thrust of algebraic topology their school's research program was. It was clear they learned from the patriarch of the group, and all followed his research program.

@JonathanBeardsley: Just my guess; I would bet 5$ on 1 on it happening, unless you really handpick a heterodox speaker. I mean, I understand it: few minorities are as underrepresented in American mathematics as blacks are; at the same time, the rest of the world would find this both distracting and imposing.

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7:37 PM

So, in some sense, I worry about differential access to "interesting problems," as well as biases that might prevent African mathematicians' work being viewed as interesting. I also have no idea what it's like to be a professor in Africa, e.g., teaching load, etc. But I'd bet there is less grant money than in the USA or Europe

Jonathan Beardsley

Ok. I mean David and I are both American and we're both thinking a lot about e.g. women in math and Africans in math (as you can see above).

@DavidWhite: I think of this star-orbiting structure as a problem. But mathematicians need to be in the front seat when solving this problem; I don't think many others understand what it is about in the first place. It is not about exclusion, willing or not; it's about FOMO, the desire to be in the middle of the action, and the desire to hear the newest and the most exciting.

On the "access to interesting problems" front, I actually think we've gone a great way with MathOverflow, with Polymath and now with remote conferences.

I agree that mathematicians need to be in the front seat of solving this problem. It's our community to reshape as we like. That's why I wanted an ICM talk, to draw more folks to this kind of work, the way Dave Kung got me interested in it.

Jonathan Beardsley

Well except that MathOverflow is another environment in which many women feel horribly unwelcome

So I actually kind of suspect that places like MO are exacerbating the issue.

By providing community and connection between (mostly white or white passing) men that women do not have access to.

@JonathanBeardsley: I've heard this on occasion, but always as third-party claims and rumors. I've also seen a lot of guys being driven out of MO by something (usually I've no idea what; on m.se at least I have some ideas). I'd want to hear more before accusing MO of exacerbating inequality.

Jonathan Beardsley

7:43 PM

I've spoken with many women who have told me they hate MO and would never use it and when they've tried they've been talked down to and dealt with rudeness and unwelcoming behavior.

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I posted a link to David's suggestion on my Facebook page and already a few women have let me know that it's an excellent example of the things that cause them to be extremely avoidant of MO.

I also think the very idea of accusing someone for improving X's life but not Y's (or Y's to a lesser extent) is exactly the wrong way of getting things to improve. You are communicating to X that you view them as standing in your way. If MO was subsisting on taxpayers' money or otherwise you had your skin in the game, you'd have a point with that -- but as for now, you're sounding like you don't like people having too good a life.

@JonathanBeardsley: Is there anything you can quote in a non-identifying manner?

I'm aware that there is a lack of women on MO, though I cannot easily quantify it, as I suspect women to be behind a lot of pseudonyms (as often happens on the internet, for reasons the maths community or any other community cannot realistically fix).

I also suspect that the kind of gamification that MO is built upon -- the reputation system -- attracts men more than it does women; all I can do is stress (like most active MOers do) that we don't like the system much and don't see it as central to MO.

Gerhard Paseman

Thank you for raising awareness. While I believe the time is now to consider this, one needs to chose the place and manner carefully, otherwise regress is a probable outcome.

Jonathan Beardsley

I do not have quotes, no. Generally when women tell me they have had bad experiences on MO I do not ask that they provide quotes or justification. I think this is actually kind of an important point. Many women, queer people and people from underrepresented ethnic groups are saying "I do not feel welcome in your community, in fact I am sometimes abused or harmed by your community," and the answer is frequently "Well that's just anecdotal."

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@GerhardPaseman Nice to see you! Thanks also to your pointer before about parallel sessions. Do you happen to have a link? I think you said they were organized by the IMU

I also agree with what Sean Tilson wrote, that being a special lecture would draw attention to the issue much better than the existence of a parallel session

Gerhard Paseman

Further, one needs to be clear about defining the groups to be supported and the goals to be met. I think there is a place in this world for circle squarers, (and they may even support some efforts in mathematics), but I don't know is ICM or MathOverflow is that place.

7:57 PM

You used that expression before but I don't know it. What is meant by circle squarers? This is an innocent question.

I'm not saying everyone who leaves MO for some reason should give an exit interview, but I think it would be very useful, if this is to be taken as a tendency rather than a series of disconnected events, to have some clarity on the "why".

An anonymous poll perhaps?

Gerhard Paseman

I will see if I can find a link for you. However, Women in Mathematics should be a good starting search phrase.

A panel discussion on MathOverflow?

Gerhard Paseman

David, then how about angle trisectors?

Jonathan Beardsley

Gerhard I think it would be helpful if you spoke clearly and directly.

7:59 PM

Ah, you mean the task is impossible

Anyway, I gotta go. It's getting night here and I need to be up early.

@darijgrinberg Have a good one!

Quite delightful to hear y'all's opinions in detail rather than communicated through tersely packed comments.

Gerhard Paseman

I refrain from using the word cranks because I refer to people who have devoted study to a subject, whose opinions about mathematical fact May be at odds with the established community, but whose ideas and methods May inspire research within the established community.

@GerhardPaseman Are you familiar at all with the work of Uri Treisman? He's a PhD mathematician who was an early force in the world of more inclusive pedagogy.

Gerhard Paseman

8:02 PM

No. I'm actually fairly asocial, and tend to avoid political issues.

Back then, the problem (of lowering the failure rate of black students in calc at Berkeley) seemed impossible, but Treisman figured out a way.

Jonathan Beardsley

I suspect a good example of why women and URMs feel uncomfortable on MO might be the comments on David's suggestion. There are suggestions that "opposing viewpoints" should be represented, where presumably the viewpoint being opposed is "we should try to be more inclusive in math."

Gerhard Paseman

Cool! I'll check out Treisman.

@GerhardPaseman He wrote a great paper called "Studying students studying calculus" math.mit.edu/~hrm/interphase/TreismanXArticle.pdf

He was later hired directly out of grad school into a full professorship at UT Austin (iirc), where he's done wonders for their recruitment and retention of math students from underrepresented groups

Hi @HarryGindi. Earlier, we talked about the bias in the SAT and I recommended a book by Paul Tough. I don't recall reading about correlation between the SAT and IQ scores, but Tough shares a LOT of data about racial bias in the SAT (in fact, I think he said even when you control for differences in IQ, the bias is there)

barnesandnoble.com/w/the-years-that-matter-most-paul-tough/…

By "we" I mean me, Darij, and others. I'm kinda new to chat but it should be at the top of this thread

Gerhard Paseman

David, thanks for the link and the efforts. I recommend caution, as you may get what you ask for and find it is not what you wanted. I do agree more people should be supported in doing mathematics. However, giving them more access to the current institutions May not be the answer. It may be better to build new systems for use by them and by others.

My two bits. I'll check back later.

8:16 PM

@GerhardPaseman I, too, wish there was a way to create more capacity in math, so that welcoming in folks who are currently pushed out would not feel like a zero-sum game.

One small idea I had in this direction was to create a teaching postdoc to train a math PhD in how to teach statistics. There are tons and tons of universities that need someone to teach stats, and not enough stats PhDs teaching in universities.

This is basically how I got my job, by the way. I teach computer science, statistics, and (once in a while) math. Turns out, if you have a PhD in math, it's not impossible to learn how to teach these other subjects. But, this is probably not a long-term solution to our current job crisis for math phds

@HarryGindi That's basically how it used to be! You know the story of Cardano? That's why he kept the cubic formula a secret. Anyway, that also would not be great for diversity

@GerhardPaseman @HarryGindi Another step in the right direction for the job crisis thing is the CFD postdoc. We hire folks almost every year, and the CFD pool is almost always empty. Would love for this program to be more widely known gettysburg.edu/offices/provost/consortium-for-faculty-diversity

gettysburg.edu/offices/provost/consortium-for-faculty-diversity/…

"Applicants must contribute to increasing the diversity of member colleges in one or more of the following ways: Increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximizing the educational benefits of diversity and/or increasing the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of students."

Importantly, this is not money that's coming out of some other pot of money that could be used to hire "normal" postdocs. It's externally funded, and if more mathematicians would apply, they'd get hired (with money that otherwise might have been used to hire a chemist or something)

I think the teaching load is like 1-1 or 1-0, so, plenty of time to do research, as a postdoc should

Well, I happen to think there's a lot of value to writing a diversity statement. My post that spawned this room was essentially a very short version of my diversity statement, and reading that literature made me a better professor in many ways

I remember reading about it at the time. Anyway, it seems off-topic for the conversation of whether or not to have a special lecture at the ICM

Jonathan Beardsley

8:34 PM

Lol

I thought a condition of your PhD work with your advisor was that you stayed off MO?

No, no. Leave them. Everyone should know how you feel.

"Ignore This User"

8:50 PM

Just got a tornado warning so I'm heading to my basement. Catch you later!

9:01 PM

@darijgrinberg what MO could fix though is discriminating openly and actively users that use a pseudonym.

I usually do not frequent MO chat rooms anymore, but my attention was drawn to this room somewhat by happenstance. The above is in a way an aside, but I actually do think that quite a bit could be learned on MO by analyzing how it treats, or at least treated I do not much follow since several years (yet I doubt it changed much), its pseudonymous users. Some interesting parallels can be observed.

9:20 PM

@DavidWhite Hey could you delete all of my posts in here? Danke schön.

Anyway, I'm out!

Tangentially I don't think David White can delete the message @HarryGindi He could move them to a "Trash" room though.

thanks. I'll ask a mod.

Actually, quid, you're a mod on SE aren't you? Can you do it?

@HarryGindi yes I can do that.

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@HarryGindi it's done. I just left the delete request.

9:41 PM

thx!

No problem.

Well, that was an interesting hour. Okay, seems Harry is gone. I'll keep this chat open in case others pop in with questions or want to follow-up on the other thread

10:16 PM

I am not sure we should be surprised that women do not feel welcome on MathOverflow. Women don't feel welcome on Internet in general because they are met with all sorts of degeneracy (most of it in my experience sexually motivated).

I feel like I do understand to some extent the point of American speakers focusing on the issues facing American Blacks. In America itself, people talk about discrimination against people of color but Asians are often put in a worse position than Whites in my opinion. See e.g. the debates about the science-focused public high schools in NYC. Or the recent case involving Harvard

Harvard's lawyers won but still the available statistical data suggests that Asians have to score more than Whites to get in (of course Harvard also takes into account the extracurriculars but unless Asians are uniformly more boring than Whites this makes no sense).

I am all for supporting the minorities but the available data suggests to me that the existing power structures affect different racial minorities in different ways (which probably would have to be taken into account to find a solution). So speaking about a uniform category of people of color suggests some white-non white dichotomy which doesn't actually exist.

10:41 PM

@crispr Glad to see you here! I'll be happy to follow up on your comments here and in the other thread, but I need a break for a moment. Do you mind if I ask what time zone you're in? It's almost 6pm here so I'll be up for a few more hours

Gerhard Paseman

I'm not good with cutting an d pasting on a cellphone. World Women in Mathematics 2018 is a Springer book which is an example of what I speak. I am confident you can find related for other groups.

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