Ep 40. From math to science: How weak math skills hurt students with Therese Markow

This transcript was created with speech-to-text software. It was reviewed before posting but may contain errors. Credit to Deepika Tung.

You can listen to the episode here: Chalk & Talk Podcast.

[00:00:00] Anna Stokke: Welcome to Chalk and Talk, a podcast about education and math. I am Anna Stokke, a math professor, and your host.

Welcome to another episode of Chalk and Talk. This is episode 40, and my guest is Dr. Therese Markow. She is a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, and host of the popular podcast Critically Speaking. As a geneticist, she brings a unique perspective to the conversation. A few weeks ago, Therese reached out to share her concerns about the decline in math skills and how it impacts student success in the sciences.

I couldn't wait to have her on the show to explore this critical issue from a scientist's point of view. We discuss the vital role of math in scientific fields, the challenges many students face with basic numeracy, and the broader societal implications of these issues. Our conversation also touches on some fascinating intersections between math and science.

Therese shares findings from studies linking math abilities to logical reasoning. It's a great reminder that taking math benefits students in more ways than just learning math. We also tackled the question of whether math skills have a genetic component. I found our discussion really thought provoking, and I think it will resonate with anyone passionate about education, science, or the importance of numeracy in today's world.

So, whether you are an educator, a math or science enthusiast, or simply curious about these topics, this episode offers something for everyone. Now, without further ado, let's get started.

I am excited to be joined today by Dr. Therese Markow, and she is a professor emeritus at University of California, San Diego in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. She has held endowed professorships at major universities in the U. S., as well as positions abroad. She is an award-winning geneticist, including winner of the 2001 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

She is host of the popular podcast, Critically Speaking, where she hosts critical discussions in everyday language about issues that impact our health, our society, and our planet. And I was lucky enough to be a guest on that podcast recently, so you can check that out. And we are going to have a really fun conversation today about math and science and that sort of thing.

So, welcome Terry, welcome to my podcast.

[00:02:50] Therese Markow: Yeah, thanks, Anna. It's nice to meet up again on your podcast this time.

[00:02:55] Anna Stokke: So, let's start with a bit of background. So, you taught for a long time, and you taught, as I understand it, genetics and biology and that sort of thing. So, what sorts of courses did you generally teach and who was the audience?

[00:03:07] Therese Markow: Well, I taught undergraduate general biology, a human genetics class for non biology majors, and that was undergraduate. Advanced human genetics would be like for seniors and for grad students, and then behavior genetics. Those were the main ones.

[00:03:24] Anna Stokke: So, and we are not going to get all sorts of genetics lessons today, but we are going to talk about math and how that is necessary for a lot of the sciences.

So, were math skills required to succeed in the classes you taught, and if so, what kind of math skills were necessary?

[00:03:44] Therese Markow: Yeah, there were math skills that you would just sort of assume people would have. They are, they are pretty basic things I thought everyone learned prior to grade six. Not anything like geometry or trigonometry or calculus, but man, I was surprised at the number of students that lacked even the basic arithmetic facts and skills.

[00:04:03] Anna Stokke: Okay, that's interesting. So, do you happen to have any specific examples, for instance, of how the poor math skills of college students might hinder their learning in college biology or specifically your field of genetics?

[00:04:16] Therese Markow: They have to be able to think a little bit. So, there are certain examples that come to mind.

And one I was thinking about the other day was in an introductory biology class that I was teaching. It wasn't genetics. We were talking about heart disease, kind of epidemiology, you know, the frequency of these things in populations. And we were talking about the number of people, for example, that die of heart disease.

And it was just an example of how to look at larger populations of people. So, I had said to the class, for example, if 1 percent of the people die of a heart attack, how many would that be out of 300 people? So astoundingly, there were a lot of blank looks, okay? Several hundred kids were in the class and a number of them reached for their cell phone so that they could calculate.

But while they were doing that, one student raised their hand to, say, 30 people, and someone finally said three. Well, you know, I was pretty speechless. So, you know, these were students at the University of California, and this is a school that's known for pretty rigorous admission standards. So many of the students have been confused. I thought, okay, I'm going to ask this again in an easier way. Remember, one percent of the people die of a heart attack. How many would that be out of a thousand people?

Well, again, several pulled out their iPhones, um, and somebody without a phone said, a hundred. And, but this time there were more that, that got it this time and said 10.

So, how's that? I mean, that's, that's pretty basic, right? It should be in your head.

[00:05:55] Anna Stokke: Absolutely. Yes. But I am not surprised. I am curious if you actually saw a decline in numeracy levels over the course of your career.

[00:06:05] Therese Markow: Well, yeah, I started to notice these kinds of little issues, you know, probably about 10 or 15 years ago, but they didn't become really bad until maybe five years ago, where it just really changed a lot of things.

I mean, I have other examples if you want to hear about them. So, there was one from, I used to teach human genetics, um, for non majors, non biology people, but they were at the university, and I had this little problem, you know, solving problems in human genetics, and I actually wrote the first part of this problem, on the whiteboard, and it was a problem to solve based on what we'd already been talking about.

So, bear with me here. It's actually pretty easy. So, the problem is, as stated, a normal healthy couple knew that both of their families carried a recessive gene for the same lethal disorder, and recessive means that the gene won't cause the disorder unless two copies get together. So, here are these two normal parents, but they wanted to know, you know, is there a chance that they could have the recessive gene?

So, they went to genetic counseling before deciding to have a baby. And the test showed that, yeah, in fact, each one of them did carry the recessive gene, which meant that, yeah, they could have a child with the disorder. if the baby received two copies. Okay, so then the problem is, okay, well, what are the chances of that happening?

What's the chance that two copies could get together and they could have an affected baby? So, a mother can make two kinds of eggs, right? One with the normal gene, one with the problem gene. This was all written on the board and same for dad. So, what are the chances that the baby gets two copies of the deleterious gene?

So, I'm writing this on the board and it's one half, times one half and that's one fourth. That's pretty easy, right? I mean, it's from, we all did those kind of fractions in, in grade school. So, a student got really angry. She raised her hand, jumped out of her seat, and told me, I have enrolled it in genetics class, not a math class.

And she was, visibly upset. And I asked her if she'd learned how to multiply fractions in grade school, and she'd said no. And had she learned the multiplication tables? No. And she replied, there's really no reason to know these. That's just, you know, a worthless waste of time. And, you know, I happened to ask her, I said, well, you know, what, what is a one fourth chance? is there another way to express that? and she did say 25%.

It was, I mean, it was, it was pretty astounding because this was so easy. And honestly, I know several years ago, several, well, probably at least 10 before nobody had problems with those kinds of things, everybody got it, especially with me writing on the board and yeah, it was pretty shocking.

[00:09:00] Anna Stokke: So that student ended up dropping the class.

[00:09:03] Therese Markow: She ended up dropping the class. Now this particular student was a marketing major, which struck me as kind of odd because I think for marketing you would need a certain level of numeracy skills, but you know, who am I to say what she needs to be doing other than I was shocked.

[00:09:21] Anna Stokke: Yeah, and I think maybe a lot of times students don't actually realize that they will need to use basic math in other classes besides math classes. And so, this is just sort of an example of, and this was just a general genetics class. In fact, that's kind of a high school problem, right? You didn't encounter a problem like that in high school biology.

[00:09:43] Therese Markow: Its basic mental genetics is what it is. It's really, really easy, but these were non majors. And so, you know, you start off doing this and talking about things that could affect them and their health or somebody that they may know and that they would be interested, everybody else was. But, but I started to notice more and more things like this over the years.

And, you know, its very discouraging.

[00:10:06] Anna Stokke: And I would imagine, some students might actually, it might hold them back in sciences even, when they don't have these basic math skills because they are, they are going to need them, right?

[00:10:18] Therese Markow: Absolutely, right, and really just having a calculator isn't going to help with a lot of it. You just need to know it, yeah.

[00:10:25] Anna Stokke: And just out of curiosity, so this is at UCSD, right?

[00:10:29] Therese Markow: Uh huh.

[00:10:30] Anna Stokke: Very, uh, competitive tough school to get into. What sort of math requirements in general would they have at UCSD?

[00:10:39] Therese Markow: Makes me wonder right now, right? I mean, you'd think most of the students coming in there, if they didn't have calculus, they would have taken it.

But I would think they at least would have gotten through some algebra and maybe some, I don't know. You just kind of assume, but I think what's happened is I think that the high schools are offering less and less. And so, they are less and less prepared. And I think maybe university admission requirements, maybe they are kind of changing to accommodate what goes on with, with these kids, how prepared they are.

I don't know. It's odd.

[00:11:22] Anna Stokke: So, that kind of brings me to my next question. So, I think sometimes what happens when students aren't as prepared, is there's often some pressure to change things, you know, whether it's in terms of grading or admission requirements or that sort of thing. So, I am wondering if you noticed, say, over the course of your career, if this has affected university curriculum or, or standards in any way.

[00:11:47] Therese Markow: Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to a lot of the other classes, but I can certainly say that for me, what it meant is just not touching certain topics, not teaching certain things, and they could be important topics and problems, but, you know, because the capacity for the basic numeracy wasn't there. I don't know, I just had to omit it.

Too many kids had difficulties with things like, you know, the examples that I just gave you. I mean, the percentage thing was really ridiculous, but, you know, and also it meant testing students on a more limited constellation of material, right? And honestly, it took the fun out of teaching for me. If the students were unhappy because you asked too much of them, oh, your class was too difficult, and they complain, and then they give you a bad rating on that, right, my professor thing, and then they end up, I mean, in the end, they end up learning less and less.

You know, I don't, I can't speak to what else went on, on my own campus. I don't know if you remember several years back, there was a professor at NYU, his name was Dr. Maitland Jones, and he had been at Princeton, and he was a very, very distinguished chemistry professor, and because he didn't really want to just stop teaching, he started teaching chemistry at NYU, and he'd been teaching that course at NYU for several years.

The similar preparedness issues on the part of the students started to emerge. You need some mathematics and chemistry. And the lack of preparedness came to a head one year when a subset of his students complained to the administration that his class was too difficult, that he was unreasonable, blah, blah, blah.

Well, to make a long story short, he got fired. And even when some parents were upset that he was fired because they wanted their kids to have a rigorous curriculum, something not dumbed down, he was still fired. That's an extreme case, right? But I think it speaks to the same problem. And when students are complaining that things are too difficult and when they are making things, it's like they are, they are writing the rules instead of the faculty saying, listen, this is what you are here to learn.

You know, it's like, I don't, I don't want to say that prisoners running the jail, but, but it's, you know, that's like the rules don't apply to them. Right. It was very strange, very strange.

[00:14:15] Anna Stokke: And it is concerning. And we talk about this sort of thing all the time, how the students come and, and they are not prepared.

And actually, sometimes the students are kind of angry at their grade school and their high school preparation, to be honest.

[00:14:30] Therese Markow: Some of those students realize that they got shortchanged in their K through 12.

[00:14:36] Anna Stokke: Yeah, they definitely do.

[00:14:37] Therese Markow: A question for you there. Do you, because I know we have to do this at universities here, sometimes students don't, clearly don't have the math background or background in something else and they have to take remedial classes that they don't get credit for so that they can then enroll in the other classes.

Is that an issue at your university?

[00:14:58] Anna Stokke: Yes, we do have that. The only thing I would say is, in Canada, we don't have a lot of standardized tests or entrance tests or things like that. So, for instance, in calculus, they take, they just need to have pre calculus, sometimes a certain grade in pre calculus, but the grade in pre calculus may not mean that much.

We don't always know what it means. So for instance, in calculus, what we have had to do, we have a pre calculus review workshop that they have to prep for on their own and they get tested on that calc, that pre calculus high school material because otherwise they will struggle because we know that some of the students come, they know it, and then other students don't, but their grade might not reflect that, but definitely there, there are remedial courses, but those are generally for students who didn't end up taking the precalculus or the course they need, so they, they moved into some other stream in high school and now they can't get the course they need.

[00:16:05] Therese Markow: Right, so what about students entering different majors, you know, somebody entering math or science as a major, I think that's going to be a little different. What about the requirements or the expectations, for example, of somebody entering for an education degree, a basic education degree?

[00:16:25] Anna Stokke: Yeah, that's a tough one.

And funny, you should mention that. But yeah, so in my province, this is a big debate right now because they have actually removed all the breadth requirements for subjects. They used to have to take two courses in math and we had, you know, specific courses for them. for K-8 teachers. But um, that's a battle that's going on right now.

But certainly, that is an issue that we definitely want our teachers to know the map they have to teach. So, we are constantly working on that. But yeah, it's interesting.

[00:16:58] Therese Markow: Yeah. So it's my impression, you know, from when my, my own kid was in school and then knowing a little bit about what goes on with some, with some of the teachers, at least in, you know, in kindergarten through six is that, a lot of them, if they have had any math themselves in the university, it wasn't necessarily math that was taught by mathematicians in the math department. It was taught by somebody in the education department who really probably didn't have much math background.

And then they get turned out into the public to teach kids. And I am not, I am not sure that they have enough background even for some of the very basic kinds of things, you know?

[00:17:42] Anna Stokke: Yeah, that's right.

And I think you will hear that from a lot of teachers that they feel that they weren't prepared as well as they could have been. Certainly, I am an advocate for math courses being taught by math departments, and I do think that we do need specialized math courses for teachers that teach at the elementary school level.

I think calculus is great, but I think it's usually better if they have courses that are more, they dive deeper into what they need to, to know to teach the subjects, they need to teach in K-8.

[00:18:18] Therese Markow: Well, yeah, for example, how to multiply fractions.

[00:18:21] Anna Stokke: That's right, exactly. And there's so much focus on the why, right? Like, you know, why do you flip and multiply, right, with fractions?

And, and I do think we need, we as universities have a responsibility to make sure that students are given the, the proper background so that they are able to teach that.

[00:18:40] Therese Markow: Because if they are not comfortable teaching it, and maybe they only remember it from when they were in elementary school. They maybe haven't remembered enough of it to teach it, and so that they may just avoid it for lack of comfort with the subject.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what goes on. I just know by the time they arrive to university, a lot of students, and I am not saying all of them, but a lot of students just don't have just even basic things, and that's kind of strange.

[00:19:08] Anna Stokke: And I think what you are talking about is just sort of a cycle that can repeat if we have students coming in that maybe didn't get the proper background in K to 12 and then they go into education we want to make sure that they are comfortable teaching the math for sure.

[00:19:24] Therese Markow: Basic math. It's not like it's super advanced that they have to teach.

[00:19:36] Anna Stokke: So, let's shift gears a bit. I am so excited because I have a biologist on the show, and I have never had a biologist on the show. I’ve had mathematicians and I've had Lots of psychologists, and I've had teachers, but I have never had a biologist. So, as a biologist, I am wondering if you can talk about whether learning math is connected to any other skills, like logical skills, because we always say this as mathematicians.

We claim ourselves that learning math develops logical skills and critical thinking. So, I am wondering if you can tell us about that and if you can talk about, say, a study on that if there is one.

[00:20:15] Therese Markow: Yeah, no, actually there have been a number of studies and you mathematicians saying, saying those sorts of things that this is really important for people's other skills like logic and reasoning. The data actually show that, that you are right.

It's comforting to know that you are right, right? So, you know, there, there have been a number of studies, and I recently had actually been looking at some of these for, for another thing I was interested in. And there have been a number that show pretty clearly that having basic math education can enhance performance in logic and other kinds of cognitive skills.

And so, I will mention one really interesting study. It was done in Australia. And I'll simplify it for, for the purposes of the audience. So, at this university in Australia, they took first year students, right? And they averaged 19 years old, and they separated these students based on the amount of previous math education courses they were enrolled in and where they ended up in college.

Cause they, do they have to take introductory classes, standard classes, advanced or whatever? So, they had four categories and in the introductory, which was the students that had. you know, the least amount of math education prior, there were 62 students. In the standard group, there were 27. In the advanced group, there were 34. And in the very advanced group, there were 44.

Okay, so what they did was they grouped these, and then they gave a bunch of reasoning, problem solving, uh, tests, exercises to these students. So, what's, what's an example of a nonmathematical problem-solving exercise, okay? You know, they are probably not as easy to envision, but there are actually a lot of them, and a lot of them have been designed to test people's problem-solving abilities and logic.

So, here's one, and it starts off, okay, there are three people. Jack is looking at Anna. That's the name of this problem, and the three people are Jack, Anne, and George. So, Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. The question is, is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

And there are three options for the person to answer, yes, no, or cannot be determined. So, I am going to repeat the questions so people can think about it and see for themselves. Okay, so you have three people, Jack, Anne, and George. Jack is looking at Anne. But Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not married.

So, then the question is, is a married person looking at an unmarried person? Okay, well, the answer is, is A, obviously, you know, yes, you know, somebody is. But the people that got it, got a correct answer to this tended to be the people that were in the more advanced groups and the people in the introductory group that had very little math education before they got to university, and they had to be placed in these classes. A large number of them didn't, didn't get the answer.

And it's really just reasoning, right? So, in this study used some other questions like this too. It wasn't the only one, but they were, and that trend was so clear that the least math education the students had coming into the university, the less well they could answer these logic kinds of questions.

Pretty, pretty interesting, right? So, I think that's good evidence.

[00:23:53] Anna Stokke: Yeah, that's really interesting. So, now the more math you took, or did that correlate with you being able to solve more of the logic problems?

[00:24:04] Therese Markow: Right, that were coming into the university were placed in those four groups based on how much math education they had previously, dictated what they were going to have to take when they were starting the university.

And the ones that were in the very lowest group, you know, had to start with the very basic classes and the others, you know, had a lot of background information and that correlated really strongly with how well they could do on the logic problems. That's interesting.

[00:24:33] Anna Stokke: I have to say I am not surprised. I just kind of wonder how far up the math ladder you have to go before you see that impact.

I'd be curious to know that because, so for example, you know, we teach introductory proof classes. That's really, your logic skills have to be quite good, and we develop the logic skills in those classes. So, I imagine that students who had taken those courses, definitely it would help a lot.

[00:25:01] Therese Markow: Yeah, I don't know, you know, exactly what classes they'd had, but obviously, you know, it wasn't as much as the people that were in the more advanced groups and, you know, and the relationship was pretty strong.

There was another, another study where something similar was done with students. They were college students and some just stopped taking math when they got to the university and others continued. And a very similar pattern was found on, on other cognitive problem-solving things that have nothing to do with math, you know, there was a real over and how well they could do, and other things and it wasn't, it wasn't that they were stupid.

I think it had to do with the fact that they, they just have not had a lot of that kind of mathematical problem solving beforehand, they stopped, and it showed. I mean, it didn't mean they are complete failures at something. It's just that, um, you could see it subtle differences sometimes. But while subtle differences and something like that could not always, but they could make a difference and how a person fares later in life.

And their career or whatever, you know, or making bad decisions or I don't know.

[00:26:10] Anna Stokke: Oh, definitely. The whole logic thing is a really important thing, just in general. Like if you want to be able to make arguments to if you have a, you have a claim and you want to support it and you want to convince people, you really need, need to be able to think logically.

There's one thing I would mention about a study like that. How do they know that it wasn't just that people who think more logically choose to take more math courses?

[00:26:39] Therese Markow: Yeah, well, you know, it's a good question. I think a lot of it has to do with requirements too, you know, what school they went to and how far they were required to go.

But, you know, that's a good question. I can't answer that one.

[00:26:53] Anna Stokke: There probably is good evidence. I, I would suspect that more training in math probably does really develop those logical thinking skills.

[00:27:01] Therese Markow: It's like anything else when you are, anything you have to practice, you know, if you want to practice to be on the swim team or something, the more you practice, and maybe they just didn't have the opportunity to be engaged with the math.

[00:27:19] Anna Stokke: So, have you come across any evidence that connects math education to what goes on in the brain? So, for example, does taking math have an impact on how the brain develops? And I am thinking in particular about a study that you, you shared with me, previously when we talked before the show that looked at the brains of adolescents who stopped studying math.

Can you talk a bit about that?

[00:27:45] Therese Markow: Well, yeah, that one actually was this, that was part of the same study where they had stopped studying math before they got to university, and they did studies on their brains and saw that there were differences in certain aspects of their brains.

[00:28:01] Anna Stokke: So, Terry, you are a geneticist.

Can you comment on the role that genetics plays when it comes to math abilities? Are math abilities inherited to some extent?

[00:28:12] Therese Markow: You know, we have lots of evidence that there's a genetic component to math ability. It doesn't mean it's not like, you know, big M, you're smart at math, little m, you're stupid. It doesn't mean that.

I mean, it's, these are, they are very complex kinds of traits, but we do know that, that math abilities are heritable to a certain extent and actually to a significant extent. So how do we know this? Okay. Well, One way we know it is by something called heritability studies, and the way geneticists do this, what they are asking really is if you see variability in a population, whether it's for height, whether it's for, you know, whatever, in this case, it would be cognitive abilities of some sort, what's a very common way to ask to separate out genetic components is to use identical twins raised, you know, they came out of the same uterus, but also compare them to non identical twins that came out of the same mother at the same time also. So, the identical twins are absolutely identical genetically. And so, you would expect that anything that they perform at would be the same for the two of them.

But when you have fraternal twins, what geneticists call dizygotic twins or non identical twins, they actually only share 25 percent of their genes, common genes. Okay. So, that means the other 75 percent is different. So, you can actually look at the amount of genetic contribution versus environmental contribution to differences among them.

So, these are very, very popular studies, this kind of thing, you know, and there are huge twin registries in lots of different countries, especially in Scandinavia, to look at this kind of thing. So, you know, this is what geneticists like to do.

So, there was a study that had identical twins and non identical twins. And 128 were identical and 175 were non identical. They were tested for various aspects of mathematics, reading and what we would say general cognitive abilities, just, you know, cognitive abilities, meaning how can you think or something like that. And it turned out, it was really interesting that, yeah, you know, there's a heritability for math and it was probably anywhere, it's probably anywhere between about 40 and 60 percent, which means that 40 to 60 percent of the differences among people in the general population or students and in a general school setting is going to be due to genetic differences among those individuals as opposed to environmental differences.

Well, it's pretty strong, but, you know, we will talk about what this, what this means. The other thing is that mathematical ability, I don't have to tell you this because you are a mathematician, it's not just one thing, right? I mean, there are all these different things, there's ability to compute, there's ability to be fluent with things, and, and each of those you can separate out and they actually do have different heritabilities.

Because I think they tap into different processes in the brain, and there are ways to separate that. So, the way they had done this with these twins was, they had to figure out how to do some problems, and they measured this at when they were six, seven, and eight years of age. And what's really, really interesting is that, you know, at six, they haven't really had much math education yet, but by the time they get to be seven or eight, they have had a couple of years of elementary school and some basic math.

And it did change a little bit over time. So, you could see that that kind of predisposition to being able to do well at it actually came into play when they were then in grade school and taking different classes. But moving on and talking about this with the genes, because this is something here that's really interesting is that, okay, so we know from that kind of family study that there's a, there's a genetic component to math ability.

So, the next question, of course, that all geneticists ask is, oh, genes, what are the genes? Well, you know, in something like an ability for something, it's like with height or anything where everybody varies just a little bit. Genetically, they are complex, but it is possible to, through large scale, what we call genotyping studies to identify some of the candidate genes that look like they could be involved.

In other words, you have thousands of people, you have their scores on math and different kinds of things, and then you sequence their genes, which is now very cheap to do it, and you see, are there any differences in categories? And so, it turns out that there are and some variants in several genes are known to be associated with mathematical abilities and how interesting is it that all of these genes actually are expressed, in other words, they are turned on during development in nerve cell tissue.

We also know at the same time that there are certain brain areas that are more important for math abilities than others that we know. You know people know that from doing things like, okay, you know, this person had a brain injury in a certain part of their brain, and then they can't do math. You know, simp, very, very simply put, but like that, okay so, it was a great study done by investigators working at the Max Plank in Germany.

And they asked this question, how does the expression of these genes relate to the brain areas known to be involved in math? So, they had 178 children that had been typed. Their genes were known for these neurologic development genes, the ones I just mentioned that tend to associate with it.

It was really, really interesting because when, when these little kids were like three and four years old. They weren't in school yet. They did MRIs on their brains and which it's an MRI as a way to image the brain and you can look for volume in different areas and there are certain kinds of MRIs that will look at how well things are connected in the brain and different things.

It's very cool. Okay, so they have the MRIs on these kids. They were little, they hadn't started school yet, and they measured things like brain volumes and features of different brain areas. And then, at seven or eight or seven to nine, I think it was the kids were in school, and the investigators could go and find the math scores for these kids.

You see where I am going. And the question was, you know, was there any association between the math scores in school test scores and the patterns that they had seen in the brains of kids before they had even started doing math and it's way cool because the gray matter volume and that's where we think the gray volume matter in one particular area that what we call the parietal lobe of the brain because it's associated with some of these math abilities, this was associated with the expression of one of these neurological genes as well as with the math test scores that the kids took later.

So, the bottom line here was that the, the greater the gray volume matter in this part of the brain before kids go to school, it's predictive of how well they are going to do in their math classes. This doesn't mean yes, they do it or no, they don't do it. I mean, we're talking about very subtle differences.

It's like, you know, how many grains of sugar are you going to add to your coffee? It's very continuous. Okay. But, this one gene did stand out, but it's not, people should never think, oh, that gene makes you smart or stupid at math. It's not like that at all. It's just, this is a correlation. These are associations.

And as you know, as a mathematician, that correlation doesn't mean causation. But the associations are, are pretty cool.

[00:36:29] Anna Stokke: I guess a good follow up question might be literacy. Is there then, on the other hand, and maybe, maybe you don't know this off the top of your head, but I am just curious, like, is there going to be a genetic component to literacy as well?

[00:36:43] Therese Markow: I should have mentioned that in this same study, they actually looked at, at reading and reading comprehension as a measure of literacy, and there was no association.

And I think what the investigators concluded was that, that is something that really is much more heavily influenced by the environment when the kids are growing up, such as, um, parents reading to kids and, you know, really getting it very, very early. Where the math thing, it seems like it's a little bit more hardwired, but we are talking about subtle differences here. Doesn't mean anybody's predestined to do anything.

I think what it means that even the kids that were not, that were not in the category where they had this particular brain feature, and this brain feature wasn't a yes or no. I mean, it was just, there were slight differences. This doesn't mean that these kids can't be good at math, that they can't, that they cannot attain proficiency at a decent level.

I think, you know, it doesn't mean they can't do math. Absolutely not. With, with practice, all these kids, unless they have some sort of clinically defined learning disability or something, they can all attain decent proficiency. And I think, you know, from what I have read, because it's a real interest of mine, because I wanted to know what's wrong, you know, why were my students becoming so poor at some of this stuff? And I started looking into some of these different educational philosophies, and there's a huge amount of evidence that shows that with really, organized, I guess its what people call direct instruction, with a lot of practice, that these kids do just fine.

And, you know, just because somebody isn't doing well, they shouldn't be written off or put out on some track that's for dummies or something. They just need a really good teaching technique, and I am not confident that what goes on in the schools is giving it to them.

[00:38:40] Anna Stokke: Right, and that's kind of what my whole podcast is about, by the way. I wonder if it's, if that genetic component, it's very subtle, if maybe that is sort of the thing that we as math teachers see, that some students really do need a lot more practice than others.

Like, I, I am quite certain of that, you know, and I think anybody who teaches math knows this. And so maybe that's where it comes into play. Well, you sort of hear two sides to this, and one side is the people who are quite convinced that there's a math gene and that there are some people who just can't do it, right?

And then there are other people who think, well, everybody can become a mathematician. I am not necessarily convinced of that either. But I do think. that it's likely that everyone can reach a certain level in math, which is what I think you are saying, if they are given good instruction and the right practice opportunities.

[00:39:39] Therese Markow: Yeah, I think that's true. And I think from what I can tell, looking at a lot of the literature, and I have looked at it because you know, besides being interesting, I am concerned about it. There are these, these ways of teaching that they call discovery, and I guess they also call it constructivist ways of learning, where you just let the kids figure it out for themselves. Well, I just don't think that works. I am sorry.

You know, we see, we see the fruits of that when the kids reach college, and it just doesn't work. Teachers will have kids sitting around in groups, and they, they have to pose their own problem, and then they figure it out, and you know, maybe it's wrong. They really, students need, I think, to, to have very direct, hands-on instruction.

And, and a lot of, you know, people used to say, oh, that's road. It's, you know, drill and kill. Well, actually what it is, is it's just practice, Anna. It's just practice. It's like, you know, if you want to be a weightlifter or you want to be an ice skater or whatever, I mean, you don't, you don't just put on the skates and go out there and skate.

You have to practice, and you have to have been taught properly. And I think this is a problem with some of these teaching philosophies that I don't think they are right. I am sorry. And I think, I think also that, that a lot of kids that have plenty of talent because maybe they are not doing well in math instead of helping them making it a little bit more structured that they get shoved off into something and that's not, that's not right. You know, they become labeled as, oh, somebody who can't do it.

And the kids that are really good at it, well, you know, they can. move ahead, take a more advanced class. They don't have to be held back by other kids, but, but the ones that maybe are having a tougher time, I think they can be fine. They just need, they need to be taught correctly.

[00:41:27] Anna Stokke: And back to the genetic thing, is there any reason to believe that girls are less genetically capable of learning math than boys? And I asked this as someone who has heard this mentioned, many, many times by say parents or I will hear girls say it themselves. I just want to ask that question because I have a geneticist here.

[00:41:48] Therese Markow: Well, it's so funny because I have a, a woman mathematician here that you are not the only one. I bet you know others, right?

[00:41:54] Anna Stokke: Oh, there are lots.

[00:41:56] Therese Markow: Yeah, there are a lot. So, I mean, there's your first piece of evidence, right? But I have not seen what I would call any really concrete evidence, um, to support that. What I do think, though, is that there's a lot of societal messaging going on here that, oh, girls don't do well at that. And, so, if little girls are doing well at that, early on in school, and it's supposed to be something that only boys are good at, you know, a lot of little girls are, they are going to hold back.

They are going to hold back and not, not put themselves out there for it. You know, I, and I think it's subtle. I don't think it's anything, but you never know, you know, but that's a message I think that, that girls get at a very, very early age. They don't want to be thought of as, you know, as being boys, what about in your own life?

I mean, you just gravitated to math early.

[00:42:53] Anna Stokke: Yeah. So, lots of people ask me that question. So, first of all, my, my mother is really good at math and my mom actually was a chemistry teacher. But as an example of how much she likes math, when she was retired and, you know, 65, I'd go visit her and she had an old calculus book, and she was trying to learn it herself.

I mean, she'd taken calculus when she went to university a long time ago, but I mean, who does that for fun when they are retired, right? Like she's trying to refresh her memory on calculus, you know? So, I, I grew up with a mother who really liked math and science and that sort of thing. So, that probably was a big part of it, but yeah, I tended to do well in math in school.

I always really liked math. I didn't think I'd become a mathematician. I had other plans when I went to university, but I had a really good math prof and, and that's kind of why I ended up in math in the end.

[00:43:50] Therese Markow: Yeah, I think that can make a difference. And I think, and that's where it goes back to, I think, in elementary school and in junior high, how important it is to have teachers that are, they know enough math and, and they know how to teach it that, you know, it's okay, those kids will learn and they'll think, oh, that was a great math, math teacher. But if the person isn't really competent and they avoid certain things, that's going to be a problem. And you had good teachers, you had good professors.

[00:44:20] Anna Stokke: But you are my guest. So, what about you? I mean, did you like math as a young person?

[00:44:26] Therese Markow: It's really interesting.

I loved it for a long time, okay? And then I had a really, I had really horrible teachers in high school for math, and I didn't like it. And it just, it made me really angry. I used to love, I mean, I used to love solving problems and, you know, basic algebra was kind of where you get, and then suddenly you have these terrible teachers.

So, for a while, for a while, I really wasn't taking much math, and I thought, ugh, because at that point, I knew I was going to go into science, right? And when I got into the university, I took a statistics class, and I loved it. I mean, I just loved it. And then, when I got into grad school, my professor had actually written a biometrical statistics book, where he had, he had derived all these different formulas for the mean, the moments about the mean and all this stuff. I just loved it. I loved it.

And I think part of it is because those teachers were good, but also for some reason it made sense, maybe because I could hook it onto some biological concepts or something. But so, I mean, that's why, you know, when I hear people say, oh, you know, this person, they'll never be able to do, do well in math. I don't believe that. Right? I don't believe it. But you mentioned before that there were these different camps. There were these people who thought, oh yeah, it's totally genetically determined. You are either born a mathematician or you are not, or the other extreme is anybody can do anything.

[00:46:01] Anna Stokke: Have you heard of growth mindset?

[00:46:03] Therese Markow: I have, I have heard the term, but I am not, I guess I am not familiar with the proponents of it.

[00:46:11] Anna Stokke: Well, it's kind of like along the lines of believing yourself, right? If you think positively about what you can do, that you can accomplish these things.

And I think there's a certain part of that, that makes a lot of sense. Yes, it's good to believe in yourself, but it has, this has to be coupled by lots of practice and good instruction. So, there are some big proponents of growth mindset. It's just sort of solving all the, most of the problems in math, but of course it doesn't.

Like we can sit around and talk about, you know, we are all math people, but at the end of the day, if you don't get good instruction and you don't do the work, you are not going to be able to get good at math.

[00:46:52] Therese Markow: Right. So, do they have scientific evidence that supports that idea that anyone can do it with a positive mindset?

[00:47:00] Anna Stokke: So, I had someone come on to talk about that a while ago. That was Carl Hendrick, and we, we had a discussion about that. I don't think there's a lot of good evidence for it. I mean, it's something that sounds good. I mean, some people will say, well, what's the big deal? It can't hurt. And it can't, it's just that I think that it has to be coupled with, you've got to work hard, and you have to get good instruction.

[00:47:24] Therese Markow: Yeah. Otherwise, it can hurt. You know, it's, it sort of reminds me of, I forget, there was, wasn’t there some, some megachurch where the, the pastor said, all you have to do is think about the money and you will be rich or something like that.

[00:47:38] Anna Stokke: Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, it does kind of sound like religion now that you mention it.

Yeah.

[00:47:42] Therese Markow: But they are not going to get rich if they don't work, you know, just thinking the money and thinking they are going to be rich, it's not going to, it won't do it. But, but so, you know, on the other hand, then there's a group that says, you are either going to be a mathematician or you can't be. Do they have evidence?

[00:47:59] Anna Stokke: I think that that is a common, that is a common misconception in math, that people really do think that there are math people and there, there are people who are just math people and there are people who are not math people. I don't know if there's evidence. That's why, that's why I was asking you about it.

[00:48:17] Therese Markow: I don't know of any evidence for anything like that. You know, obviously people are going to pursue in life what they are interested in. You know, you could say somebody in athletics, oh, you know, that's not a basketball person, that's a, you know, a football person or something, and that's genetic, you know, and they are predetermined to be that way. I don't, I don't think that's necessarily true.

But, you know, the other thing I think about that's so appealing about these ideas where anybody can do it, you just have to, you know, have a good, good mindset and so forth. It kind of reminds me of, of some of the people in this self esteem kind of movement where everybody gets a trophy, right?

And everybody has to feel like they can do it, and they may not have to put the work in on it. And I think, you know, there's people that are worried, you know, about, about kids and their self esteem and so forth. I think it is important to be worried about those things. But I think kids know. If they have really worked hard to attain something or they have just been kind of given something, I think they know that and that that's not great, right?

[00:49:27] Anna Stokke: Yeah, I agree with you.

[00:49:28] Therese Markow: Just the basis that people shouldn't, for example, these studies that I talked about earlier, where you can say, yeah, you know, there is a heritability to it, but, you know, I just want to make it really clear that even when there's a heritability and they can see slight differences in the brain, that doesn't mean that's not a yes or no for the track you are going to go down.

It just means, hey, well, maybe you need a little bit more help or instruction on this, but you can do it.

[00:49:53] Anna Stokke: Okay, so I am what you'd call petite. Okay, so I am only like 5'1. I don't think I would make a good basketball player. So, I mean, what would you say as a geneticist? Could I become a great basketball player if I got lots of practice?

[00:50:11] Therese Markow: Well, I think you could become a good guard. If you look at it, there are, there have been some guards that have not been tall. You know, I think we are seeing these basketball players, they are getting bigger and bigger to the point where it's like, oh my God, you know, but I remember watching, you know, the Phoenix Suns when they first, you know, were started to play and they had some guards that were pretty short and you really notice it when they are standing next to some of these other Gigantos on the court, right? But they did it. Yeah, there you go. So, you can go out and start practicing basketball.

[00:50:43] Anna Stokke: Not likely. That comes back to the things you really are interested in, and I am not, so that will not be happening. Okay is there anything we missed? Is there anything else you wanted to mention?

[00:50:56] Therese Markow: I guess, you know besides the importance of having at least a good handle on basic math to get through some of these important courses in the university, kind of, it's important, you know, in your life, right, people are going to, you know, say you are voting for somebody and that person says, I am going to reduce taxes. Okay, everybody's excited. They are going to reduce taxes, but people are not logically thinking.

Do I get anything back for those taxes? Like, are my roads paved? You know, do I get an, you know, an enormous amount of service back for that? And then if suddenly there are tax cuts and then suddenly their benefits go away. You have to think about that, but I think it's important to think about it before. It's like, well, what is this actually going to cost me? It's like if you buy, you know, a cheap used car, it may seem, oh God, this is great. You know, I am getting this for a thousand dollars instead of two thousand dollars, you know, and then maybe, you know, I, I need to wonder possibly this older car, could that start having some mechanical problems that could really cost me money.

So, I mean, those are, those are things that people, that's logic, but it also has to do with numbers and people borrowing and spending money they don't have. And I don't know. So, I think some basic numeracy is important for people just, you know, in their daily lives and in their lives as citizens who want to operate the levers of power.

[00:52:26] Anna Stokke: Yeah, very well said. And of course, I agree with you that there are larger. implications and just students showing up and, and not being able to participate in their genetics class, although that's not a great thing. There are larger, there are implications across society really for weak math skills.

[00:52:46] Therese Markow: Right. There are. I mean, I don't think everybody has to, has to know calculus, but I think there's some basic things that everybody needs to know, and they can, I think everyone can easily.

[00:52:57] Anna Stokke: Yes, exactly. So, maybe that's a great way to end the show today. It's been a great conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you today.

It's a little different than my usual format, so it was really fun. And I actually learned a lot from you today, too. So, thank you so much.

[00:53:12] Therese Markow: Oh, well, you are welcome. I learned from you. So, it's been fun.

[00:53:26] Anna Stokke: As always, we have included a resource page that has links to articles and books mentioned in the episode. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider showing your support by leaving a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Chalk and Talk is produced by me, Anna Stokke, and the transcript and resource page are by Jazmin Boisclair and Deepika Tung.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes delivered as they become available. You can follow me on X, Blue Sky, or LinkedIn for notifications, or check out my website www.annastokke.com for more information. This podcast received funding through a University of Winnipeg Knowledge Mobilization and Community Impact Grant funded through the Anthony Swaity Knowledge Impact Fund.