Coryoth writes “The widely held belief that there is disparity in the innate mathematical abilities of men and women has been steadily whittled down in recent years. The gender gap in basic mathematics skills closed some time ago, and recently the gap in high school mathematics has closed up as well, with as many girls as boys now taking high school calculus.

Oh yes. This is a very good news—that is, the fact that the media is finally acknowledging that gender gap hasn’t existed for years—I would even argue that even at my generation there was no such thing as a “gender gap” that put women at any disadvantage from men. Every opportunity available to a man was available to a woman.

Is it possible that we can now expect some attention on the problem that boys are the ones who seem to be falling behind these days? Is it possible that people will now pay attention to the seeming problem that more boys drop out, more boys get worse grades, and more young men commit crimes? Equality of result is of course not what we should strive at—but at least we should examine if we were all so focused on encouraging women and emphasizing that everything a man can do a woman can … that we neglected boys were being discouraged and neglected.

Can you spot the error in this “proof”?

If you want to make it look less frivolous, try writing “A = B/C” and see if the following ought to be true: “If B = 0, C = 0.”

This is why applying rules of algebra without a solid understanding of mathematics is … well, idiotic.