She presented at the first RobotsConf and it was really compelling and could inspire other kids to start building things: http://teamtreehouse.com/library/robotsconf-2013/super-aweso...

(find me at avani@salk.edu)

http://www.salk.edu/stepintodiscovery/exploresalk.php

Anyway, it sounds like a great event, and I hope to come and bring the family!

I have to say I envied you for a moment. My daughter once enjoyed an afternoon with me at the REPL, but then politely made it clear that we wouldn't need to do it again.

I'm asking because my younger cousin definitely enjoyed looking and playing with a Mario-like game where we would loop-back and have fun within the REPL. However, I don't think she would have enjoyed mathematical additions or learning about while loop for the fun of learning-about-while-looping.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc

I am a mentor for my local team. The program is absolutlely wonderful. It inspires and drives kids at many levels. Mentors run a huge range, from scientists amd engineers to welders, makers and really driven Mom's and Dad's. The common thread, among other things, is to inpire the kids to learn and apply technologyy to solve problems. Highhly recommended.

Bummer the OP just missed the 2014 Greater San Diego Tournament by a few days

http://www.botball.org/sca/2014/tournament

FRC league is for High School students. They have leagues for elementary and middle school students in Lego and Tetrix, respectively. FRC is the full blown CNC machined parts and rapid-prototyped/3D-printed awesomeness. (Or woodworking)

Really, I just want her to come home with a new appreciation for the technical ability of women, and insight that learning math and science leads to something other than doing more long division by hand.

And to go and make a friend would be awesome!

I went through all the contacts made through this thread and my daughter seems most interested in contacting you and your daughter. If you're interested in a free lunch, my email's in my profile.

You do need to have an employee ID badge to get into the area that the museum is in, but I bet if you called them or know someone who currently works there they could show you around.

Source: I was an intern there last summer. http://www.qualcomm.com/about/buildings/museum

Totally get if gymanstics is taking a priority though :). Running and jumping and doing cool tricks is a ton of fun.

It doesn't seem like there's a Girl Develop It chapter in San Diego yet, but a quick Google search shows a few meetup options nearby:

- http://www.meetup.com/Teach-Yourself-Programming-A-Womens-Co... - http://www.meetup.com/IEEE-Women-in-Tech-Meetup/

I bet you could reach out to the group members/founders and they would be more than happy to speak with you and your daughter about tech things! It's really wonderful you're encouraging her passion too, btw. Good luck!

South Dakota? Sudan? Santo Domingo? San Diego?

Being a European on the Internet is really a first world problem :)

It means San Diego.

We appreciate efforts to combat snark, but the cure must be better than the disease.

http://pythonsd.org/

(I used to work at Cuker, and all the PythonSD guys are pretty great.)

In the meantime, let me know if you want to grab lunch in SD - it's on me. yreztsov@gmail.com

Personally, I learned how to do web programming because I had something in mind that I wanted to build. I learned while building that thing. If I had to go through a book, course or tutorial first, I would have never been interested. I also wouldn't ever be inspired by going to work with someone unless that person is Elon Musk.

Your daughter might be the same. Let her interest guide her. I remember all the things I said I wanted to be when I was a kid. It was all just kid talk. I don't think I really ever cared to be any of those things.

Or maybe just leave her be. 16 hours of gymnastics plus school is a lot. Maybe she simply doesn't have time for anything else. Don't force it.

Since (as I understand it) the idea of same-gender is to make the connection more straightforward, I would further suggest that you prefer a graduate student to an actual "worker".

At my university there is a grad-student scholarship that requires fieldwork to be done in a certain place (first nations community). The grad student has to involve a local high-school student in the fieldwork. When I first heard of this I thought it was wonky social engineering, but apparently it's a great success: fun and educational for both.

http://www.idtech.com/locations/california-summer-camps/la-j...

  > she's in love with it
  > I can't talk her out of it. I've tried.

If she "knows some python", is she in love with it? Is she actively learning more on the web?

Or the injuries. They suck too.

How to work hard and improve at something through many small iterations.

Learning multiple events is tricky and useful.

Dealing with injuries is an important part of life. Nobody goes through their day to day at 100% all the time. Working through the challenges is part of life.

I think gymnastics is one of those 'learning to learn' activities like chess.

I would strongly recommend looking into BJJ when she wants to move on from gymnastics. It has very similar benefits and is substantially cheaper. It can also be done at a slower pace than gymnastics, you could take a few classes a week instead of 4 x 4 hours.

For most girls (less for boys apparently) this problem solves itself by age 14, and he'll probably have to nudge her to do some sport of any kind by 15.

http://wintrisstech.org/workshops.html

Over the past 8 years, I've taught programming to people from ages 6 to 50, of all genders and cultural backgrounds. Female students have generally related more to my female colleagues, just like black students generally relate more to my black colleagues. Which is perfectly fine, and why you want a diverse set of educators in the first place.

It has been proven that our society is full of gender and racial biases, and to fight them we need to accept this fact so we can have a sensible plan of attack. Apparently we can't just make those biases disappear by wishing them away. It is easier to dismantle them by first fighting the symptoms. If you just tell people to ignore their biases, you will ask them to ignore their personal day-to-day experience, and that's asking a lot. It's hard for people to believe one thing if what they see around them goes against that belief. To change beliefs we must first change the experience.

I don't. I don't need french onion soup either, but it's sure a nice treat on occasion.

> isolating female students from male teachers

Her current math teacher is male, her science teacher is a woman and former pilot of helicopter gunships. I'm her dad, and I help her with her math and science at home. One of our good friends in the neighborhood is a PhD biostatistician who is the CEO of her own research firm.

But why ask for what's common? Within my social circle, half the guys are engineers. Heck, I can arrange for her to get a trip to SpaceX. I don't need the megaphone of Hacker News to get that. In fact, the mom of my son's best friends (twins) is an environmental engineer. So "female engineer in San Diego" is actually a tractable problem within my social circle.

Finding women in each of the many STEM careers is quite another thing. And for that, I tossed it out to Hacker News. When I post things to Hacker News, I generally don't expect a big response. Most of my posts die in /new. This didn't, which I'm grateful for.

> why carefully structure inequality in?

Because equality is often an unstable equilibrium. So exerting a force opposed to the instantaneous natural tendency may be the right response at any given time. In fact, the system may have to be permanently pre-stressed to change from unstable to stable.

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"But why ask for what's common?"

I didn't say ask for what's common. I asked why to ask for something uncommon. They're quite different and they aren't the range of possibilities. Another possibility entirely is to just not limit it.

When talking about mentors, "because a mentorship is a many year relationship that can have a significant impact on a person's life, and I'm not sure why you would only search half the space available to you for the best person for the job."

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"Because equality is often an unstable equilibrium."

Not in the case of human gender.

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"So exerting a force opposed to the instantaneous natural tendency may be the right response at any given time."

I don't see any instantaneous natural tendency to select for male either, and I'm still looking for a supporting cause for that "may be" which isn't a vague reference to an unstable equilibrium.

I'm not even sure what equilibrium you might mean, unless you mean how many people are in each gender, and expect that to change.

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"In fact, the system may have to be permanently pre-stressed to change from unstable to stable."

As that stress has been applied, beginning in the late 1970s, the division in gender in technical roles has increased dramatically. Indeed, it appears that since women's mentorship in tech has been steered towards other women, the number of women in tech has dropped dramatically.

It's important to take a look at the data before taking a position on hypotheticals, in case the data suggests exactly the opposite of what the suspicion suggests.

How would you respond if it turned out that giving a child a mentor of the opposite role, meaning they were used to a broader range of gender roles than otherwise, increased diversification? Would that change your mind about the right thing to do?

.

Lastly (and sorry it's out of order, but it's to me the dividing point):

"So "female engineer in San Diego" is actually a tractable problem within my social circle."

It's not clear to me what makes this the problem to solve, yet.

I'm not arguing with you, or saying you're wrong; I don't understand the reaction I'm getting.

I'm just trying to understand why you are cutting away the vast majority of the available mentors.

If there are ninety Xs and ten Ys available, and if Xs and Ys are fundamentally equal quality, but if both groups have individual variation, then it is strongly statistically expected that the best available individual is an X, because of the variation of individuals and the larger sampling pool.

People don't get several mentors.

I don't understand why the choice is in any terms other than finding the single best available individual.

I just want to understand the data driving your choices. I'm not arguing.

Kids are very perceptive. This girl sounds lucky to have parents who encourage her in STEM topics, but that doesn't shield her from media/misguided school teachers/councillors/other kids telling her these things aren't for her. Having a female role model is a powerful thing.

I believe that choosing to limit one's role models by gender is a problem.

This is not true for women. This guy's daughter might be the only girl in her class who feels comfortable expressing an interest in engineering. She might go on to be one of a tiny (and steadily decreasing) number of women in an overwhelmingly male university-level engineering program. Can you imagine how it might be nice to at some point be able to meet and learn from someone whose life experiences more closely match your own, and learn from the experiences that they have (or will have) in common?

That is not what is being said, it is that it may be useful for a girl to not only learn from men.

No one is talking about limiting to one kind of role model. Indeed, since women in STEM are not as represented as men, it may be limiting to not allow a student to seek out a role model who is a woman as they may never encounter one by happenstance. Having a role model you identify with, esp. with a trait that is a minority in some group, is one of the ways people can counteract imposter syndrome.

Yes, the post saying "I need a woman for a role mode" is limiting one's role models by gender.

Having a woman for a rolemodel does not exclude also having a man as a rolemodel.

Consider it like getting an advice on getting into a good college from someone who got in using Affirmative Action vs someone who didn't.

A better analogy would be considering someone getting into a good college because of their connections & wealthy parents vs someone who didn't.

In that case, isn't it absolutely imperative to start making those connections, by not demographically binning mentors?

Connections don't just spring out of nowhere.

I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here because I know where this is leading to from past experience on HN, but....

I think in the tech-scene(probably society in general) some of those connections are easier made(and sometimes come as default) depending on gender/race.

You don't want to make those connections early by arrangement, because they would be more difficult to make later on voluntarily?

Not every individual's parenting decision needs to be treated as an overall trend to be analyzed and correct.

Sometimes it's actually perfectly valid to politely ask someone why they think something.

For the record, I'm a female engineer who moved to the USA from Ghana when I was a smaller. I can't stand this ridiculous patronizing attitude there is towards female engineers, as if we need "extra help" or something. Even worse are the feminists creating us-vs-them politicization of the issue.

When I was learning to code, ride a bike, tie my shoes or something, I never thought "gosh I can't do that since none of the role models are female". In fact, if there are no role models of the same gender or race, its usually even more inspiring as you want to be the first one.

Nobody is saying women engineers need extra help. Wanting to meet someone who you identify with as a woman in STEM is not necessarily easy and it is totally legitimate to seek someone out. As for feminists and feminism, I don't know of anything that would suggest an us vs. them attitude, generally feminist leaning groups look to increase participation of women in STEM through a variety of ways.

> When I was learning to code, ride a bike, tie my shoes or something, I never thought "gosh I can't do that since none of the role models are female". In fact, if there are no role models of the same gender or race, its usually even more inspiring as you want to be the first one.

This may be true for yourself and others, but we know that this is not true on a larger scale. People can and do internalize messages about the kind of people that exist in certain professions and this can be self limiting in both conscious and unconscious ways. I'm not speaking for any one person about that, but it is legitimate to find a role model that you identify with esp. when you are a minority status in a group.

You can read more about stereotype threat here: http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html

Thanks for this. That's why I said she could use some inspiration. And not all the messages come from men. Women and friends provide powerful messages as well.

Also, I'll add another +1 to the people who are saying it's nice to see someone like you. There are questions that it is safer to ask someone who has faced similar struggles in the past. For example, I would love to meet more female professors who have managed to find a balance between family/R01-level research/service.

I draw great inspiration from people who do not have my gender, my race, or several other role model limiting demographic factors.

I feel very sad for people who are set up to not have the advantage of looking up to everyone of value.

===========

Edit: why is this being downvoted? Is it disagreeable to say "I have learned from people unlike me?" Are we now saying it's bad to argue for inclusion?

It's a polite, friendly comment, stating a positive opinion that says "I think people of every gender, race, etc are of value and should be available."

I feel like people are using downvote to show personal frustration.

People have value, but we can't deny that for some people finding someone like themselves in a particular field is very difficult. Those people certainly can and do learn from others, but finding someone that has faced the same issue and challenges as themselves is very helpful in not only exploring an issue, but also in counteracting stereotype threat.

This reads to me like

"You are being downvoted because your opinion doesn't address the original question you asked."

I have been polite, friendly, and reasonable. You guys are punishing an opinion about increasing inclusiveness because it goes against your norm.

Except your original post said:

"I don't understand why we all talk about the gender problem in engineering, then continue it by isolating female students from male teachers."

The gender problem in STEM isn't that women have a hard time finding men as peers and role models, its that women have a hard time finding women as peers and role models. You started out by misidentifying the problem in the first place, this is why your subsequent posts are downvoted because you are creating a straw man out of the OP's request to find a woman in STEM for their daughter to meet.

Suppose that we are trying to sample a distribution that is, say, 90% male and 10% female. If we do that with a fair sampling, and take 5 samples, chances are that we will end up with no females in the sample. Someone observing the sampled distribution would draw the conclusion that there are no women in the population from which the samples are drawn.

The solution is to not sample fairly, because to do so results in oversampling the common cases and undersampling the rare cases. Instead, you construct your sample such that it samples the rare cases with an artificially higher probability. You of course needs to take this into account when interpreting the samples, but that's fine.

So for the topic at hand: if you want to expose someone to the widest possible range of viewpoints, sampling fairly is an inefficient thing to do. Instead, you need to split the samples into several strata, be they gender, cultural background, wealth, anything you can think of, and then make sure that all parts of those distributions are represented in your sample. Otherwise, with a limited number of samples, you'll never encounter the rare instances.

In other words, you need to "carefully structure inequality in", as you say.

Because role models are a great thing thing for a young person to have. Why is it a problem for him to want a female role model for a female child? Why do you think that "wanting his daughter to meet a female engineer" represents inequality? Do you think that it would somehow be more equal for women to only have male role models?

You seem to be going to great effort to misunderstand me.

By saying "I think young people should have access to everyone, not just people demographically like them," you seem to have heard "I think young women should only have access to people unlike them."

A call for inclusion has been misrepresented as a call for exclusion.

.

"Why is it a problem for him to want a female role model for a female child?"

For the same reason that it would be a problem to only want male role models for male children. It reinforces existing problems and stereotypes, prevents social connections across demographics, limits group knowledge cross pollination, and limits the students' access to whoever is the best mentor available in the case that that mentor does not match them demographically.

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"Why do you think that "wanting his daughter to meet a female engineer" represents inequality?"

Does this actually need to be explained?

> A call for inclusion has been misrepresented as a call for exclusion.

In terms of gender, cisgender men by far the norm, they have no problem being represented. Women in general are not as well represented, someone looking for a women as a role model would have to look harder to find someone. To that end, a highly represented group doesn't need special consideration to be included, they are heavily included already.

> For the same reason that it would be a problem to only want male role models for male children. It reinforces existing problems and stereotypes, prevents social connections across demographics, limits group knowledge cross pollination, and limits the students' access to whoever is the best mentor available in the case that that mentor does not match them demographically.

Nobody is arguing that role models should be limited. Indeed, if this person's daughter pursues STEM they will likely have a man as a role model at some point since they are well represented. Groups of people that are not as well represented will be harder to come across so it is not a bad idea for someone to seek out different people.

> Does this actually need to be explained?

It does to a certain degree, as it seems that you feel that the extra search and effort to find a woman role model detracts from the dominant group.

"Nobody is arguing that role models should be limited."

The entire tree I'm responding to is.

The father wants to make sure his daughter gets access to both male and female role models at which point she can choose one or two or all or none of them if she wants - that is the complete opposite of _limiting_ role models. People replying to you think it's okay for him to seek out a female engineer specifically because if he doesn't try, she's ending up with a male role model (not a bad thing) out of a pool of only men right now (the bad thing). He's not saying "my daughter will ONLY have female role models or else" or "men can't be role models for my daughter" or "the woman I find from this Ask HN must be my daughter's role model". He's also not asking for male role models because he thinks they make bad role models for women, rather that they're very common as half the men in his social circle can act as one for his daughter. I would also fully expect him and others to care just as much about finding a similar potential role model had he had a son instead of a daughter.

Personally, most of my role models were male, but it would have been nice to encounter more women along the way. I have different conversations with other women than I do with men that aren't my husband in the tech industry. It's also a coping mechanism when I deal with sexism that men don't fully understand because they're not used to or aware of it. (I recognize that the complete opposite happens in some fields and I don't approve of any of the sexism, I just don't see what's wrong with doing what you can and taking advantage of what you can if you need to.)

I agree. :(

.

"He's not saying "my daughter will ONLY have female role models or else"

Yeah, I didn't claim he was. What I actually said was "making this selection explicitly by a demographic feature that isn't germane is limiting." It doesn't have to be universal.

If you go to the store and say "I'm going to try a strawberry drink," that's limiting, even if it's only applied to that one store trip.

Everyone seems to be trying to stretch what I said into an infinitive I had no intent of, which isn't actually present in my speech, in order to argue with the infinitive.

It's simpler than that.

Kids don't get a plethora of mentors. I think it's problematic to screw up the first mentorship by adding a criterion that is unnecessary and not particularly productive.

I mean reduce it to absurdity. "I want to give my child access to four mentors, one each from the four elements of the Western Zodiac, to give them the chance to figure out which element they like best."

Except that's dramatically limiting - it constrains which sets of mentors can be made available. If you have Charlie, who's an Aries, you can't also have Dave, who's a Taurus, because they're both fire signs. (They probably aren't; I don't actually know astrology.)

And when you hook it on something we all explicitly don't care about, like astrology, then suddenly the problem becomes really obvious, because it isn't taboo to think it over. "Oh hey, I shouldn't be adding arbitrary constraints to what can be proferred, then observing the range of those constraints as if it's some form of diversification, because constraints are always a reduction against wild card."

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"He's also not asking for male role models because he thinks they make bad role models for women"

I wish people would stop making assumptions about the author's opinions then stuffing words into his mouth this way.

I asked that guy his opinion. Not everybody else reading the thread. You aren't mind readers and you don't know if this is what he meant.

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"I would also fully expect him and others to care just as much about finding a similar potential role model had he had a son instead of a daughter."

I have a hard time reading this, because it seems to me like you're saying you expect his son to be proferred male role models, in the same post as where you're talking about how he doesn't limit who's offered.

Again: I am a man, and I modelled my professional self on a woman. I think that to offer male children preferential access to male role models perpetuates the broken networking and disallows men to learn from women.

I don't understand why this is not obviously a problem.

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"Personally, most of my role models were male, but it would have been nice to encounter more women along the way."

And yet you want to make sure this girl gets childhood mentored by a woman.

I wonder if you're just taking this from the position that a person has several childhood mentors in their life?

.

"It's also a coping mechanism when I deal with sexism that men don't fully understand because they're not used to or aware of it."

Which is another great reason that we shouldn't be hiding male mentors from having access to those vanishingly rare female students.

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"The father wants to make sure his daughter gets access to both male and female role models at which point she can choose one or two or all or none of them if she wants - that is the complete opposite of _limiting_ role models."

I don't know that I actually agree here.

If I had a boy, and I wanted to arrange for him one male and one female role model, and it turned out that the two best available were two women, I'd have limited him.

Unfortunately, despite that I'm trying to argue for inclusion and for helping female students, I'm about to be downvoted again :(

For all the HN articles about parent seeking role models for their children, are we really saying that "parent looking for male role model" is highly represented on the HN?

Or is it that no parent will ever need to look for a male role model outside their own social circle?

When you see a comment that is truly toxic for HN, flag it by clicking "link" to go to the item page and then "flag" at the top.

Edit: Since I know some people have concerns about unpopular opinions being suppressed, perhaps I should add that it's not an unpopular opinion which is the problem here. It's the trollish content and vicious tone.

So yes, gender matters. Kids want to be able to relate to their heroes, and gender is a deep part of identity. And admitting that gender matters isn't sexist.

I wouldn't assume that people know that. In fact if I hadn't read that particular post on that day I wouldn't know that.

I wouldn't also assume that any particular user will even click on your profile (which is another way of saying "don't just put it there").

I thought for a while about only making mod comments from this account, but that doesn't seem right. I was a community member and HN user long, long before I was a moderator.

We'll figure it all out as we go :)

Gymnastics leads to becoming a well-rounded person, which is a pre-requisite for the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, which leads to exceptional careers in medicine or technology. American culture places a tremendous value on athletics, even for people in intellectual pursuits. In the business world, athletics is a key way for intelligent people to distinguish themselves within the pool of other intelligent people.

He also drank milk. I mean there is no way you are seriously suggesting logic like this are you?

"Gymnastics leads to becoming a well-rounded person"

I agree that Harvard and Stanford will choose only exceptional people (that is ones without other connections or advantages etc.) However even without doing any research, I somehow feel that there are quite a few people at all the IVY league schools who don't participate in sports at all. And never have. I went to one and I never did any sports. And I knew plenty of people that never did any sports. And I know that there is no checklist that says "reject if no sports" like there might be "reject if a felon".

For that matter what makes participating in any sport (gymnastics or otherwise) a pre for being well rounded? What about handicapped people?

Lastly it's obvious that there are many schools other than Harvard, Stanford or the usual suspects that allow people to lead exceptional careers.

So the question becomes to what extent are you going to play the game in high school with extra activities to try to get into a "top" school vs. a "really good school"

Not only that but some people actually can't handle academics and sport participation.

Somehow I feel that since it is well understood that grades and sat's are quite important (and there are clear demarcation points on those values) for some students it might actually pay to not do any sport or spend time learning to program.

Do what you enjoy enough that you don't mind doing it 30 hours per week, and do what you love the rest of the time is pretty solid as well.

there's certainly a balance to be had, and it isn't fully in favor of short term happiness, either.

> blowing off your obligations

She is 12 years old. Are you people mad? She has very few obligations and that's a good thing. Let her have some fun before she needs to start being an adult.

huh, can't find the part where i suggested that. or anything like it.

in fact, pretty sure i said something about balance.

> She is 12 years old. Are you people mad?

i was addressing the values that kids should be taught, not the expectations for their behavior, and certainly not the expectations for one particular kid i don't even know.

perhaps look harder for alternative interpretations before resorting to madness as the most likely explanation next time?

Exactly. And see nobody wants to believe that. They want to think that things will just work out.

I'm wondering about how many people downvoting or disagreeing are aware that the major problem in marriage (as reported in popular culture and I believe it from my observation to be true) are money problems. So sure hey continue to pursue what gives you happiness but don't forget the things that allow basic survival.

Care to discuss the probability of that happening?

I know someone who got an NCAA (or similar) scholarship for swimming. The rest of the team didn't.

Anecdotal still, but both of my sisters turned down the gymnastics scholarships. They trained 36 hours a week from age 6-18 and then quit completely. One is now a nurse and the other is in vet school. Seems wasting their childhood on something they loved wasn't terribly detrimental after all.

I think that there are "intangible" benefits to athletics (not just team sports) that you're missing here.

It isn't always a full ride at a D1 school (only true for 2 out of about 30), but many got into schools they wouldn't have otherwise, others received partial D1 scholarships, and many others received large "leadership" scholarships at private D3 schools.

All this to say, there are some real benefits in the college process to competing at higher levels of high school athletics. Even if all the student gets is to spend a night on campus, and meet the entire team, and see the campus as a student, there's some real value to that.

In retrospect this is probably what seems to have made people upset (from the comments below)

"Gymnastics, nice, leads to ?"

That said I'm appreciative for the other perspectives.

I didn't mean to imply that there was no value in sports (although for sure that is what my sentence seems to say). What I meant is that I thought the value of the other program (FIRST) was more valuable in terms of setting the child apart. That's strictly my opinion it's obvious that others see it differently. You only have so much time in a week you can't do everything and have to triage based on what you feel the best outcome is.

But since you asked: I am female and did gymnastics as a kid. What has it led to? It has led to someone who knows how to fall without ending up in the ER. I have a serious medical condition which sometimes leaves me neurologically impaired. I sometimes fall down under circumstances where I really should be left bloody and with broken bones and the like. I am usually left with a few bruises and strains. That a) is worth big bucks in terms of money not spent on major medical care and b) priceless because god knows I have suffered enough from my medical condition, I don't need to be in the effin ER every time I turn around because I stupidly feel down. I have enough pain and physical limitations without it being constantly compounded by more scars and the like.

Gymnastics training is not just some frivolous indulgence.