A math club for girls

When we love something we want to share the joy with others. Ken Fan loves math. He's also aware that sometimes girls get the short end of the stick when it comes to math education. So he founded Girls' Angle: A Math Club for Girls. It provides a unique environment for girls to explore mathematical concepts, equations, and ideas. Homeschooling students are welcome to join. Below, Ken talks about the club.

Q. What is Girls' Angle: A Math Club for Girls?

Girls' Angle is a place where girls can get a high quality mathematics education from our mentors who are among the best women in mathematics at each stage of the mathematics career path. Our mission is to nurture and foster girls' interest in mathematics. We're also a growing community of support for all women who study, use and create mathematics. And we're a source of quality mathematics educational materials. We produce media that people can use to explore mathematics. For example, we have a bimonthly magazine called the Girls' Angle Bulletin that contains interviews with mathematicians, articles on math and fun and challenging math problems.

Q. Why a math club just for girls?

This is a really important question, but it is difficult to give a brief answer. I thought about this question for a long time before founding Girls' Angle because I knew it was going to take a huge effort to create Girls' Angle and so I wanted to be sure that I was convinced that building a math club expressly for girls is a worthy cause. Perhaps one can start by noting some facts. A few years ago, ten of the top math departments in the US were surveyed and fewer than 7% of the tenured faculty were women. Harvard has never once had a tenured woman math professor. Prominent people, such as psychologist Steven Pinker, offer as a hypothesis that the cause can be traced to innate biological differences between men and women. For example, one hypothesis says that there's something biological about girls that make them just not like math as much as boys. However, if one understands that mathematics is really about anything that can be thought about abstractly and rationally, the idea that girls don't like math is very close to suggesting that girls prefer not to think, which is absurd. At Girls' Angle, we take the view that girls and boys have the same innate ability to perform and create outstanding mathematics. But if we assume that, there must be another explanation for why there are so few women in mathematics. We believe that the way math is currently taught in the US is, in fact, gender biased against girls in subtle ways. I would even suggest that co-educational math programs in the US are essentially boys' math programs. For example, it is difficult for girls to find female role models in mathematics, but it is extremely easy to find male role models. Today, it's difficult to escape the influence of men in mathematics. There are so few places where girls can go in math to get away from boys. Girls' Angle is such a place. This is not to suggest that all girls would benefit from an all-girl math educational environment. However, we believe that there are many who would benefit...certainly more than enough to justify large all-girl math educational programs. Well, this response just scratches the surface of an enormous topic. In short, girls and boys are different, yes, but not in a way that makes girls less capable of doing and enjoying math.

Q. What makes the club different from other resources available for homeschoolers to learn math?

Well, I haven't studied all of the other math educational resources that are available, so I cannot really answer this question. But I will say that the mathematical community is small, and there really aren't very many women in mathematics today, relatively speaking, and certainly there are not many in the Boston area. Girls' Angle employs quite a number of these women as mentors, so I would dare to say that our program has the most talented mentor class. There aren't too many other places (if any) where a fifth grader can work regularly and one-on-one with a faculty member at the Harvard or MIT mathematics department. What this means is that we are able to deliver mathematics to our members as a living, breathing subject. We try to instill this creative spirit at the club from the very beginning because we hope that girls who pass through Girls' Angle will enter adulthood with self-confidence and the eagerness, skills and strength of character to tackle and solve the most challenging and pressing problems that face humanity today ...problems with no known solution and which demand new ideas to solve.

Q. What's a typical day at the club like?

The common thread at all club meets is that women who understand math extremely well work with girls to help them in whatever way possible to increase their knowledge and understanding of mathematics and, more generally, improve their ability to think. Exactly how this manifests itself can differ markedly from meet to meet. Different concepts and different girls require different ways of teaching. So at a meet, you'll sometimes find group activities whereas other times there will be more individual work. Sometimes we make worksheets; at other times, math-based games. Sometimes we have mini-lectures; at other times, we have the girls explain things to us. Sometimes we have collaborative challenges; at other times, we have competitive games. What is critical to us is that each girl who comes becomes engaged with mathematics in some way. This places high demands on our mentors who must be alert and ready to think fast in order to accommodate different learning styles and figure out what would be best for a girl at any given moment. It's the main reason why we hire only highly talented women as mentors. The mix of mentors, members and mathematics leads to some very exciting meets!

Q. Can anyone come to the club, or do you have to be "good" at math?

Any girl, well, for now, aged 10-16 roughly, who has an open mind is welcome to join. It does not matter in the slightest how good the girl is at math or how good the girl perceives herself to be at math. In fact, I find that many girls who think they are no good at math because of something that happened at school are actually quite good at it. Also, we encourage girls to try us even if they think they do not like math. School gives a very limited idea of what math is about because only a minute fraction of the mathematical universe is addressed in the school classroom.

Q. Do you have a favorite club moment?

Running Girls' Angle has given me a rich treasure trove of memories that I'll cherish for the rest of my life. I really enjoy those moments where girls are learning a great deal of math and laughing out loud at the same time. I also love those times when a girl becomes so excited by some piece of mathematics that she goes off and does math at home on her own by choice and comes back to the club eager to tell us about what she did. But I'll go ahead and describe one specific memory. At the last meet of the third session, we brought in presents for the girls. The presents were in a big box that was all wrapped up. When the girls went to open it, they discovered that it was sealed shut with two combination locks. On the table were a stack of problems whose solutions gave clues to the combinations. In a marathon collaborative effort, the girls worked out all the problems and, with but a minute and a half to spare, the second lock snapped open! A cheer erupted. It was really a triumph of cooperation, hard work, and perseverance.