As someone who was always interested in CS but who also always sucked at math, the basics of logic helped me immensely in finally understanding both. And, whether by nature or nurture, as a woman I was always better with words than numbers. Learning the fundamental concepts of logic without numbers bridged that gap in my brain and gave me the confidence to tackle the numbers soon after.
There’s a really good course on edX called “Logic and Computational Thinking”. It’s pretty basic and you could probably finish the whole thing in a Saturday. I would imagine much of the content is in line with the capability of the average high schooler. It was a good (and unintimidating) starting point for learning how computers “think”.
I wish people talked about the relationship between logic and math in high school. No one told me that math is really an extension of logic until I got to college (or if they did I ignored them.) Once you realize that you realize how unimportant the application actually is and the whole subject starts to make sense (at least to me.)
This. I can't express this enough. And other thing I can't express enough is how logic is an extension of common sense. Just go and read the wikipedia articles about the Three Laws of Thought: the Law of identity, the Law of noncontradiction, the Law of the excluded middle and the Principle of Reason.
> as a woman I was always better with words than numbers
This is really concerning to me as a father to a daughter. Is this a research finding? This can be decoded as saying women have lower IQ than men because people who are good with numbers generally have higher IQs.
Yes, it is concerning. Fortunately the research actually says the exact opposite.[1] It is a strongly held stereotype (in the US at least) and natural ability or natural interest is often pointed to on HN as the reason for the lack of women in STEM. I personally don’t believe it has anything to do with nature and is entirely attributable to nurture.
However, I wrote “whether by nature or nurture” because my ultimate goal was to let OP know that teaching logic might be a good avenue to spark the interest of high school girls who were like me - interested in CS even though they might have been discouraged from participating and feel like they don’t have the “natural” ability because they’ve been pushed toward language skills for most of their academic career. My message would have been brushed aside (at best, I likely would have been, and perhaps will be, berated) had I written “as a woman although I was interested in numbers I was encouraged to focus on words”. And so, like women often do[2], I held back my true thoughts on the matter because I hoped that doing so would be for the greater good if it meant OP would be the CS teacher I wish I had as a high school girl.
It's an old cliche, and I personally suspect it's more a case of the cliche informing cultural expectations and behaviours than this being an inborn thing. I think I've seen some research in the past that women and girls perform just as well on math and numbers as men and boys, as long as you separate them from those cultural expectations.
Of course there's a lot of individual variation. Some people simply are bad at math. But I think more people allow themselves to be intimidated by it when it's not necessary.
In any case, my mother and sister were/are better with numbers than words (which is also true for the men in my family).
As for IQ, it's about a lot more than just being good with numbers. There are many aspects to it. Though it also depends on how you define it. Different IQ tests can sometimes measure different things.
> I think I've seen some research in the past that women and girls perform just as well on math and numbers as men and boys, as long as you separate them from those cultural expectations.
Stereotype thread studies doesn't replicate that well.
> as a woman I was always better with words than numbers
As a man and a mechanical engineer, I was and still am way better with words than numbers and I think it's perfectly OK. Heck, I almost hate numbers and symbols without (the explanatory) words/paragraphs. I struggled at classes throughout all my years as a student since almost every topic in engineering is "applied", hence without a rigorous (theoretical) background and so much example/case based.
I wonder if it has something to do with how one's memory works. Isn't it easier for everyone to remember/visualize concepts and then deriving the formula than trying to remember the exact formula? (Writing this down, I imagine the people who do the former are better with words as the ones who do the latter are better with numbers). The derivation of equations governing the Hagen–Poiseuille flow is a good example, I presume[0].
> I almost hate numbers and symbols without (the explanatory) words/paragraphs.
The numbers and symbols only make sense in the context of some specific language game. If you work in a domain a lot, then repeated sequences of symbols and conventional naming of variables hints what language game you're playing. Without that, everyone needs the explanatory words/paragraphs.
> Isn't it easier for everyone to remember/visualize concepts and then deriving the formula than trying to remember the exact formula?
Yes. There's an interesting notion of a "recovery procedure" in Borovik's "Mathematics Under the Microscope" where he points out that mathematicians don't remember formulas and theorems, they remember simple procedures that recover them.
There’s a really good course on edX called “Logic and Computational Thinking”. It’s pretty basic and you could probably finish the whole thing in a Saturday. I would imagine much of the content is in line with the capability of the average high schooler. It was a good (and unintimidating) starting point for learning how computers “think”.