Needs ideas for a math/science conference for girls.

[gprellwitz]

Mari, a frank question, given that the conference is specifically geared towards girls. I note that you and Missa are the only female respondents in the thread. Do you think that gender plays a role in the perception of the utility of advanced scientific and mathematical education, or do you think it's just a personal thing? (Note that by gender I'm thinking more along the lines of societal attitudes shaping ones attitude than any sort of innate ability.)

 

[Graueradler]

Different people's brains work in different ways. I need to understand something, then I can move to rules of thumb or quick and dirty methods. Instead of memorizing equations, I need to be able to derive the equation. If I forget the equation, I can still figure it out. If I use it often enough, it soon becomes a memory item. My wife wants to memorize which buttons to push in which sequence. Give her a different device and she is lost.

 

[TMetzinger]

Everything you study enhances your understanding of something and I'm not as anti-education as I probably sound. Still I don't think that advanced math, including trig is necessary to be a successful pilot. I have known great pilots who have never taken trig, let alone set foot in a college.

Even if you have a lot of book smarts it doesn't necessarily follow that you have a lot of common sense. I have known (and flown) with people like this. When it comes to flying an airplane I would lean towards the person that has more common sense.

No argument, it's not required to be a pilot.

 

[TMetzinger]

.... My wife wants to memorize which buttons to push in which sequence. Give her a different device and she is lost.

Yeah, I see that a lot. A little extra effort to understand the underlying principles/functions/design philosophy of something greatly reduces frustration when you have to do something else that is similar-but-different.

 

[Anthony]

Yeah, I see that a lot. A little extra effort to understand the underlying principles/functions/design philosophy of something greatly reduces frustration when you have to do something else that is similar-but-different.

That's what I am really taliking about. Not just the skills/education needed to manipulate the controls of an airplane and get from point A to B.

 

[Everskyward]

Different people's brains work in different ways. I need to understand something, then I can move to rules of thumb or quick and dirty methods. Instead of memorizing equations, I need to be able to derive the equation. If I forget the equation, I can still figure it out. If I use it often enough, it soon becomes a memory item. My wife wants to memorize which buttons to push in which sequence. Give her a different device and she is lost.

I'm not sure what pushing buttons in sequence has to do with understanding equations but...

I don't think I think in terms of equations. I use rules of thumb without really knowing where they come from. Or perhaps I was taught at one time and don't remember and am to lazy to try to figure it out again.

As far as trig goes, as I noted before, it's much easier for me to think in terms visualizing triangles. I must confess that I took trig but if someone asked me how to use it today I would have to do a lot of reviewing. I remember the words sine and cosine...

I guess I think more visually than numerically. Maps and diagrams have always been easy for me to read and understand, even before I was a pilot. I also think I learn physical skills like flying best by observing and doing rather than analyzing so I'm a kinesthetic learner.

 

[Everskyward]

Mari, a frank question, given that the conference is specifically geared towards girls. I note that you and Missa are the only female respondents in the thread. Do you think that gender plays a role in the perception of the utility of advanced scientific and mathematical education, or do you think it's just a personal thing? (Note that by gender I'm thinking more along the lines of societal attitudes shaping ones attitude than any sort of innate ability.)

I'm not sure that I'm a good person to be answering this since I don't have any experience with young girls, or boys for that matter. Looking back when I was young, I don't remember girls being discouraged from studying math or science although I don't think they were particularly encouraged either. Two of my female friends back then were real math whizzes.

I tend to think that people have innate strengths but they need to discover what they are and cultivate them in order to succeed. The thing is, your strengths might not be what you parents, your teachers or cultural stereotyping predict they should be.

 

[Matthew]

I have two girls, one in engineering school and another finishing high school and who will go to college for anything BUT math/science/engineering (but who really does well in her advanced math and science classes). I think the main thing is to keep it interesting and fun. Different ages have obviously different skill levels, but almost all have a level of curiosity. Girls and boys brains are wired differently and will learn differrently.

Keeping an aviation theme is fine, but I think it might be better to show how flying can be used to demonstrate math/physics instead of the other way around. Ballistics - dropping something from and airplane and calculating where it will land. Trig - calculating altitude using a protractor and distance to get two of the three things needed to calculate the rest of the triangle. Algebra - time and distance calculations.

 

[Everskyward]

Girls and boys brains are wired differently and will learn differrently.

As long as we are talking about girls and boys and cultural stereotypes I'm going to say that I don't think it's as black and white as this. It's not like someone hooked up wires to one connector for girls and to another one for boys. Girls may tend toward one type of learning and boys towards another but there are many shades of gray and many people cross over. When I was younger I would hear or read that girls learn/think/feel/interact in a certain way and I would be puzzled and I couldn't relate to it because I didn't learn/think/feel/interact that way. I've even had people who know me quite well tell me that I'm not really like a girl. Since then I've come to believe that these issues are not even close to black and white. They also have nothing to do with sexual orientation. I also have to say that, culturally, it's much easier and more accepted for a girl to be a tomboy than it is for a boy to be effeminate and that that's a sad thing for boys.

 

[OtisAir]

Heather, I have a book (somewhere) that is called Science from your Airplane Window or something like that. I'll try to find it over the next day or so and if I'm successful, I can mail it to you if you think it would be of value.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Heather,

You need to have a chat with Lynda from http://www.girlswithwings.com/ as she's a pro at this!

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Grant,

I get what both you and Mari are saying... I'm really glad that I can use a lot of the knowledge from engineering school to understand what's going on when I'm flying, but other people such as Mari and Jesse have learned tricks that work well for them in practice and don't require knowing all the geeky details. (I'm a big-time geeky-detail guy!)

The interesting thing is, Mari's comment about visualizing triangles says "TRIG!" all over it to me - I'm guessing that since she's a "visual thinker" that's what she got out of Trig. I may not be a 100% visual thinker, but I do know that for me to retain knowledge in Calculus, Physics, Statics, Dynamics, etc. I always had to relate what I was learning to real-world problems. Until I figured out what a derivative or an integral *really was* I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Now, I see calculus in the real world all over the place and I actually like it.

 

[Matthew]

As long as we are talking about girls and boys and cultural stereotypes I'm going to say that I don't think it's as black and white as this. It's not like someone hooked up wires to one connector for girls and to another one for boys. Girls may tend toward one type of learning and boys towards another but there are many shades of gray and many people cross over. When I was younger I would hear or read that girls learn/think/feel/interact in a certain way and I would be puzzled and I couldn't relate to it because I didn't learn/think/feel/interact that way. I've even had people who know me quite well tell me that I'm not really like a girl. Since then I've come to believe that these issues are not even close to black and white. They also have nothing to do with sexual orientation. I also have to say that, culturally, it's much easier and more accepted for a girl to be a tomboy than it is for a boy to be effeminate and that that's a sad thing for boys.

I wasn't implying girls can't learn the same stuff as boys - I just think that different approaches to teaching work differently for boys/girls. And yes, I know there are individual differences. My two girls thrive in completely different learning environments, and both have done very well in math and sciences.

Good luck and have fun with it!

 

[HeatherCFI]

Thanks for all the ideas! I have some good ideas to go forward with and I will definitely contact Lynda.

 

[Everskyward]

I'm really glad that I can use a lot of the knowledge from engineering school to understand what's going on when I'm flying, but other people such as Mari and Jesse have learned tricks that work well for them in practice and don't require knowing all the geeky details.

I have another theory about this. I learned how to fly when I was pretty young and Jesse was even younger. For that reason, at least for me, it's very internalized and normal. You don't think about the geeky details behind driving your car, do you? Or maybe you do.

(I'm a big-time geeky-detail guy!)

I could tell that from the few hours I spent with you when you stopped by at KAPA.

 

[jesse]

Grant,

I get what both you and Mari are saying... I'm really glad that I can use a lot of the knowledge from engineering school to understand what's going on when I'm flying, but other people such as Mari and Jesse have learned tricks that work well for them in practice and don't require knowing all the geeky details. (I'm a big-time geeky-detail guy!)

The interesting thing is, Mari's comment about visualizing triangles says "TRIG!" all over it to me - I'm guessing that since she's a "visual thinker" that's what she got out of Trig. I may not be a 100% visual thinker, but I do know that for me to retain knowledge in Calculus, Physics, Statics, Dynamics, etc. I always had to relate what I was learning to real-world problems. Until I figured out what a derivative or an integral *really was* I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Now, I see calculus in the real world all over the place and I actually like it.

Give me an example you would use in the cockpit that involves Calculus or Trig. I will tell you how I'd solve it. Curious to see the difference.

 

[steingar]

Overall it is a gender issue. Girls are outperforming boys in every level of education, and I've read that the last man will get his bachelors in 2051 (if current trends continue, of course). Our med school is now over half female, the vet school around 90% female. However, women are still highly underrepresented in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering.

 

[Everskyward]

Overall it is a gender issue. Girls are outperforming boys in every level of education, and I've read that the last man will get his bachelors in 2051 (if current trends continue, of course). Our med school is now over half female, the vet school around 90% female. However, women are still highly underrepresented in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering.

It's the same way with pilots. The figure I've heard is 6% of the total pilots being female and even a smaller percentage of the professional pilots. Airlines have a bigger percentage of women than business aviation as well. I am the only female of about 25 pilots and in the 10 years I've worked here there have never been more than two at one time. The question is why? The other question is, does it matter that much? I don't see why it is necessary to have every profession balanced in the same way the general population is balanced in gender and ethnicity. Does it matter that there are more female doctors and vets and not that many female pilots and mathemeticians? Equal opportunity is not the same thing as equal outcome. As long as women and men understand that all these opportunities are available to them, which I think is what the math/science conference for girls is all about, and there are no barriers either overt or covert, then it shouldn't be that concerning.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I have another theory about this. I learned how to fly when I was pretty young and Jesse was even younger. For that reason, at least for me, it's very internalized and normal. You don't think about the geeky details behind driving your car, do you? Or maybe you do.

Well, mainly at the moment I'm using "geeky details" WRT driving to save gas. I've managed to increase my mileage by about 5 mpg by changing the way I drive to emphasize fuel economy over speed.

Give me an example you would use in the cockpit that involves Calculus or Trig. I will tell you how I'd solve it. Curious to see the difference.

These are generally not things I'm thinking about in the cockpit, but things I think about before or after a flight, often due to scenarios we bring up here, or if the airplane behaves a little differently in some situation than I expect it to and I want to figure out why. When I'm in the plane, I pretty much just fly it the same way you do.

One example of how I know Mari and I think a little differently is descent planning. I think like this: "Okay, I'm at 7500 and TPA is at roughly 2000 MSL, so I have 5500 feet to descend, 500 feet per minute would take 11 minutes. I'm getting 130 knots groundspeed right now so probably around 135 in the descent, that's 2 1/4 miles per minute, times 11 minutes, means I need to start my descent 29 miles out to arrive at TPA 4 miles from the field." Mari has a rule of thumb (3 miles per 1000 feet?) that works great in her airplane. I get to TPA without popping my pax' ears, and Mari makes her FL210 crossing restriction issued by ATC, but we arrive at the numbers we need via different methods.

 

[jesse]

One example of how I know Mari and I think a little differently is descent planning. I think like this: "Okay, I'm at 7500 and TPA is at roughly 2000 MSL, so I have 5500 feet to descend, 500 feet per minute would take 11 minutes. I'm getting 130 knots groundspeed right now so probably around 135 in the descent, that's 2 1/4 miles per minute, times 11 minutes, means I need to start my descent 29 miles out to arrive at TPA 4 miles from the field." Mari has a rule of thumb (3 miles per 1000 feet?) that works great in her airplane. I get to TPA without popping my pax' ears, and Mari makes her FL210 crossing restriction issued by ATC, but we arrive at the numbers we need via different methods.

Gotcha, If I really want to figure that out...which I rarely do..I just say..I'm at 5000 feet. I want to lose 4000. 4000 will take me 8 minutes at 500 fpm. I just look at the ETE on the GPS..add a few mintues..so at 10 minutes ETE I would start down. More if I plan on coming in fast.

Of course I could make the 396 figure that crap out..but it seems like its more work to me to set it up then it is to just wing it. I could do all the math and make it exact..but it doesn't need to be exact so I don't. Once again the math it takes to do this precisely is middle school level or lower.

Most of the time...I just start down when I feel like starting down. I don't generally put much thought into it. I'm not that high.

 

[tonycondon]

jesse its actually really easy to set the vnav up on the 396, and its really nice to have. used it all the time in the 421.

 

[jesse]

jesse its actually really easy to set the vnav up on the 396, and its really nice to have. used it all the time in the 421.

Yeah I guess. But I don't like doing all that planning. It ruins the fun. I'm only at like 4,000 feet.. I can come down from 4,000 feet very quickly in lots of fun ways. That is why I liked the 150 before that damn AD. Need to lose a few thousand feet? Look around..no airplanes...enter the spin and down I go.

 

[GigG601XL]

Good question...I haven't seen anything that pays reasonably well that management isn't trying to outsource. I wish I could be more constructive.

Well then the obvious answer is management.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Gotcha, If I really want to figure that out...

I do it just so that I exercise the brain just a hair. And then I get annoyed when I get to the top of descent point and start down, and then the Garmin starts alerting me to do the same. Pesky gadget-boxes!

Once again the math it takes to do this precisely is middle school level or lower.

In this case, yes. Like I said, most of the calculus type stuff is stuff I'm thinking about on the ground, going through scenarios in my head. However, this reminds me of something one of my calc profs said: "Only one step of a calculus problem is actually calculus - The rest is just algebra." It's more of a way of thinking, than a math problem.

Most of the time...I just start down when I feel like starting down. I don't generally put much thought into it. I'm not that high.

Yeah, I just stay in practice with the 500fpm descents for the many times I'm flying non-pilot pax.

 

[Everskyward]

Well, mainly at the moment I'm using "geeky details" WRT driving to save gas. I've managed to increase my mileage by about 5 mpg by changing the way I drive to emphasize fuel economy over speed.

I'm not sure what kind of geeky details you are using but I know that if I changed my driving by accelerating more slowly and not trying to go too fast on the highway I would get better mileage. That's why they made the speed limit 55 back in the 1970s. The actual calculation is not important to me, nor is the exact amount I might save in gas mileage. These things can't be exact anyway since you are not driving on a test track but in real traffic.

One example of how I know Mari and I think a little differently is descent planning. I think like this: "Okay, I'm at 7500 and TPA is at roughly 2000 MSL, so I have 5500 feet to descend, 500 feet per minute would take 11 minutes. I'm getting 130 knots groundspeed right now so probably around 135 in the descent, that's 2 1/4 miles per minute, times 11 minutes, means I need to start my descent 29 miles out to arrive at TPA 4 miles from the field." Mari has a rule of thumb (3 miles per 1000 feet?) that works great in her airplane. I get to TPA without popping my pax' ears, and Mari makes her FL210 crossing restriction issued by ATC, but we arrive at the numbers we need via different methods.

But my method only involves multiplying the thousands of feet by 3 which seems like less mental math, to my small brain anyway. 10,000 feet to descend times 3 = 30 miles out. 40,000 feet to descend times 3 = 120 miles out. It actually works for all airplanes, not just fast ones. Of course as Jesse points out, if you are not that high it doesn't matter. I remember talking about this subject with you. I also mentioned that you should use a descent rate of groundspeed times 5 to get an approximate 3 degree glide slope. So if you are going 100 knots you need to descend at 500 fpm. At 400 knots it would be 2000 fpm. Nowadays the airplane I fly has VNAV which makes me lazy...

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I'm not sure what kind of geeky details you are using but I know that if I changed my driving by accelerating more slowly and not trying to go too fast on the highway I would get better mileage. That's why they made the speed limit 55 back in the 1970s. The actual calculation is not important to me, nor is the exact amount I might save in gas mileage. These things can't be exact anyway since you are not driving on a test track but in real traffic.

I actually have an instantaneous MPG readout on my car, which certainly has helped to refine my technique. I'm not doing any math, really.

One thing that I do is to not put the pedal any farther down going uphill, generally, so I'm slow at the top of the hills and then pretty fast at the bottom. However, I have a theory that if you start (from a stop) at the bottom of a hill you need to go up (like here), that an ultra-slow acceleration actually hurts you, since you're exposing yourself to a negative acceleration for a longer period of time. (Think of how the glider folks handle up and down drafts... Same type of thing.) However, there's a limit to how fast you should accelerate up the hill, as after a certain point you are using more gas for not much less time going uphill. Without hooking up an integrator (or a computer with the proper software), though, I can't really say exactly what the relationship between the slope of the hill and the optimum acceleration is.

That is the kind of thing I think about. I need help.

But my method only involves multiplying the thousands of feet by 3 which seems like less mental math, to my small brain anyway.

Oh, it is definitely less mental math, no doubt! Also, since you're going so fast, I bet that even up high winds aloft are a smaller percentage of your speed in that sort of situation, so the possible errors are smaller. And if you do have to push the nose over a bit more to make the crossing, the pressurization will take care of the pax.

Nowadays the airplane I fly has VNAV which makes me lazy...

Even our lowly 182 has VNAV thanks to the 430W, but I try to stay sharp anyway.

 

[Everskyward]

I actually have an instantaneous MPG readout on my car, which certainly has helped to refine my technique. I'm not doing any math, really.

Cheater!

One thing that I do is to not put the pedal any farther down going uphill, generally, so I'm slow at the top of the hills and then pretty fast at the bottom. However, I have a theory that if you start (from a stop) at the bottom of a hill you need to go up (like here), that an ultra-slow acceleration actually hurts you, since you're exposing yourself to a negative acceleration for a longer period of time. (Think of how the glider folks handle up and down drafts... Same type of thing.) However, there's a limit to how fast you should accelerate up the hill, as after a certain point you are using more gas for not much less time going uphill. Without hooking up an integrator (or a computer with the proper software), though, I can't really say exactly what the relationship between the slope of the hill and the optimum acceleration is.

That is the kind of thing I think about. I need help.

No kidding.

Also, since you're going so fast, I bet that even up high winds aloft are a smaller percentage of your speed in that sort of situation, so the possible errors are smaller.

That's not necessarily true. However the rule of thumb that you descend at 5 times your groundspeed makes up for that. At a 400 knot gs you descend at 2000 fpm but with a 500 knot gs you use 2500 fpm. You can also start your descent 10 or 20 miles sooner to give yourself a little fudge factor. Of course this all depends on ATC being cooperative.

And if you do have to push the nose over a bit more to make the crossing, the pressurization will take care of the pax.

That's true but you really don't want to get too carried away with nose down, speedbrakes and spoilers unless it is necessary because it's a little more uncomfortable for the passengers to ride at that angle.