Chicken & Egg

"We are not gender-biased but there is no way the ministry can stabilise university intake involving genders as admission is strictly based on meritocracy"

—Higher Education director-general Datuk Dr Radin Umar [NST]

Some of the new readers of this blog are not aware that I was once a teacher for about 3.5 years many years ago. During those few years mingling with school kids, I was able to learn a bit about boys and girls—of how their brains work; of how they see and figure out things. But later on, I realised that what I found out was also more or less true for adult males and females in general.

In an education system in Malaysia where school results are heavily weighted on theory rather than practical, I am not surprised that the girls will always outdo the boys. I have conducted a couple of experiments in this blog before to make my point, and although admittedly the size of participants by those who were sporting enough to join in the "study" was too small to qualify for any conclusive deduction, it nevertheless gave us all a glimpse of a pattern in the thought process between boys and girls. This is of course talking from the general point of view. I have no doubt that some girls are very clever people—I mean truly clever, not only on paper.

When presented with a problem, women would generally approach that problem from a much more complicated angle. If possible at all, they'd go into very detailed calculations, even using computer softwares to arrive at the answer; whereas men can arrive at the same answer much faster and accurately with hardly any complicated calculations whatsoever.

Consider this question which I've posted elsewhere in the past:

There is a kind of leaf which grows on the surface of water in a pond. It grows at the rate of doubling up every day (24 hours). So 1 becoming 2 after a day; becoming 4 the following day; becoming 8 the next day, and so on and so forth. Now, starting from ONE leaf, we are told that it takes 40 days for that ONE leaf to multiply to cover the entire surface of the pond.

Now we remove all those leaves from the pond and start again. Only this time we start with TWO leaves. How many days would it take for those TWO leaves to multiply to cover the entire surface of pond?

OK, first let's do the sifting process. I would say roughly about half of the population, of which perhaps comprising more or less equal percentage of men and women, would not have the mind to solve this kind of problem. They merely glance through the question and then sit back and wait for some other people to solve it for them. These are the lazy people who are not destined to be the problem-solvers of this world. In school they only read what's required to complete their assignments; they only study what they need to pass their exams. Nothing more. We shall not dwell on this group of people for our present discussion.

Of the remaining population, we have the more hard-working men and women who'd try to find the solution to the question. And I'm happy to say that from the many times that I have posed this question before, I'd say more or less equal number of men and women were able to find the solution. But I was more interested to know the thought-process in arriving at the solution.

A brilliant woman mathematician from a University here in Sabah solved the above question flawlessly. But I was somewhat amused by her approach. She sent me a 2-A4 size workings, including some complicated spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel) calculations which I did not bother to investigate, accompanied by some assumptions, and finally arrived at the required answer—39 days.

On the other hand, on another occasion, a male friend of mine who's probably left school a hundred years ago (maths was not his major) gave me his accurate answer in only a few sentences based on simple logic. He said that since we start the second experiment with TWO leaves, that is like starting the first experiment (the one which we started with only ONE leaf) from the second day (because ONE becomes TWO after 24 hours). The rest of the process would continue the same way between both those experiments. Therefore, the only difference is that one day at the beginning of those experiments. Hence the answer for the second experiment is 39 days. Very simple, logical and much faster way of arriving at the solution!

To be quite honest, when I asked the question, I wasn't really interested to know the answer, because I was fairly certain that it would be solved in the end. Instead, I was more interested in the thought-process in arriving at the answer. However, although I don't consider the above question as very difficult, some of you may still find it too complicated. So let's conduct another experiment now with something even more straight-forward and simpler, without mathematical complications, and hopefully we can get a bigger participation this time round.

Question:

Which one comes first, CHICKEN or EGG?

As usual, send your answer (only ONE answer please) to:

ckoh1965@yahoo.com

Real names are not required (though preferable), but it is necessary to specify your gender. I will not publish the names of participants, but I may share their explanations, anonymously. If no gender is specified, then I shall reluctantly exclude the submission from the "study". Give me your answer with a short explanation. This is necessary to investigate the thought-process. Refrain from discussing the question with anyone, especially the opposite gender. Employees (and ex-employees, especially the one working in Wisma Merdeka) of my company are automatically disqualified from participating.

p/s: I'm moderating all comments while this "study" is in progress.