Boys have traditionally out-performed their female classmates in math competitions, normally one-shot, timed events in which students are pitted against each other on equations. To measure performance, Joe Price, a professor of economics from Brigham Young University who co-authored the study with Rutgers’ Frank McIntyre and Christopher Cotton from the University of Miami, made a minor adjustment to the competition structure: they added rounds. Once competitors moved past the first round, girls performed as well or better than boys for the remainder of the contest.
‘It’s really encouraging that seemingly large gaps disappear just by keeping [girls] in the game longer,’ says Price.