This story was updated on August 8, 2008. The view that girls are worse than boys at mathematics is unfounded, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of California at Berkeley reported today in the journal Science. Their conclusion challenges the frequently cited argument that the poorer female performance in math explains the shortage of women in physics, engineering, and related careers.

In their study, the researchers examined extensive performance assessments of more than seven million students carried out by 10 states, as required by the No Child Left Behind law. The researchers found that, in standardized tests, the differences between the average math scores of boys and girls in grades 2 to 11 zero.

It is also commonly said that boys are overrepresented at both ends of math performance; they are more frequently the best and the worst achievers than girls. The researchers found there’s more variability in the boys’ math scores; but this variance was not large.

When the research team studied if there were gender discrepancies at the highest levels of mathematical performance, they got different results depending on if the kids were white or Asian American. In Minnesota, 11-grader white boys hit the 99th percentile more than twice more than white girls in the same grade. But for Asian American students, the pattern got reversed.

“It might be the different cultures’ emphasis on Math,” says Janet S. Hyde, leader of the study. Her group has two ongoing studies analyzing data on the math performance of American children and youth in other nations.

Finally, the researchers looked at SAT results. Men usually perform better than women on the test, but the researchers attributed that result to poorly done statistics. The sample group of SAT test-takers is not random: Only students who are applying to college take the SAT, and the two groups are different in size — more girls than boys take the test — so they can’t be compared fairly. —Maria José Viñas