<p>My daughter is a politically engaged girl living in a sorority-like House at an all-women's college and she's a math major. </p>
<p>Here's a story with video clip of Terrence Tao recently done at UCLA. TheMom was very impressed meeting him, said he's very down to earth.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ucla.edu/about/faculty/tao.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ucla.edu/about/faculty/tao.html</a></p>
<p>Hello, I hope I'm not doing any injustice by topping a (month-old) thread.</p>
<p>There's an interesting book I read some time ago:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Talking-About-Leaving-Undergraduates-Sciences/dp/0813389267%5B/url%5D">http://www.amazon.com/Talking-About-Leaving-Undergraduates-Sciences/dp/0813389267</a></p>
<p>Which touches on attrition rates not just among math majors, but also among science majors as well. Its appendix is particularly nice</p>
<p>Here's an interesting post relating to the phenomena at Caltech: (intensely specialized in math/science)
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=3936781#84%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=3936781#84</a></p>
<p>==
In my opinion, part of the problem has to do with the mentality that "you need to learn from a teacher/class in order to learn something." This mentality, of course, leads to the mentioned problems with respect to math/science major attrition. However, if more people had the option to self-study, should they have the desire to pursue an option, part of the problem could have been corrected. Keep in mind that people don't like repeating mistakes - and that a single course (or a sequence, taught by the same teacher) can easily turn off a student. </p>