The quality of education in the US is actually pretty good. The problem is that Americans think the US should be number 1 in everything. Because of this, the fact that there are a handful of countries with lower education systems that are equal to or better than that of the US is regarded as a failure by Americans.
…except that the members of the US team were all Asian. Seriously, you can’t take the math Olympiad as a final answer since you have to adjust for population size, training, etc. This can tell you which country can field the best team, but nothing about which country’s peoples are innately better at math.
cfagoal2 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > > Interesting stuff, quality of education in US is > not as bad as people think if we base it solely on > this. not sure if one can judge the quality of high-school education in general by this. we are talking about a team of dozen math genius kids representing every country. USA has the population and the resources to train a few math whizzes that perform at the top in this competion, but these kids probably don’t go to regular high school anyway
Hello Mister Walrus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The quality of education in the US is actually > pretty good. The problem is that Americans think > the US should be number 1 in everything. Because > of this, the fact that there are a handful of > countries with lower education systems that are > equal to or better than that of the US is regarded > as a failure by Americans. Agreed. Apparently, BO thinks we should extend school hours to catch up with other countries … http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1926529,00.html “If you ain’t first, you’re last” - Ricky Bobby
Furthermore, as you guys probably realize, the people who compete in international math competitions are hardly representative of the overall populations that they come from. The top 0.000000001% of Chinese might be the best mathematicians in the world, but there are millions more that are barely literate. To validate the conclusion that math olympiad results indicate math proficiency on a national scale, we need to modify the question to be “which country has the best mathematicians”, rather than “which country’s population is the best at math”. Also, consider that China has roughly 9 times the population of Russia, and 4 times the population of the US. This will also skew the results of an international math competition.
Check this out, too funny. It’s Britain but still representative. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6589301.stm
daviskr Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > Apparently, BO thinks we should extend school > hours to catch up with other countries … > http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,192 > 6529,00.html > > > “If you ain’t first, you’re last” - Ricky Bobby It’s also worth pointing out that many countries, particularly those in the east, do not have summer breaks. Thus, the pace of classes is not interrupted yearly. On the other hand, kids in these countries are less likely to have “summer” jobs or other activities like that, which arguably contribute to their development as well.
The top percentiles, taking into account size of population, of any country would be mostly equivalent in their Math skills. They are not smart because of their country or schools they attend, but because of their innate abilities. But I guess you are talking about a larger top percentiles from which some wander to quantitative finance and schools, therefore, country, may matter. I did find at least one of my Russian colleague during my Civil Engineering Master’s program at Rice to be far superior in Math skills compared to others. But he was a Jew and terribly discriminated in old Russia and not allowed to go their top school/Academy and so ended up in Civil Engineering. In short, I am not sure if he was smarter than the smartest guy in Maths department.
^ excellent point buddham 1 - the best of the best, are really independent of their country or race 2 - the best in terms of overall performance, it’s probably due to the educational system, economic environment, etc.
You can’t use the Olympiad results as a proxy for our public school system as I’m sure the competitors are all privately schooled. In addition, it is important to take variance into account as I have a feeling the dispersion is pretty wide for the US, allowing us to both score well in a math olympiad and poorly as a mean.
http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx The Indians might have ran out of time, as they were running late!!
vpatel9 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx > > > > The Indians might have ran out of time, as they > were running late!! Hahaha. IST!
Chinese still use Soviet system of education which seems to work well for them.
I worked with some IIT grads and they were pretty solid.
First of all the US is better at everything. That’s just the way it is. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. So to answer the question posed. Both suck. Americans rule.
Please see the book Outlyers by Gladwell for a discussion on why he beleives Asians, broadly speaking, are better at math. He attributes it to the language process for counting.
the quality of discussions here have definitely gone downhill. does this post stink of racist undertones or what?
I went to graduate school with both Indians and Russians (both of whom were generally better than me in grad school because I had a psychology undergraduate degree and they had 30 college-level math classes before grad. school). But, based on my small sample, Indians are good but Russians are better. There was this guy Roginsky in grad school who finished in 3 yrs. His thesis advisor gave him a problem that would be worthy of a dissertation. Roginsky disappeared for a week, not teaching his classes, not taking his classes, not at his house (I banged on all the doors). After a week, Roginsky showed up in the same clothes he was wearing a week earlier, unshowered and unshaven for a week, walks into Smith’s office and says “Have solved problem”. Smith checked the solution, which was correct, and was badly shaken. Russians 1 - Rest of World 0.
^man it’s going to be hard for the Indians to come back from this one.
Asians aren’t inherently talented at math, they are just insanely persistent. They’ll study 30 hours a day - don’t ask me how that’s possible, but they do. Eastern Europeans (Russians, Romanians, etc) are superior to any other group of people at math in terms of sheer talent.