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That is an interesting idea, never thought of that. Personally though, I've always felt it was the ass whoopings. ![](/mirror/smilies/wink.gif)
I think the kind of "skills" or habits you need to do get good scores and grades( for pre-university) can be bruteforced through lots of work. Atleast in the education system here, it's all studying and memorizing. The good shit like proofs and difficult mathematical concepts are never really covered in highschool. (Hell, with a little creativity, you can bruteforce pass Uni too, but youre just wasting your own time/money)
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Clearly the SATs are racist and should be completely evenly distributed since all men are created equal.
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I also agree with the users who believe that Asian-Americans' skills come from parenting as opposed to their language.
I've actually never learned multiplication tables. My parents told me to, but I ended up just memorizing the individual products, so in my mind it would just pop up when I thought of the factors...
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So what if you ask an asian child to subtract 3 from 12? Sorry but the 12 - 2 example only applies in very few cases. I would hardly call that an advantage of the asian number system. The western numbers have all the same information in them, they just use position of digits instead of whole new signs for 10, 100 and so on. So there we have a disadvantage: The western system only uses 10 digits, the asian system uses about 10 + log10(number range). Plus/Minus 1 I guess, to lazy to check. An asian child has to be taught the numbers 0 to 9, the number 10 and multiplication to calculate stuff up to 99. A western child has to be taught the numbers 0 to 9, multiplication and the concept of higher digit positions. Both systems need a deeper understanding whenever it's not something simple as simple as 10 * x, 10 + x, (10+x) - x.
To become good at mathematics you need practice. A lot of practice, even if your naturally talented. For most people that's the single most important factor. And we all know that working hard and is a common theme in asian culture.
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Interesting point.
I attribute math proficiency to practice, and I had to do these 3000 'Question Bank' series in middle school which just contained nothing but questions.
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On July 09 2010 04:41 mucker wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2010 04:31 ooni wrote:On July 09 2010 04:27 Roffles wrote: Hmm, nice read. Always thought it was cause they drilled us to do so much practice work that it became ingrained into my memory. that helps too but that wouldn't really explain this ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/SAT-math-by-race-ethnicity.png) Assumming statistics are correct and most of Asian Americans that do well in math are 1.5 or 2nd generation. On July 09 2010 04:29 JeeJee wrote:i think it's an interesting idea but probably has little to do with truth ![](/mirror/smilies/puh2.gif) for example russian language is probably worse than english in this respect (for instance, two hundred isn't "two hundred" although it's close -- 2 is dva, hundred is sto, but 200 isn't dvasto, it's dvesti). worse still, arbitrarily after 500, instead of using 'sto' for hundred, you start using 'sot' instead. yet, russian math skills are still >> ones here We don't actually mean math theory. We mean math as in schooling. If you think about it Germans have great mathmaticians if not one of the bests in the world but not many of them are good at math during schooling. And yes I know Germans! Do you honestly think your simplistic explanation accounts for that graph? A slight linguistic difference that may or may not even exist in Asian immigrant households makes their performance in a highschool aged test that much better? How do you explain the black children performing so poorly? They are learning the same numbers as the white kids when they grow up.
Let's not ignore other factors. For example:
I suspect Asian immigrants are likely to be higher educated than average Americans in general, especially if they immigrated first for college, or graduate degrees. Of course not all Asian immigrants entered the US that way, some were refugees, etc. or were sponsored by family members, etc.
Math based degrees, like engineering, seem to be in higher demand in Asian countries in general, thanks to their rapid growth creating a higher demand for engineers.
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What about the Asian heritage children raised in English speaking households that are still mathematically superior?
Though you raise a very valid argument.
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That only helps conception on basic math concepts, when i entered high school i was already taking calc.
What helps in math is doing the work and being dedicated to it, Asian Americans are more likely 1st or 2nd generation from being immigrant parents, they tend to come from a stricter culture most kids i know that are Asian don't speak any asian language (unless their Chinese for some reason a ton of cheese force their children to learn it, again Anecdotal evidence) I have no proof of anything but i rather think it's becuase Asian parents tend to force their children to do well academically, you know those Dad:you a doctor yet? kid: no dad i'm 12 Dad: you a disgrace, come back when you a doctor. jokes come from somewhere.
In other words i think it has to do more when cultural habits then learning a language, i learned math from my father who taught me at a young age to use a slide rule instead of a calculator, i tend to do math in my head with a greater amount of accuracy and speed then most other people i know and i attribute that to learning the slide rule. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/309280/may-12-2010/stephen-s-sound-advice---how-to-ace-the-sats
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United States1719 Posts
I like the points raised in OP, never thought about it that way. However I'm gonna have to go with the people saying it's mostly cultural. My kindergarten teacher in korea made me write out the multiplication table 10 times each day for about a month?? by the 2nd time it was already easier to just memorize it and write it down while saying it out loud than flipping to another page and copy it. It's just one anecdote but that's the gist of how koreans teach math: drill, reinforced by punishment and rewards. Once it gets into the harder parts like math theory, I heard it's different but I have no idea since I left Korea before I ever reached that point. I have been surviving with the mental arithmetic skills that I retained from korea and people say I am good at math lol
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Ha, that's really cool. At the least they have a leg up earlier on.
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Sorry but this argument is just wishful thinking of the OP. You have so much different ways of using the numbers. For example where and English speaker would pronounce 24 as twenty-four in the Netherlands it would be vierentwintig (four and twenty). And when you take 81 it becomes eighty-one in English, eenentachtig (one and eighty) in Dutch and quatre-vingt-un (four twenty one) in French.
If you would look to all different systems you would most likely find out your theory wouldn't hold up.
On July 09 2010 05:04 spinesheath wrote: So what if you ask an asian child to subtract 3 from 12? Sorry but the 12 - 2 example only applies in very few cases. I would hardly call that an advantage of the asian number system. The western numbers have all the same information in them, they just use position of digits instead of whole new signs for 10, 100 and so on. So there we have a disadvantage: The western system only uses 10 digits, the asian system uses about 10 + log10(number range). Plus/Minus 1 I guess, to lazy to check. An asian child has to be taught the numbers 0 to 9, the number 10 and multiplication to calculate stuff up to 99. A western child has to be taught the numbers 0 to 9, multiplication and the concept of higher digit positions. Both systems need a deeper understanding whenever it's not something simple as simple as 10 * x, 10 + x, (10+x) - x.
To become good at mathematics you need practice. A lot of practice, even if your naturally talented. For most people that's the single most important factor. And we all know that working hard and is a common theme in asian culture. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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On July 09 2010 05:17 semantics wrote: I have no proof of anything but i rather think it's becuase Asian parents tend to force their children to do well academically, you know those Dad:you a doctor yet? kid: no dad i'm 12 Dad: you a disgrace, come back when you a doctor. jokes come from somewhere.
you dishona to famiry!
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Interesting read, cool stuff.
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math is like starcraft, keep practicing, make sure you have a solid understand of the basics, creative stuff comes out later.
seriously, i think Asians just do 'better' at math because they are forced to do it more [and it's pretty boring mostly]. When I was in grade school in China, we had these exercises, where we always had to do 300 questions of random simple calculations such as 4+3=?, and 5+6=? etc etc [with a time limit]. But when u get to middle school, you can feel very easy to think about more complicated concepts, because the simpler 'mechanics' of math takes no thinking.
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The simple way to test this is to look at an asian who didn't learn chinese.
Furthermore, all this provides is faster learning at a low level if you're chinese. The graph is kinda off. If you want to compare people who learn by chinese and english, then you group them by such and not by race.
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Yea I don't totally doubt that OP has an effect. But it just seems like an overwhelmingly bigger reason for better math skills is the culture.
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On July 09 2010 04:31 ooni wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2010 04:27 Roffles wrote: Hmm, nice read. Always thought it was cause they drilled us to do so much practice work that it became ingrained into my memory. that helps too but that wouldn't really explain this ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/SAT-math-by-race-ethnicity.png) Assumming statistics are correct and most of Asian Americans that do well in math are 1.5 or 2nd generation. Show nested quote +On July 09 2010 04:29 JeeJee wrote:i think it's an interesting idea but probably has little to do with truth ![](/mirror/smilies/puh2.gif) for example russian language is probably worse than english in this respect (for instance, two hundred isn't "two hundred" although it's close -- 2 is dva, hundred is sto, but 200 isn't dvasto, it's dvesti). worse still, arbitrarily after 500, instead of using 'sto' for hundred, you start using 'sot' instead. yet, russian math skills are still >> ones here We don't actually mean math theory. We mean math as in schooling. If you think about it Germans have great mathmaticians if not one of the bests in the world but not many of them are good at math during schooling. And yes I know Germans!
this looks like an economic graph to me. don't you think that could be the reason for the differences?
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On July 09 2010 06:19 danl9rm wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2010 04:31 ooni wrote:On July 09 2010 04:27 Roffles wrote: Hmm, nice read. Always thought it was cause they drilled us to do so much practice work that it became ingrained into my memory. that helps too but that wouldn't really explain this ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/SAT-math-by-race-ethnicity.png) Assumming statistics are correct and most of Asian Americans that do well in math are 1.5 or 2nd generation. On July 09 2010 04:29 JeeJee wrote:i think it's an interesting idea but probably has little to do with truth ![](/mirror/smilies/puh2.gif) for example russian language is probably worse than english in this respect (for instance, two hundred isn't "two hundred" although it's close -- 2 is dva, hundred is sto, but 200 isn't dvasto, it's dvesti). worse still, arbitrarily after 500, instead of using 'sto' for hundred, you start using 'sot' instead. yet, russian math skills are still >> ones here We don't actually mean math theory. We mean math as in schooling. If you think about it Germans have great mathmaticians if not one of the bests in the world but not many of them are good at math during schooling. And yes I know Germans! this looks like an economic graph to me. don't you think that could be the reason for the differences? if it was economic graph whites would be above asians by a bit.
edit:i forget old money super rich people inheritance doesn't actually count as getting an income to skew the graph.
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I think I will just mention it really fast. If we look at the immigration policies that U.S. puts on Chinese immigrants, we can see that they are very strict that they meet a certain education criteria, such as having a bachelor's degree. As a matter of fact, it used to be that many students from top universities in china would get a student visa to do their higher graduate studies in the U.S. (students often needed to win scholarships to come, because otherwise they couldn't afford it). These students later apply for a green card. That way only people that made it out of the cut throat competition from China's vast talent pool had means to come. While time has changed, it is still true that the speed at which you gain a green card is correlated with the job and education you have. As you see, 2nd generation students Chinese (I can't speak for all east-asians, confirm if this is true for other nations too) not inherited a education-oriented culture, but also genes, after one round of selection.
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Sure, education emphasis plays probably a much larger role on mathematics achievement than the way we count. But I've lived in U.S. for almost... 9 years now? And all my theoretical math I learned here, my understand of math in Chinese covers up to solving systems of linear equations and that is all, which comes nowhere close to my math education in the States. Still, when it comes to arithmentics, Chinese language makes so much more sense than English so I never ever do arithmentic in English because it sucks balls compared to Chinese in terms of simplicity and speed, even pronounciation.
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