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A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

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Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#51

Post by brohee »

dominotw wrote: post #32
dineshp2 wrote: post #8

The fundamental problem of education in public schools and its ineffectiveness is not being addressed. It's great that many of these extracurricular clubs and institutes exist to impart advanced education to interested students. But it does not solve the underlying problem.

>The fundamental problem of education in public schools and its ineffectiveness is not being addressed. If it so ineffective, how come americans win so many nobel prizes, have thriving high tech industry ect http://graphics.wsj.com/which-country-has-the-most-nobel-pri...

I'm not sure basing a reasoning on extreme outliers makes much sense but anyway, the percentage of foreign born and educated American Nobel prize winner vastly exceed the percentage of foreign born citizens...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-witte/nobel-laureates_b_...

So that's not especially vindicating the American high school.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#52

Post by dingo_bat »

fluxquanta wrote: post #48
Ntrails wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that the cool stuff isn't even always complex. It's little things, like going through how the quadratic formula is derived instead of just telling someone to learn it by rote. Explaining differentiation with a bit of the logic behind it instead of just teaching rules. But at the same time - I know I'd have/did enjoy that stuff but maybe 60% of my classes would have played up if a whole lesson was spe…

>It's little things, like going through how the quadratic formula is derived instead of just telling someone to learn it by rote. Explaining differentiation with a bit of the logic behind it instead of just teaching rules. Once you get in the mindset of deriving equations, rote memorization becomes insanely difficult, at least in my opinion. During my last year as an undergrad majoring in physics I got a 4.0 in quant…

>what 9 times 7 was

Is there a reason you didn't whip out a calculator and do it there? Although I must say that I remember everything till 20x20 :P

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#53

Post by dineshp2 »

dominotw wrote: post #45
dineshp2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot conclude that the current school education is not ineffective(effective) just by looking at the number of Nobel Prize winners. The USA is lagging behind many countries in key areas( especially STEM fields). Anyway the point I was trying to make was that, these extracurricular initiatives are great, but it cannot be a solution to a poor public school system.

>The USA is lagging behind many countries in key areas( especially STEM fields). Lagging how? Test scores are not a good way to measure the "lag", imo.

There is lots of research which suggests that the USA is indeed lagging behind in STEM fields. K-12 does not prepare students well enough when compared to many Asian and European countries. The numerous research articles are a Google search away.

Another indicator is the lack of sufficient skilled workforce in STEM fields in the USA. This forces many tech companies to hire from abroad.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#54

Post by VLM »

mixedmath wrote: post #4

I've taught a summer program in number theory for high school students for the past several years. Each summer, my classrooms fill with high school students that are intrigued by the idea of math and extremely capable. That is nice and inspiring, and generally more rewarding than when I teach calculus classes to university students during the school year. But my program is prohibitively expensive, and I'm acutely awa…

"But my program is prohibitively expensive"

Why? Just curious if there's any brainstorming to be done.

Also expensive relative to what? Some people think Kumon is expensive. My kids did it for a couple years. Its about $100/month. Its very popular among immigrants who make a whole lot less money than I do. Of course Kumon isn't "real" math because its very drill -n- kill (which is why we quit, more or less)

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#55

Post by fluxquanta »

dingo_bat wrote: post #52
fluxquanta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's little things, like going through how the quadratic formula is derived instead of just telling someone to learn it by rote. Explaining differentiation with a bit of the logic behind it instead of just teaching rules. Once you get in the mindset of deriving equations, rote memorization becomes insanely difficult, at least in my opinion. During my last year as an undergrad majoring in physics I got a 4.0 in quant…

>what 9 times 7 was Is there a reason you didn't whip out a calculator and do it there? Although I must say that I remember everything till 20x20 :P

I was standing at the blackboard in front of the class. I've always been flaky on multiplication tables for some reason, and doing arithmetic in my head isn't my strongest suit.

That said I excelled in math throughout high school and college. It just goes to show that elementary math really has no bearing on the type of mindset one may have for "more complex", logic based math and computation.

Trust me -- since that experience of being humiliated in front of the best students in the math department at my college, I haven't forgotten what 9 times 7 is.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#56

Post by tryitnow »

j2kun wrote: post #5

I am continually surprised by how many emails I get from teenage students thanking me for writing my math blog. On top of that, I try to occasionally make it out to high schools to give guest lectures. I posted an example experience from one of these online [1] and I am usually looking for other opportunities to do this sort of thing. I think that if every math graduate student who is a reasonably good teacher took a…

Thank you for doing this. I would have appreciated someone like you in high school.

I remember going to the "best" math teacher in my high school with a math question about my science fair project. He couldn't answer it. That was so demoralizing. I had already taught myself so much of the math and stats I needed to know for analyzing my project, so I only went to him out of desperation.

It would have been awesome to have a more advanced instructor available to talk with and learn from.

Thank you, your students appreciate you way more than you may know.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#57

Post by douche »

dineshp2 wrote: post #53
dominotw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The USA is lagging behind many countries in key areas( especially STEM fields). Lagging how? Test scores are not a good way to measure the "lag", imo.

There is lots of research which suggests that the USA is indeed lagging behind in STEM fields. K-12 does not prepare students well enough when compared to many Asian and European countries. The numerous research articles are a Google search away. Another indicator is the lack of sufficient skilled workforce in STEM fields in the USA. This forces many tech companies to hire from abroad.

To make a reasonable comparison to the United States, you'd have to lump a European country in with a third-world developing country to get the same level of racial and cultural heterogeneity. People always try to compare the US to Finland, when Finland has less population than New York City and the demographics of New Hampshire.

Tech companies hire abroad because it's cheap, not because there is a real skill deficit.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#58

Post by whorleater »

VLM wrote: post #54
mixedmath wrote: post #4

I've taught a summer program in number theory for high school students for the past several years. Each summer, my classrooms fill with high school students that are intrigued by the idea of math and extremely capable. That is nice and inspiring, and generally more rewarding than when I teach calculus classes to university students during the school year. But my program is prohibitively expensive, and I'm acutely awa…

"But my program is prohibitively expensive" Why? Just curious if there's any brainstorming to be done. Also expensive relative to what? Some people think Kumon is expensive. My kids did it for a couple years. Its about $100/month. Its very popular among immigrants who make a whole lot less money than I do. Of course Kumon isn't "real" math because its very drill -n- kill (which is why we quit, more or less)

Prohibitively expensive might not specifically reference to the monetary cost of the class. You could probably scrounge up $100 a month for Kumon even from much lower income families, but many children in lower income families end up having a real opportunity cost in going to a summer class. The parents may not be able to drive the children to the class, the children might be pressured to get a summer job to help pay for the family, etc.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#59

Post by ryanhuff »

lintiness wrote: post #20
venomsnake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't schools financed by local property taxes in US. And the rich parents pay more in taxes and there is more resources in the system. Also well off parents could help school in other ways.

teachers in bad / poor areas in the states aren't paid less than teachers in the "good" areas. cps for instance, chicago public school teachers are among the best paid and worst performing in the country.

I didn't know the teachers were the ones earning the grades. See the posts above that cite what happens to re-gentrified areas, where the social-economic make-up of a school changes but the teacher make-up does not.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#60

Post by douche »

wastedhours wrote: post #17
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad private institutions exist too. But remember you can only get the education you can afford. Since brilliance is not necessarily related to parents' income, private education is a poor substitute for efficient, timely public education.

Exactly - that's why things like https://www.teachforamerica.org/ have to exist. It's a socio-economic issue that's holding back talent in developed countries across the world, where parental income directly impacts on academic success. Considering the imbalance is so pronounced in-country, it's a real shame...

I applaud Teach for America for the effort, but I'm not sure that's really that successful. I graduated with more than a handful of people that went into TFA, and around 90% of them burned out hard after a couple years. Most of them had no teacher training, and, really, no cultural context for understanding the cultures they got dropped into. Inner city ghettos, Cajun Bayous, and Appalachian hollers are a different world than white-bread East Coast suburbia.

I think if you want to fix the disadvantaged areas of the country, you've got to reverse the brain-drain that's sucking the best and brightest people out of these communities. Decentralizing the economy would be a good first step.

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