Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
nytimes.com
Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
1–10 of 257 posts
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#2Because they don't spell it as Maths, obviously.
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#3It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots. One could argue that for whatever reason, many of the professors, researchers and postdocs at those schools learned math in other countries, but, if these lists are to be believed, the US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world.
So two questions:
1) Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education?
2) If the primary and secondary education in the ROW produces such a high level of capability relative to the US population, why aren't their universities better represented in the rankings?
[1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mat...
[2] http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#4Because you don't use math while watching TV and Reading FB newsfeed all day long.
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#5Because they don't spell it as Maths, obviously.
We spell it the same, we just abbreviate it differently.
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#6Math is the lingua franca of sciences. It should be taught like a language as well. In our elementary schools we don't have teachers dedicated to teaching math. Instead we have teachers who are afraid of math themselves.
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#7Because you don't use math while watching TV and Reading FB newsfeed all day long.
Subscribe to the right fb feeds and you would
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#8If you convert our scores to metric it's not so bad.
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#9I think it is related to our refusal to embrace the metric system, kids at a young age get thrown off by our archaic system of measurement.
Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
#10It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots. One could argue that for whatever reason, many of the professors, researchers and postdocs at those schools learned math in other countries, but, if these lists are to be believed, the US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world. So two questi…
Maybe, like many things in America, mathematical knowledge is more unevenly distributed between the top and bottom than it is in other places.