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Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#51

Post by johncolanduoni »

jomamaxx wrote: post #39
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

It'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…

"Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education?" Because preeminence of top tier institutions (which are kind of global centres anyhow) - has absolutely nothing to do with teaching math to the commons. Here's a hint: +++ Americans don't suck at Math +++ There's a very un-PC but very large elephant in the room that people won't discuss. + European A…

> European Americans actually do better than Europeans - on average. + Asian Americans to better than Asians - on average. + Latino Americans do better than Central/South American Latinos + African Americans do better than Africans.

I've always heard this explained as a sort of "selection bias". Since immigration to the US (particularly for university education) is often seen as desirable, the people who manage to pull it off tend to be above the mean. Do you feel that explanation rings false?

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#52

Post by anexprogrammer »

matthewhall wrote: post #16
anexprogrammer wrote: post #13

Everyone believes they are bad at maths, so they are. It applies just as much to the UK. My youngest believes this strongly, yet when we were quizzing, or helping with homework, she didn't seem to find it too hard, just believed it so. She certainly didn't get those beliefs from home! Looking at my kids maths lessons, especially in late Junior, so much effort was spent to actually hide the maths that I wonder they le…

I love math and I think I'm pretty good at it

OK, not everyone, but it seems to be the subject that people are most likely to claim to be terrible at. Schools don't help by sucking all the fun out of it.

Was always my favourite subject, but that was despite school rather than because of.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#53

Post by 58 »

Might it have something to do with this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-u...

I'm no fan of the American education system, having suffered through it a full 12 years, but I have to believe it's not the primary cause here. Math is hard, and near impossible if you're stressed. I excelled at math, despite relatively boring math curricula. Why? Because I wasn't stressed as a kid, my family was stable and did not suffer from any serious physical and mental illness, and one parent always made enough money so that the other could stay at home throughout my entire childhood. I had an enormous advantage, and most all of the kids I knew through advanced math classes and math competitions had a similarly charmed existence.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#54

Post by yazaddaruvala »

One word: Football.

One of my friends graduated with an engineering degree from MIT. I once asked him if he could have traded that to be better at Football, would he? His response was that if there was even a remote chance he was good enough to play in the NFL he would have traded education for that chance.

Humans innately crave fame, and the lack of scarcity that is perceived to come with it. The USA has sadly, and unknowingly groomed that romanticism of fame, towards consumables (this might be the long term effects of Capitalism). Rather than grooming that romanticism of fame towards research/intelligence/creation (the renaissance).

Even local to the film industry, almost 100% of 10 year olds want to grow up to be Brad Pitt or Salma Hayek, not George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg[0]. Even fewer want to be the writer.

Even local to football, everyone knows the names of the player that caught that hail marry, got that big hit, recovered that fumble. Few know the names of the people who create those plays.

Only in recent years have the masses truly started to recognize creators/intelligence with the title famous (Gates, Jobs, Zuck). But again for the wrong reasons, i.e. for their money. Even artists Picasso, Beethoven (adored for generations) have only truly been appreciated by the aristocracy, i.e. the rich and "mathematically" acute.

Which way do you suspect the causal link lies? Are we first intelligent, therefore we appreciate the intelligent? Do we first appreciate the intelligent, therefore we become intelligent?

[0] I mean no disrespect to Brad Pitt or Salma Hayek, or actors in general. Good Actors need to be extremely intelligent, but this isn't why they are adored. I'd argue this part of them is even sadly shunned by the media and populace.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#55

Post by droithomme »

People keep saying Americans stink at math, americans don't understand science, americans are ignorant, etc.

And yet at the same time we have these sorts of track records:

http://www.popsci.com/us-dominates-at-sending-stuff-to-mars

It's not just Mars or the moon, or decades ago, the US also is where most operating systems and software and CPUS are conceived of and designed. As well as countless other things that people who are so ignorant would not reasonably be expected to be able to do.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#56

Post by totalZero »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #54

One word: Football. One of my friends graduated with an engineering degree from MIT. I once asked him if he could have traded that to be better at Football, would he? His response was that if there was even a remote chance he was good enough to play in the NFL he would have traded education for that chance. Humans innately crave fame, and the lack of scarcity that is perceived to come with it. The USA has sadly, and…

MIT has a pretty good football team.

https://youtu.be/XnVcaHMsYqM

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#57

Post by asgard1024 »

hawkice wrote: post #45
asgard1024 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It'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." It's a fallacy. US is a large country, so those talented students concentrate in fewer universities. In Europe for instance, due to language and culture barriers, talented students from Czech Republic do not very often go to Cambridge. You need to look at m…

China is a larger country with extremely promising mathematics scores. So why is it not 8/10 China and 2/10 US (in proportion to population) or even more extreme? A large country having access to a large talent poll doesn't get very close to explaining what's going on.

It's hard to tell, but it can be because most maths research is published in Chinese, while these rankings are little anglocentric. Also lot of Chinese probably migrate to the US as soon as they can. Anyway, I was just pointing out that the ranking is not such a simple argument.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#58

Post by yazaddaruvala »

nemo44x wrote: post #47

Math is hard work. I was bad at math. I went to college a couple years after I graduated high school where I made little effort to challenge myself. But after figuring things out, at 20 I decided I wanted to do computer science as I enjoyed some of the programming skills I picked up (C++ of all things!). I was very unprepared for the math part of it and it was hard. I tested into a remedial math level and when I look…

Congratulations!

I'm always disappointed when people say "some people just can't learn X".

It isn't that they cannot learn X, they just cannot learn it in the same time frame, and they shouldn't be expected to!

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#59

Post by tmptmp »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

It'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…

US society/culture in general is the main cause of this problem as most people here do not value math. Math requires deep, creative and original thinking and thinking is rather difficult to perform act. It seems that the US culture derides analytical thinking in general, with many popular public figures flaunting their "inability to do math" as some sort of great achievement and sending out a loud and clear messages, like, "don't analyze just enjoy your life and avoid math as math means analysis". This paper titled "Student Apathy: The Downfall of Education" [1] is a good read in this respect too.

The bad effects of such societal level bias against math can be seen in public spending in schools also. Enormous amounts of money are spent on football coaches/teams[2] in schools whereas not enough money for math teachers/students.

The society seems to equate success only with one's ability to earn money. Then you can see that many such popular public figures "getting successful" without math as they can be seen to earn large amounts of money.

This is sad as such people even if are successful on money front, cannot understand any of the complex aspects of modern societal/business/political structures (be it, things like privacy issues, or many public policy issues like taxes) and of course cannot understand any of the modern technological/scientific discussions (be it discussions regarding global warming or genetically modified food or statistical significance of some tests).

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1968613

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case...

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#60

Post by vmarsy »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

It'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…

You're probably right. those rankings have a lot to do with the research papers published by those schools from non Americans.

Relative to the US population, the primary and secondary education do not produce a high level of capability.

Looking at the fields medals per capita[1] you can see that the US doesn't have as much as the UK, Russia, or France. You can also see that the university with Fields medals recipients [2] for more details, and indeed you can see that of the mathematicians associated with Princeton are not Americans.

As a specific example, in [1] you can see that France is generating more than 4 times more fields medalists per capita than the U.S. Why is that?

It probably has to do with the more rigorous Math education. Look for instance at this translated Math final[3] exam for French high school students. This is for the "Literary" students, those who focus more with the worst level of Math. You can see examples of the "Scientific" math test here [4]. It's in French, but it's Math, just by looking at the symbols it's possible to understand. It has some differential equations solving, probabilities, geometry with vectors/planes in 3D spaces, Series analysis, etc. Integrals and derivatives are also part of the program. In Physics these concepts are applied to calculate velocity/speed/radioactive decay etc.

[1] http://stats.areppim.com/stats/stats_fieldsxcapita.htm

[2] http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FieldsMedal.html

[3] https://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/a-look-at-one...

[4] http://www.letudiant.fr/bac/bac-s/corriges-et-sujets-du-bac-...

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