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Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

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Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#331

Post by Gibbon1 »

paganel wrote: post #307
missosoup wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school studen…

> One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. It was the same thing in Romania, at least in the '90s, when I went to school/high-school. It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids…

> It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids generally around the country.

In the United State there is an extreme anti-intellectual bias among conservative middle and lower class whites.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#332

Post by concerned_user »

collyw wrote: post #317
missosoup wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school studen…

Does Russia have celebrity culture a la Kardashians or stuff like that? (I assume they have some, how does it compare?)

Yes, they hate them with a passion

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#333

Post by sunderw »

wutbrodo wrote: post #92
Pxtl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, those rote mental muscles mean that the basics are never slowing you down when tackling a harder problem. It's comparable to having a perfectly organized toolbox vs a mess of tools in your shed - you can do the same things, but you're free to focus on the core of the current task instead of distractions in the trivial parts.

This is precisely it. I have a math-heavy job and play/write music, and the same phenomenon plays out in both situations: when reading sheet music or thinking in music theory is in your muscle memory, your entire conscious mind can focus on the actual, creative task at hand. This should be obvious from any number of examples, from driving a car to typing as a programmer. Reducing the friction between your brain and y…

It's very interesting because in the examples you described (music and programming at least), I sometimes feel limited by the tools I know.

I studied music theory for about 5 years more than 10 years ago and remember some of it. I like to compose music and sometimes like you said I'm really losing a lot of time/energy because I don't master the basics. Yet some other times, I don't even think about music theory and let my inspiration go - and it's often better quality.

I find this effect to be true in programming as well. I find myself restricted by the frameworks I know and sometimes my mind can't think outside of it.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#334

Post by tarun_anand »

This is a question close to my heart.

I was a huge fan of Russian Math and Science books and I used them to study for an entrance exam to IIT (its more difficult to get into IIT than Harvard) and came out in top 100 in the country.

But, inspite of coming out at the top of the exam, I found Russian maths books very interesting and sometimes very difficult to master.

This coming from a country full of brilliant mathematicians. Russian math books are not only hardcore compared to US - they are hardcore compared to India also!!

One particular example is V. A. Krechmar.

https://www.amazon.in/Problem-Book-Algebra-V-Krechmar/dp/935...

If you consider yourself good in maths, try solving the problems from this book!

There is simply no comparison of Soviet Math Books with the rest of the world. US is so far behind that this comparison is not apt. The closest is Indian Math books or books from Cambridge like S. L. Loney.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#335

Post by cynicalreason »

burpsnard wrote: post #265
de_watcher wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the children don't want, don't care or just plain stupid to be able to grasp the subjects. It makes sense to isolate together those who can. The special schools don't do anything special, they just cut down the distractions, shift 0.5-2 university years into the school and spice things up with some competitive math/physics/programming/chemistry/biology/geography/etc.

Im crap at math, but annoyed at why. Read about math teaching, and what I found was that there's nothing that correlates with math ability except interest and encouragement (and general iq). There's no genes, brain scans, blood tests, or behavioral signs at preschool age that can predict math success. Teacher ability and enthusiasm likely plays a role.

I believe the opposite when it comes to 'behavioral signs at preschool age' .. I think a child natural inclination towards 'math like' sciences is visible very early

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#336

Post by alexanderchr »

realbarack wrote: post #94
julianeon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's worth pointing out here, for Americans who don't know better (no blame implied), that the French have one of the best mathematical pipelines in the world. They have almost as many Nobels (13 vs. 11) despite having 1/5 the population. Guardian article about them here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/31/europa-french-... So please don't think France is a backwater that just doesn't know how…

A paraphrased anecdote I heard about French math education: "In America, they start by teaching you how to add two numbers, then once you've mastered that you learn to subtract, then once you've got that down you learn to multiply and divide and so forth. In France they tell you: this is an arithmetic object. The operations on it are add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It's simple! It's a good way of cranking out a…

Tangent joke:

> A British mathematician was giving a talk in Grothendieck's seminar in Paris. He started "Let X be a variety...". This caused some talking among the students sitting in the back, who were asking each other "What's a variety?". J.-P. Serre, sitting in the front row, turns around a bit annoyed and says "Integral scheme of finite type over a field".

found it on /r/math: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7qjxbe/whats_your_fav...

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#337

Post by cmendel »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #301
kccqzy wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got beat up, physically, by my peers This is a problem. Regardless of whether hyper-tracking is beneficial, no kid should have to suffer from this kind of bullying. I don't know why bullying in the U.S. is (or seems to be) so much worse than other countries.

Teachers in American schools are usually shit-scared of their students, which is the exact opposite of how things are in Russia, China, or even India. There are many reasons. Parents and students wield too much power in the American school system, and the idea of tying a school's funding to local property taxes makes this worse. In addition, America lacks the cultural norms of respect and deference for education and…

Well there's also the whole "school shooting epidemic" thing. But sure, the 3 billion people in those three countries are all fairly comparable. China:1.4 B India:1.35 B US:0.3 B

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#338

Post by econcon »

Well I went to IIT and our education system is more like Soviet Style education, heck we used the same books for competition prep.

I aced every class always stood first in my class till class 10th and after that my performance dropped till I realized that "I am not supposed to care about understanding a concept in its entirety and solve problem based on only things I've learned however limiting it was". It was first unsettling to me because in earlier classes I always went into depth and tried building my understanding of a subject from ground up but in class 11th, there was no time for all that. I did what everyone does, I basically figured out how to solve problems based on pattern recognition, this literally required no understanding or even how things for together but remembering few rules and forumla and their order, and there you go - I cleared IIT just like that, no coaching or help required.

This literally killed all my love for subjects and it became a "game" to solve problems and acquire points. So I stopped bothering with deeper understanding all together and began having life as in hanging out with friends and girlfriend and only coming back to study when I am in mood to game the system again.

I never enjoyed this kind of labor, slow placed exploration made bigger impact on my mind and I've forgotten most of the things I learned in competition mode.

Thing is those students who feel like they can't build concepts in air without solid roots, they are going to suffer in Soviet Style education.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#339

Post by sefrost »

gambiting wrote: post #313
missosoup wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school studen…

Not the same, but I went from the Polish education system to a British university, and it also felt like it was a massive downgrade. What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in…

> What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything".

My experience was that even if all of the students prior to university studied maths A-Levels, we all studied different topics. Before those two year A-Levels, we all studied different topics in GCSEs. There is so much time wasted giving everyone the same knowledge because of how our system is set up with different exam boards.

I don't know if this is the case in other countries.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#340

Post by geomark »

noisy_boy wrote: post #325
geomark wrote: post #32

Here is an interesting paper [1](PDF) by a Russian mathematician who has taught mathematics in Russia, USA and Brazil. He compares the "very successful usage of word problems in Russia and contradictory, inefficient and often immature treatment of word problems in USA." [1] http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf

Singapore's maths curriculum for primary-level students is full of word problems. It may be confusing at first but it lets students get good with interpretation of the situation and derive the essence of the problem from the scenario which is a useful skill irrespective of level.

Yes. The paper includes a number of examples of word problems from Singapore primary maths and the author says "the Russian and Singapore programs go roughly hand in hand in style and difficulty of arithmetical problems."
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