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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)

#391

Post by varjag »

missosoup wrote: post #268
lsh123 wrote: post #80

Disclaimer: I graduated from one of the top math high schools in Moscow in early 90s, I have MS in Math from Moscow State University, and a half finished PhD from the same place. I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible. Either country doesn’t really require much to finish school and many kids just do the tests without understanding what is going on. What separa…

> 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…

Oh not this again.

The USSR coasted its first half of existence milking Tsarist legacy of science and engineering, then the other half copying the intellectual fruits of supposedly dumb Western jocks.

Modern Russia isn't even half of that.

Precious little to show for all the cheek puffing and talent grooming.

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

#392

Post by rjsw »

mbeex wrote: post #276
agumonkey wrote: post #12

I can only assume but culture makes things very different. I often said that French abstract algebra books stopped me from learning for 10 years (after many serious attempts). One book from Garreth Williams unlocked 80% of my issues. The shocking part was the approach. It was very operational, you calculate, you manipulate concrete data. In French books it's all theorems and concepts. Learning curve to make a Haskell…

Bourbaki school of thought. Read Dieudonné - not a single( I think to remember) illustration. Kindergarten starts math education with set theory. This was the imaginated ideal.

I'm the right age to have done New Math [1] in my first years at school, my memory of it is that it seemed fine but at age five I wasn't really thinking about comparing different educational styles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math

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

#393

Post by type0 »

jhrmnn wrote: post #361
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from slovenia, a small, former yugoslav country. We don't have special schools for math here, and elementary schools (7-15yo in my time) were the same for all, and you went to the closest school to your home... but our highschool ("gymnasiums" - 15-19) used the grades from elementary school + standardized testing scores to rank students, and somehow best students went to certain schools, 'the middle' got accepted…

This is one school of education. The other is the Finnish model, with no separation. I am yet to see some comprehensive multinational study that would suggest which is better. (Better for the students, or society as a whole?) It’s probably impossible to do objectively. I also feel there is probably quite a difference between these two systems in the effects on the, say, top 0.2%, 2%, and 20% of the students.

Finland is an outlier in that regard, not sure if that model can be applicable anywhere else because it's so culturally specific.

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

#394

Post by stdbrouw »

Dahoon wrote: post #368
stdbrouw wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". The rationale is that you want to give 18 year olds the opportunity to pick a field of study that they're excited about now rather than forcing them to choose something based on what kind of education their parents thought proper for them six years ago. If a single "intro to programming" course and a…

That is just an excuse. You could easily take an "intro to programming" before trying to get into the school. All it does is lower the bar of entry and you can only teach so much in the time given so it will ultimately take time away in the other end.

Let's say lowering the bar has the result of making two courses absolutely useless for you, because you've already mastered everything there is to know about them. And let's say your typical bachelor's degree includes 30 or more courses. The time "taken away" from you is around 5%. Time that surely you could spend by studying for the other courses a little bit more diligently, by solving all the optional homework exercises, by going the extra mile for projects.

That said, if after your undergraduate degree you are unsatisfied by the amount of stuff you've learned thus far, there's an easy solution: continue on and pursue a master's degree.

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

#395

Post by mpodlasin »

_0ffh wrote: post #384
salty_biscuits wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with a low bar to tertiary education? It lets disadvantaged kids get in and catch up. As long as the standards are high by the end everything is fine right?

Nothing, if you let people who do not want to waste time (and tuition fees!) on repeating basic stuff skip ahead.

I also studied CS on polish university and I feel we had the best of both worlds:

Initial programming courses were electives, where you could choose between more basic or more advanced "intro to programming" course. Basic had python, while advanced had c and c++.

Similarly logic classes were in basic and advanced groups and it was easy to choose the group you want and switch groups during course.

In fact, I was the guy who came for CS degree after never doing great at math or CS in high school and it reaaaaaally helped me to get up to speed with the others.

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

#396

Post by jacobush »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #250
Bayart wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>University on the West gets its money directly from students so they motivated to attract and keep as many students as possible - so books are entry level to do not scare students. Barrier here is established from "paying user" side. I guess Western Europe isn't part of the West anymore.

Depends. It seems to me that in general, post-USSR, school textbooks went through a nosedive in quality. I was educated in the 90s and 2000s in Poland, and experienced the modern, "capitalist" textbooks. At the same time, my grandfather showed me books from 60s-80s period. World of a difference. What I remember the most was the contrast between the English language textbooks from ~80s vs. the ones I had in school. Th…

Can say the same for Sweden. Somehow it also had this change at the same time.

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

#397

Post by dwighttk »

Dahoon wrote: post #368
stdbrouw wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". The rationale is that you want to give 18 year olds the opportunity to pick a field of study that they're excited about now rather than forcing them to choose something based on what kind of education their parents thought proper for them six years ago. If a single "intro to programming" course and a…

That is just an excuse. You could easily take an "intro to programming" before trying to get into the school. All it does is lower the bar of entry and you can only teach so much in the time given so it will ultimately take time away in the other end.

Some universities will let you skip intro courses by passing a test.

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

#398

Post by ken47 »

tarun_anand wrote: post #334

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 mathema…

"its more difficult to get into IIT than Harvard"

By what metric? I doubt that everyone who got into IIT could get into Harvard.

But I may be a bit biased because I work with some IIT graduates who are a bit underwhelming relative to the reputation of their alma mater.

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

#399

Post by Symbiote »

jojobas wrote: post #353
sefrost wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You don't get to choose different maths A-levels in Russia. There is one state standard that every school and every student has to stick to. You can have accelerated or deeper "special schools" but you can't evade the state standard on maths or you won't get you high school diploma.

There is a state standard in England and Wales (and another standard in Scotland). It's called the National Curriculum, although I'm not sure if it has a different name for A-levels.

There are multiple implementations of that standard, in the form of exams that meet the standards. The government checks the exams satisfy their standards.

For example, an exam on history might by on the 20th century Britain, and a different one might use 19th century Europe.

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

#400

Post by dan-robertson »

michaelt wrote: post #383
salty_biscuits wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with a low bar to tertiary education? It lets disadvantaged kids get in and catch up. As long as the standards are high by the end everything is fine right?

In theory? Nothing at all. In practice, some see the fact many tech employers give coding tests to people with CS degrees as a sign the standards at the end aren't as consistently high as one might hope.

This is a stupid argument. Is one to suppose that the brain teasers that were popular in interviews 15 years ago implied that universities weren’t teaching people to be clever or something?

I think a lot of interviewing style is fashion driven.

Also computer science isn’t necessarily about actually coding anyway. It’s mostly about algorithms and structure and complexity. Similarly, anyone who knows anything about university mathematics courses does not expect fresh graduates to be particularly good at arithmetic

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