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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)

#501

Post by ausbah »

sndean wrote: post #56
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #30

Excerpt: "At the risk of oversimplifying, I noticed that because of the traditional scarcity of equipment, Russian students and scientists had to think rather than experiment, whether with computers or accelerators; it was often all that was available to them."

> traditional scarcity of equipment This sort of thing likely led to what one of my Russian professors was pretty proud of: That Soviet microbiologists with some bacteria, a pH meter, and some basic chemicals like sodium citrate could bang out publications, with some well-designed and elegant experiments. We Americans, on the other hand, would spend thousands of dollars on fancy machines, reagents, etc. and were less…

constraints breed creativity!

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

#502

Post by jojobas »

Endlessly wrote: post #82
c-smile wrote: post #67

I was comparing my math books (from Soviet university, Physics and Applied Math) and my son's from Canadian university (CS). Huge difference to be honest. Canadian ones (same as in US I think) were more like belletristic texts written with the goal to give basics without too much thought needed by the reader. In contrast you cannot approach Soviet text math book without serious thinking effort. You need to overcome s…

Read, then reread, and still do not understand your point. Are you saying that in Russia, since the education was free that the goal of the textbooks was to make it hard to want to stay in school, if so, to me, seems like it’s unlikely, but possible. Putting aside non-Russian textbooks, what are you saying the intended reasoning of the textbook form was as it relates to Russian culture?

USSR needed X engineers per year. The universities had to set their entry requirements high/low enough to only allow X*1.0X to enroll. Once enrolled, they were ambitious enough to only allow the best to survive. They watched their bell curves and adjusted accordingly. I'm almost sure the Ministry of Higher Education would publish the guidelines on how to achieve that.

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

#503

Post by jojobas »

playing_colours wrote: post #341
madhadron wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked from translations and occasionally originals of some of the Russian texts, they're actually utterly marvelous.

Can you please share some books you enjoyed?

What subjects are you after?

Also, the enjoyment was not supposed to be from reading the book, it was from passing the exam.

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

#504

Post by ddalex »

visarga wrote: post #219
madhadron wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked from translations and occasionally originals of some of the Russian texts, they're actually utterly marvelous.

Same situation in Romania, some of the best math problem books I found were a bunch of books printed before 1980's. The problems were just wonderful. I was desperately searching for them for my kids through my father's library. In 1990's after the revolution we got humanitarian aid from Western Europe, including some French math textbooks. They were so low level (simple) I was in disbelief. Useless.

and, somehow, the economic and social system in France is much better than the one in Romania

my take is that the western-style school focuses on getting students life skills, while the eastern-Europe one focuses on cramming knowledge in the brain

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

#505

Post by ajsnigrutin »

captain_price7 wrote: post #455
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…

I spent 6 years in one of those highly selective schools, and I have mixed feelings about this. One problem is that Small-fish-in-big-pond-effect, a good chunk of us realized there that we weren't special anymore, there wasn't the honor and praise for being top- and consequently that drive was lost. Plus, once some schools become well established and start to attract highly talented kids- kind of kids who can do well…

I dont know about the second part... but i'm sure glad I didn't jave illiterate trouble-causers in my class (as i did in elementary school (7-15yo)).

One such disrupter can take away easilly 10 minutes of a class hour, and 1/3 of the class not understanding basics, means the teacher has to try again and again to teach them the things they should already know, while the rest of tle class stagnates.

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

#506

Post by burpsnard »

madengr wrote: post #98
seibelj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think only Soviet body builders were juicing, you are sorely mistaken. FYI I am the furthest thing from an ideological defender of the Soviet system as you will find. I am just stating some truths.

I remember the olympics in the 80’s. Pretty sure those 14 YO female, Romanian gymnasts had facial hair.

* trans women are women

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

#507

Post by david12345 »

red_admiral wrote: post #300
fastball wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that has been spending a lot of time around Higher Education over the past 7 years or so, I personally cannot think of a single University I have interacted that isn't making many of their decisions under the influence of the ideas described above. This is in the US/UK.

In the UK at least, the way I read the situation is that most of the Russell Group pays their bills off the fees they can charge international students - and compared to the income this gets us from China, other countries are a rounding error. The problem is, these students are not coming here to learn how we're all equal, they're paying for a degree that proves they're very much not equal to about a billion people b…

It reminds me of a great bit from Yes Prime Minister: "Coffee at the University" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW7mhtp5a5E

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

#508

Post by dawg- »

mwcampbell wrote: post #450
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…

On the anti-intellectualism and bullying of nerds, how do we fix this? (I'm American.) I'm not a parent myself, but my brothers and sister are. Should I suggest to them that they home-school their kids to shield them from this toxic culture?

I think it's changing quickly. Not sure if you remember the movie 22 Jump Street? The old guys show up at a high school to be "undercover" high school students and it turns out that the "cool" kids are who used to be the nerds. They are vegan, don't make fun of gay kids, stand up to bullies...and wear backpacks with two straps (lol).

I think that image of high school has some truth to it, as I graduated high school a couple years before the movie came out and it was already beginning to change. Kids playing pokemon at lunch were the same kids on the varsity sports teams. It was okay to like video games, and to be upset about getting a C on a test. The image of bullies as "cool kids" was changing to "kids whose parents probably never told them they love them" - and everybody knew it. The cool kids are nice now. Not totally sure if the shift has continued in the last 7 years, but it is definitely happening.

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

#509

Post by OJFord »

Symbiote wrote: post #245
winter_blue wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> asked me once to assemble him software department specifically from Eastern Europe people I hope your friend realizes that this is clear-cut racial/ethnicity-based discrimination . It's a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act, see: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/rights-w...

A generous interpretation is they were outsourcing the work, and the business wanted it to be outsourced to a company in Eastern Europe.

That's an even more interesting thought when you apply it to one-man bands. If the only employment is someone self-employing, then presumable the client can discriminate in such ways.

I suppose if you try to do it at scale though there are other mechanisms for calling you out on deliberately circumventing the spirit of the law.

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

#510

Post by sbalea »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #371
paganel wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In Romania in high school (Sf. Sava) being good at math and physics made you automatically very popular, everyone wanted to sit near you whenever you had written exams :) In any case, smart people were appreciated, there were no "nerds".

To add more color, the top few high schools in Bucharest at the time were all highly competitive, with low % admission rates. So the student body was naturally skewed towards more academically inclined students. In a sense, if you made it in you were more or less a "nerd" compared to the general population.
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