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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)

#591

Post by knownastron »

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…

This might be controversial but this is why I like Python a lot. It just allows me to think about the problem without wrangling with syntax.

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

#592

Post by qaq »

b3kart wrote: post #496
qaq wrote: post #319

It's not just textbooks. The whole approach was different. You would be regularly called upon in class to do a problem on the blackboard. You would be graded on the spot publicly. There was no participation trophy type stuff. Teacher could easily make fun of you for not knowing something etc.

Sounds like a recipe for producing a handful of brilliant scientists and a generation of traumatised students.

Could be or might be just people with better adaptation to tough env. Someone needs to do a study on this :)

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

#594

Post by Koshkin »

bluGill wrote: post #494
b0rsuk wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has American Football, jocks, and cheerleaders. This is something notably absent elsewhere. When you watch a hollywood high school move, this strange obsession jumps at you. In Poland the word "nerd" is difficult to translate. It has no direct equivalent.

Don't mix up movies and reality. They are often based in reality, but movies exist for entertainment and that often means exaggeration of the truth for effect.

Well, in this case movies happen to be pretty close.

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

#595

Post by Koshkin »

baybal2 wrote: post #525
ahoyleo wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. First search result on Baidu leads to this: http://tv.sohu.com/s2018/dsjshdbzdsyji/ tv.sohu is one of the largest streaming sites in China.

That's a surprise. Apparently, it got unbanned

China is progressing.

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

#596

Post by claudiawerner »

yters wrote: post #528
TimTheTinker wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fascinating... and somewhat terrifying. Because it seems clear to me that it won’t require communism or totalitarianism to achieve that kind of endgame (or at least, to get really close to it). Perhaps the communist/totalitarian/power-hungry nations of the world are sitting back and waiting for us in western nations to build such a system (think AWS, but 30 years from now). All they have to do is get complete…

Here's the cite: http://thenewobjectivity.com/pdf/marx.pdf "once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a…

I don't think it makes much sense to say this is a state of affairs Marx would want to see in a communist society; to be honest, I have no idea where you get the idea that Marx envisioned a totalizing AI controlling society from. The Fragment on Machines is highly debated and analyzed in Marxology, but it doesn't imply what you think it implies. Marx's description of communist society is actually quite the opposite (from his TGI):

>He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Post-Marxist authors and other Marxists have quite a lot to say on machinery and totalization of society to administered control (which they view as a negative thing) - see Marcuse for instance.

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

#597

Post by andrewzah »

zeku wrote: post #572
agent008t wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Oxford, for instance, social life mostly happens at colleges. The way things are set up, you simply do not get to spend that much time with your course-mates - you do not interact with them during lectures, and then everyone goes back to their colleges. And social life in colleges is (sadly) dominated by drinking at the college bar, drinking in clubs, and dinners in the dining hall, where everyone seems to sit acc…

This is an American perspective but I think this could be an Anglo phenomenon so let me take a crack at it. When I was brought up, the image of what a successful student was, was a very well rounded one. The perfect student was a diligent worker in all courses and always an athlete. Athletics was very very tied to the image of being a proper student because basically athletics = team and team = learning to work with…

> when I was brought up, the image of what a successful student was, was a very well rounded one.

I think this idea is dead, or close to it. Almost all the people I knew in college were there for a simple reason: to get a piece of paper that says they can now participate in the work force. Being educated was more of a side effect.

Plenty of people complain about gen eds or other requirements for degrees that are not explicitly related to the major.

> For non-Americans reading: private school = good, public school = bad,

This really depends on the university, the professors there, and the field. My school (USC, no, the other one) is #1 for international business, etc.

Athletics is extremely emphasized, though. I understand that colleges have to discriminate somehow to give people scholarships, and that sports make an insane amount of money for colleges, but it always struck me as odd that getting a full ride for being excellent at a sport is even a thing.

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

#598

Post by Koshkin »

azinman2 wrote: post #309
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…

We had that at my American high school. It’s called honors and AP classes. There are event “magnet“ high schools, or high schools dedicated to top artistic talent. They just aren’t uniformly available.

True - artistic (but not mathematical or scientific). But AP classes are really good at what they are meant to achieve indeed.

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

#599

Post by sparrc »

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…

> Doing well at your subjects in Russia put you in the cool group. Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd.

Seems a bit exaggerated to me. At my high school (in the US) the cool kids were just the more socially outgoing kids. Some of them had great grades and others not so much. It was the same in the 'nerds' group.

From my experience academic achievement didn't really have any bearing at all on the social group you fell into.

But I guess experiences will vary....there are pretty huge differences in public school quality across the US and even within one local school district.

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

#600

Post by andrewzah »

gambiting wrote: post #569
zeku wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed this when comparing American vs British degrees that the British ones seemed much much more focused on a topic. American 4 year degrees require you getting a reasonably well rounded education. I have a 4 year degree in comp sci but I was required to learn state history, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Art, Communications, and probably some other things off the top of my head that I've forgotten. My issue with…

Polish universities are completely free. And yes, British universities are not free, they have recently gotten pretty expensive(£9000/year), with the exception of Scottish ones which have different rules.

It pains me that my initial thought was "that's not expensive in the slightest compared to $50k/year". America sucks sometimes.
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