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American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

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Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#161

Post by boomskats »

nostrademons wrote: post #14

My college had a decent-sized contingent of Bulgarian & Romanian international students. The difference in their math abilities upon entry was striking. While most of my American-born classmates struggled in discrete math, linear algebra, and vector calc, my Bulgarian friend was like "I learned this when I was 9." They were frequently tapped as TAs by the professors, because they understood the material on a level th…

I'm Serbian and moved to the UK when I was 10. A lot of this is a bit hazy now, but I really clearly recall my bewilderment during the first class-wide 'mental arithmetic' tests in year 5 where I thought the whole class was playing a prank on me. In Serbia I remembered doing quadratics and even touching on differentiation in the afterschool classes, but over here in the UK they were expecting me to take 20 seconds to do simple mental maths (I remember 8x3+17 being the 'hardest one').

The other kids were pretty fascinated with my slightly different long division methods, but the teachers were just obsessed with making me write an `x` instead of a `·` when writing out my multiplication, and trying to make me change the methods I'd learned previously.

I stopped finding maths interesting at that point (age 11) and it breaks my heart to this day. What I knew was enough to get me a couple of 'best-in-school + gold' medals in that Year 8 maths challenge, but it was all Bs and Cs at a-level. I did rediscover a genuine interest in mathematics again at uni as part of the foundations of AI course (CS degree), but that was short-lived and frustrating, as I knew I should have been better.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#162

Post by whimsicalism »

marco_craveiro wrote: post #109

As a Portuguese citizen, I was not exposed to Russian mathematics during my entire academic career until I entered university. Whilst slightly better than the UK, our educational system was also not brilliant when it came to maths, and we only started to do calculus close to Year 12 (the last year before university). Anyways, my one and only brush with Russian mathematics was as follows - I flunked Integral and Diffe…

Portugal has still made a lot of progress. My father, who grew up in the Açores in the 50/60s, says that back then school stopped at 4th grade.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#163

Post by whimsicalism »

carlmr wrote: post #123

I had the same experience going from a French elementary school to a German school. What we were taught in second grade only popped up again in 6th grade in Germany. Then I went on exchange to the US in 10th grade and I noticed they were lagging behind the German system by about 2 years. So US vs France must be a 6 year lag.

The US does not have a universal education track, so hard to compare.

From my interactions with French students and Romanian students in college, the Romanians seemed further ahead and the french were just on par.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#164

Post by Koshkin »

indianpianist wrote: post #127

What is "Russian math" like? And how does it differ from math curriculums taught in other areas of the world?

One notable example would be the undergraduate Beginner’s Course in Topology - Geometric Chapters by Rokhlin et al. (Some “beginner” one must be, to be able to read it.)

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#165

Post by r7fufhrjrududu »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #106
nostrademons wrote: post #14

My college had a decent-sized contingent of Bulgarian & Romanian international students. The difference in their math abilities upon entry was striking. While most of my American-born classmates struggled in discrete math, linear algebra, and vector calc, my Bulgarian friend was like "I learned this when I was 9." They were frequently tapped as TAs by the professors, because they understood the material on a level th…

I'd be wary of forming an opinion on foreign education systems from international students, as they're generally of more privileged extraction compared to the unwashed masses who can't afford to study overseas.

I think this would be a more credible concern if American teachers were equally empowered to their counterparts. To a large extent what you see out of 'foreign' students is a product of teacher's having adequate power to manage their classrooms while teaching students to standards. Meanwhile in America teacher's are shackled by their things like No Child Left Behind and a union that tolerates faculty getting physically assaulted. You don't see these things being corrected because standards and discipline have been branded as racist.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#166

Post by whimsicalism »

DrBazza wrote: post #159

Went to university in the UK, met a bunch of Russian post-docs whilst I was a researcher, and they were some of the best mathematicians I'd met. Not unrelated, but today in the UK is A-Level results (for 18 yr olds), and the UK press and exam boards, as usual are reporting it as the 'best results ever'. This happens year on year. There's a lot of argument about education standards getting lower in the UK. My "anecdat…

This does not jive with my encounters with people who went to school in the 50s/60s.

Just from interacting with people of different ages, it seems to me there was a marked improvement in quality of schooling, maybe in the 90s?

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#168

Post by whimsicalism »

orthoxerox wrote: post #81
meshr wrote: post #41

It is not Russian but 'Soviets math'. Ironically, Russia introduced analogy of USA's standardized right after Itina emigrated from Russia and now Russian's math is also optimized for memorizing but not for 'emphasizing reasoning and deeper understanding'

I graduated before USE, and my math classes were... mediocre. To graduate, you had to do 10 problems of average difficulty, so our textbooks didn't even have problems harder than that. I took a look at the entrance exam at the uni I wanted to apply to and was shocked. Thankfully, I had my dad and he went through Skanavi's exercise book with me. I look at the USE math exam every year and it's much better than my final…

I am so jealous of people who have parents who know/understand math.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#169

Post by jusssi »

andi999 wrote: post #100
credit_guy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sample problem for K-1 [1]: "Jane fills a bag with three types of chips. There are 3-point, 4-point and 7- point chips. Jane picks 3 chips worth 15 points. Which chips did she pick?" Sample problem for grades 5-6 [2]: "Pinocchio drank half a cup of black coffee. He then filled the cup back up with milk and drank one third of the mixture. Again he filled the cup to the top with milk, drank one sixth of the mixture and…

I don't like the second question. Probably the kid is supposed to see the 'trick' :he drank a full cup of coffee since he didn't refill coffee and drank all. He added 1/2, 1/3 and 1/6 of a cup of milk and drank it all, so (3+2+1)/6=1. He drank the same amount of coffee and milk. I think it is ok as a brain teaser, but there will probably be one kid in the class to see it and all the other kids feel dumb or whatever.…

> 5a looks dodgy (probably just trying out numbers)

You can find the 4 zeros of the left side by eyeball, and use that to construct the rest of the equation group you need.

It's expected you've seen and solved this type of problem before taking the test. Not that many kids can come up with a working solution strategy on the fly.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#170

Post by kwhitefoot »

laputan_machine wrote: post #114
petargyurov wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am Bulgarian. I moved to the UK when I was 12. I had to join primary school halfway through Year 6 (the last year of primary school). The level of mathematics shocked me. They were still learning factorisation, something I had learned years ago. It was a breeze. Of course, in secondary school (ages 12-18) the content eventually caught up with me. Part of me wishes I could have somehow kept studying the Bulgarian wa…

UK maths teaching is fairly terrible. Not only do they start later, it's almost never taught meaningfully, instead relying on memorising rote formulae. I grew up hating maths, it wasn't until YouTube came along and the sheer amount of _good_ maths content on there that I started to 'get' the bits I just never understood as a teenager. Most of my friends will still say things like 'I just don't get algebra / I don't d…

Has it changed since the 1960s? Maths where I grew (Swindon, Wilts., ) up was pretty good and from first form (age 11, 1966) on used the SMP course where there really wasn't any memorization of rote formulae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Mathematics_Project
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