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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)

#541

Post by [deleted] »

whimsicalism wrote: post #157
credit_guy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take New York City (which I'm familiar with, but it's likely the story is similar in many other places): - each public school has the same budget per student. There is no "reduced education funding" for schools in district X vs district Y, or for any school, because the budget per student is equal. Each school's budget is public, and published on the web. - favoring religious teaching: at least at the school my kids…

It's funny how they lead with the useless info in that question.

[deleted]

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

#542

Post by [deleted] »

whimsicalism wrote: post #157
credit_guy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take New York City (which I'm familiar with, but it's likely the story is similar in many other places): - each public school has the same budget per student. There is no "reduced education funding" for schools in district X vs district Y, or for any school, because the budget per student is equal. Each school's budget is public, and published on the web. - favoring religious teaching: at least at the school my kids…

It's funny how they lead with the useless info in that question.

[deleted]

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

#543

Post by notathrowaway2 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #157
credit_guy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take New York City (which I'm familiar with, but it's likely the story is similar in many other places): - each public school has the same budget per student. There is no "reduced education funding" for schools in district X vs district Y, or for any school, because the budget per student is equal. Each school's budget is public, and published on the web. - favoring religious teaching: at least at the school my kids…

It's funny how they lead with the useless info in that question.

Mind explaining why it's useless?

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

#544

Post by notathrowaway2 »

notathrowaway2 wrote: post #543
whimsicalism wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how they lead with the useless info in that question.

Mind explaining why it's useless?

I believe you need it to figure out the total population of females who do not commute, from which you can then subtract from the total population (male and female) who do not commute to find the answer.

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

#545

Post by monkeydreams »

zsmi wrote: post #410
avidphantasm wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always liked math, but have never been great or very good at it. I graduated from a US public school gifted program, and a top 30 US university. The biggest problem I always had with math education is they didn’t teach the “why” nearly enough. I was lousy at memorizing formulas/methods (esp. in calculus), so I often found myself dead in the water during exams.

I used to suffer from the lack of "why" too until one day it dawned on me that there really isn't a why, or maybe, the why is always the same: for engineers doing classical physics solving problems by hand, it's convenient to define it that way. No more, no less. When I was a math tutor in school, everyone would complain about lack of why. This was my approach to address the issue. I would describe a problem relevant…

> I used to suffer from the lack of "why" too until one day it dawned on me that there really isn't a why, or maybe, the why is always the same: for engineers doing classical physics solving problems by hand, it's convenient to define it that way. No more, no less.

'Why' is shorthand for a description of the context of the operation or method being taught. My senior high-school experience was that my maths teacher just plowed through the curriculum from limits to derivatives to integrals and beyond without explaining what each was used for or why. I managed to scrape a pass in high-school calculus but never grew beyond the most rudimentary of understanding until I was taught by a university lecturer who invested time in explaining the why.

The backbone of my mental schema is narrative, so just throwing equations and processes at me does not cause the knowledge to "stick".

Teaching me that Gauss had a problem X that he tried to solve by Y, then showing me what he discovered process N, is invaluable to me because it aids my recall.

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

#546

Post by AzzieElbab »

sudosysgen wrote: post #424
AzzieElbab wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equality was non existent in the Soviet Union. Technically a talented researcher would earn just as much a factory worker but the researcher would have access to apparatus granted privileges like living in a better apartment, occasionally shopping in an non empty store, access to better hospitals, and so on

Researchers and scientists were actually often simply paid more.

Does it matter how much money you have when you walk into an empty store?

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

#547

Post by kevinkeller »

tjchear wrote: post #451
udev wrote: post #326

Lots of comments asking what is "Soviet/Russian Math" actually like, and how is it different. I was lucky to get an education in three systems (Soviet Math, Romanian Math School (influenced by both French and Soviet Math school), and finally in a world top 40 university in North America. I would summarize the Soviet/Russian Math/Physics approach like this: - understanding of the mechanism/intuition behind the equatio…

Any books you can recommend that are similar to the Soviet Math textbooks you talked about?

"Mathematics: Its Contents, Methods, And Meaning"

https://archive.org/details/MathematicsItsContentsMethodsAnd...

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

#548

Post by yhoneycomb »

udev wrote: post #326

Lots of comments asking what is "Soviet/Russian Math" actually like, and how is it different. I was lucky to get an education in three systems (Soviet Math, Romanian Math School (influenced by both French and Soviet Math school), and finally in a world top 40 university in North America. I would summarize the Soviet/Russian Math/Physics approach like this: - understanding of the mechanism/intuition behind the equatio…

This is probably a dumb question, but I'm guessing all the textbooks are in Russian?

I really would be interested in seeing this:

> - the old soviet textbooks are generally less verbose than North American ones (less fancy), but high quality in their expression, typesetting, and ESPECIALLY (!!!) the quality of the exercises

but sadly it would be no use to me if it's not in English

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

#549

Post by webmobdev »

dartharva wrote: post #535
ksd482 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICSE for 10th and ISC for 12th grades.

Figures. CBSE and State boards give the opposite experience, I'm sure you have heard the horror stories from your friends as well.

CBSE followed similar methodology as described and was good too. But only select central schools were good at teaching it - the teachers there were well qualified, and some of them are a real gem too at teaching.

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

#550

Post by xmprt »

eps wrote: post #98
xmprt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are pretty challenging problems and they also require a bit of working out. How many of these problems are students expected to solve in, say, and hour long test?

These represent classes of problems and the test checks which classes students have covered in their studies and which they slacked on. These two are straight-forward problems, both will be allocated some basic nominal time. You either know how to solve them or you don't. Sometimes there'd be problems that are more puzzling, because they'd combine several problem classes and will take time to unfold (this is typical…

I see what you mean by classes of problems. Some of the problems from the above links I know how to do (although working out might take some time and a pen and paper) and then there are some problems where I don't know where to start. I was just never taught how to think about numbers that way even though the link says those problems are for middle school children.
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