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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)

#271

Post by omginternets »

ptero wrote: post #177
maga wrote: post #97

I went through the Soviet/Russian school system with all the advanced topics being covered in high school as others described here. My moment of zen was on my third year in one of the top tech universities in Moscow. There were quite a few students coming from Novosibirsk University who were comfortably ahead of the curve when it came to math. When they showed their transcript ("zachetka"), they had ~3000 hours of Ca…

My personal experience is that it wasn't just hours. Those who liked math spent a lot of time on it after classes. Those who didn't, avoided extras and still did OK (they would not go to top universities, but the base would be OK, with some practice, if they decide to go to a mid-level school). The biggest difference for me in school was a consistent, well thought out program (one for the whole country) and books. A…

>teachers at grade N do not know for sure what the students already know, so they repeat a lot of the background, then jump around to cover a lot of material, much of which is never mastered.

I spent my freshman year of high school in France, and went to a French school (this is 3ème, for my fellow Frenchmen).

I recall being stunned -- in the best way possible -- when our biology teacher started his class on the first day with: "So. You've seen X last year. Now we're going to talk about related-thing-Y".

That had never happened in my US curriculum. Never.

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

#272

Post by BeFlatXIII »

a-saleh wrote: post #48
ardit33 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it was a communist country, everyone had the same conditions (crappy), and everyone had the same fricking clothes (only two clothing factories on the whole country), and same teachers (and no private schooling allowed), and we had the same books, and no calculators. And it is clear, if all conditions are equal, still people are not born equal. Some kids are just smarter than others, and some are just dummies, o…

T.b.h. as somebody from ost-block country, I did hate the cast-system based on the performance. In my school we had a class that selected for the worst students, and surprise, it created a class where so many people failed. I was in class that had an even mix, some really smart kids, some not so much, and some comparable to the worst of the D-class. Like third of the of my classmates went for the sports-focused high-…

How did the A class become ordinary while B&C had a mixture of top and average? Was it that the ordinarily smart students were motivated by the sorting exams than the top smartest students?

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

#273

Post by maga »

omginternets wrote: post #247
maga wrote: post #97

I went through the Soviet/Russian school system with all the advanced topics being covered in high school as others described here. My moment of zen was on my third year in one of the top tech universities in Moscow. There were quite a few students coming from Novosibirsk University who were comfortably ahead of the curve when it came to math. When they showed their transcript ("zachetka"), they had ~3000 hours of Ca…

My wife went through the French "classe préparatoire" system and describes a similar degree of raw effort that was put into her studies (and in particular, mathematics). She talks about spending 10-12 hours a day either in class or studying at home, and I have to admit the amount of knowledge in that woman's head is absolutely astounding. Her education is elite in the same way that a sports team or military unit can…

A bit tangential here, but our calculus/math analysis professor actually told us that the Russian and later Soviet math school drew a lot from the French, although, he might have been biased due to his apparent partiality towards Bourbaki. According to him, the university level math was taught exclusively in French during the Tsarist times, and they had some troubles coming up with Russian terminology when Soviets ordered all teaching to be done in Russian.

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

#274

Post by alistairSH »

rtpg wrote: post #133
skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

I doubt the calculators were the problem. People going through the "AP class" route with calculators finish up all of the math (and more!) that gets covered in a french high school math class (from experience of moving to France in High School and learning zilch for 3 years). Totally on point about the "analyticial and quantitative lenses". Multiple-choice questions and lack of "real" questions really hobble a lot of…

Calculators in calculus probably aren't a problem.

But in the US, calculators are used at almost all grade levels. My son's school allowed them while he was in elementary school, while still learning basic algebra.

As for math education in general (in the US), it's pretty terrible. The lack of practical applications of "advanced" maths is a big problem. Basic calculus didn't "click" for me until I started taking economics courses in college.

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

#275

Post by mirker »

24fps wrote: post #181

This is a sore point for me. I graduated from a tony American private high school, and went on to graduate from an ivy league college. The last math I learned was basic trig in eleventh grade. Somehow I was allowed, encouraged even, to avoid math. I never had to say the word math in college or graduate school. As a result I do not actually know what calculus is, and while I’m sure you don’t invoke it while calculatin…

My favorite example is compound interest. Imagine having to solve a compound interest test to get a credit card. It seems like a basic precaution to me (like a driving license), but yet I’m not convinced all in the US can do it.

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

#276

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

thinkingemote wrote: post #180
boomskats wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a Brit, I was never any good at mental math at school, I still cannot do that hardest one without a calculator. But later on, I swam like a fish in water in geometry, trig, logic and loved algebra and moved from the last of my year to one of the top. I was doing integration etc a good two years before it was being taught in the higher classes. These skills are good for programming and computers. There was a limit;…

I think mental arithmetic is one of those things that simply requires vast amounts of practise. I’m quite slow at it, but when I’m forced to do a lot of it, say for keeping score. I quickly get faster.

I too was much better at applied maths and stats. It was fairly easy for me. But my brain just shuts down doing pure math.

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

#277

Post by orthoxerox »

whimsicalism wrote: post #168
orthoxerox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you. I guess I was lucky my dad is a MIPT alumnus.

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

#279

Post by handrous »

dougSF70 wrote: post #243
sega_sai wrote: post #210

It's a weird article. I think this idea of 'Russian math' is very nebulous, and is probably used as marketing tool nowadays by some schools abroad. I have graduated from one of the top physics/maths high schools in Russia, and yes we had great math education there, but that was an outlier. Outside a handful of schools the math education is pretty dismal. And even in the good math schools there are different ways of t…

Somehow American Math doesn't have the same connotations. I am witnessing public schools take math out of the curriculum at elementary, middle and high schools. It is a wasted opportunity for young people to learn the beauty of math.

Bizarre. Where I am math and English remain king and queen of getting-on-the-schedule. Being "tested subjects" from very early grades, is the main reason. They've all but eliminated recess in elementary, and have reduced hours for things like art & music, to make sure they have plenty of time for them, since school prestige and funding rely heavily on testing well just in those two subjects.

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

#280

Post by sjg007 »

gambiting wrote: post #230
boomskats wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I went to a British university, CS course, at the age of 19, having completed my education in Poland. I had a very similar experience(except no one cared whether you wrote x or .) - basically at university it was like going back 5-10 years in terms of maths level. We were already doing advanced calculus in Poland in my last year at school(and being constantly told that we have to know it well or no one at university…

>British university, CS course

Hmm.. In my experience this would have been discrete math at best which is normal in CS classes. You'd have to have taken an engineering elective or math elective to get linear algebra.

Today, with AI being so hot, I'd bet that the programs include math for engineers e.g. matrices and linear algebra. Maybe an intro course in stats and probability.

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