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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)

#441

Post by QuercusMax »

sudobash1 wrote: post #427
beamatronic wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could do calculus, in high school and college, but I wasn't very happy about it. Until I took a physics class in college which happened to be intended for the physics majors. Did the professor ever just present an equation and ask us to learn it? No! Every Single Physics Equation was explained from first principles, using calculus - a lot of integrals. Finally we were seeing a practical application, where calculus…

It was really helpful to me in highschool that the calculus teacher was also the physics teacher, and many students were enrolled in both classes simultaneously. You ended up learning both at the same time.

Teaching calculus through physics (and vice versa) actually makes a lot of sense.

Similarly, basic Linear Algebra and 3D graphics have great synergy. I took LinAlg and Computer Graphics the same semester in undergrad, and the first half of LinAlg led perfectly into the second half of CG. (The first half of CG was all 2D stuff, which didn't need any special math.)

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

#442

Post by ilikeatari »

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…

I also had a similar experience both on the US and Polish side. The US math exercises that I experienced through my niece were really much more focused on reading comprehension, but almost hoping that the student trips up. Maybe its because I am not a native speaker, but this seemed to be not constructive to the task at hand.

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

#443

Post by ecshafer »

hhlbf wrote: post #428
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.

Maths do not have a why.

Yes they do. At minimum Mathematics have a why in that it is something that is arrived at logically, and provable. But when you learn mathematics, whether it be algebra or geometry and trigonometry or calculus or discrete, there is another why added, that of real life solutions. Why do we care about geometry? Well it ends up being useful in optics and physics. We like Trigonometry because it can help you build a building or bridge or shoot a cannon and take down said building or bridge. Calculus has innumerable uses in engineering and physics and finance and biology and everywhere.

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

#444

Post by vangelis »

hhlbf wrote: post #428
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.

Maths do not have a why.

If maths don't have a why, then programming languages don't have a why. They're both abstractions.

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

#445

Post by filoleg »

mantas wrote: post #437
portpecos wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - teachers are astute at spotting students who memorize blindly, and will intervene to correct that > 100% on memorization OP says it’s not 100% memorization and you say it’s 100% memorization. So which one is it?

Being schooled in post-Soviet 90s/00s... Overall both class and teachers didn’t like memorizers. On the other hand, it was possible to pass pretty well by memorizing. Sometimes teachers would put in random bits in tests to throw off memorizers. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All in all, memorizing and actual learning lived side by side. The main difference from what West looks like, the Soviet-ish system w…

>Overall both class and teachers didn’t like memorizers. On the other hand, it was possible to pass pretty well by memorizing. Sometimes teachers would put in random bits in tests to throw off memorizers. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All in all, memorizing and actual learning lived side by side.

I find it hard to believe, given my personal experiences and the fact that having to memorize a poem or a short story and then having to get up in front of the class to recite it word for word for a grade was an extremely common recurring homework assignment in literature classes in my Russian school (from elementary to high school).

Extra details about that type of a homework assignment for those curious: they cannot call up every student due to time constraints for each class period, so for every such assignment, only about half the students get called up (for some specific works that are "more important", they might call up everyone, but over 2 class periods; that was extremely rare though). But those assignments were so ubiquitous, you essentially got called up to the whiteboard to recite at least once every week or two.

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

#446

Post by TheGigaChad »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #417
dharmab wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the curious: > The child of immigrants might have learned a different way to solve a problem because that’s how their parents were taught where they grew up. If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life. If we take the opportunity to explore why there are different ways to approach the same problem, it can be a learning moment for the entire class. I certainly…

Part of schooling is learning and showing you can follow a specific set of instructions. As long as one was taught how to do long multiplication, I do not see the purpose of taking into account what every kids' parents taught them if the purpose of the exercise is to learn a certain method and then show that you learned that certain method by doing it.

Idiot.

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

#447

Post by bulka »

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…

Anecdotal, but still: What you have described might have been the case in a handful of top schools, mostly at metropolitan areas. The key difference for the "rest of us" was a high school theacher who would pick top 1-2 pupils after couple of lessons and teach at their pace for the rest of the year. This is my case and the story that was confirmed by dozens of people in my university.

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

#448

Post by lumost »

ksd482 wrote: post #438
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…

As I was reading the summary, I was thinking "well, of course -- that makes sense. Any teaching curriculum has got to be like that so what is so special about Russian math curriculum?". Then I read in other comments about US math curriculum and I was shocked to learn that not only they were NOT doing this, but they didn't have a better alternative. This is mind boggling. It seems almost idiotic. My schooling was done…

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that most Americans experience k-12 math as an exercise in memorization. Even relatively simple algebraic manipulation such as quadratic equations are drilled for factorization first.

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

#449

Post by Notanothertoo »

g9yuayon wrote: post #434

I used to think that the K12 math education was really bad, but now I have a different perspective. Many public schools in China and Russia are essentially like magnet schools in the US because students need to compete for entrance. So, those schools can afford more challenging syllabus. In contrast, the US has few such magnet schools, and people of different academic capacity go into the same school. As a result, te…

Maybe we should address the downgrade in education quality in the name equitable.

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

#450

Post by ip26 »

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…

I can’t help but wonder what value students see for studying calculus 8 hours a day every day for more than a year.

Maybe I’m actually just subconsciously jealous, but unless you major in math, what do you even do with that? Not to mention there’s little time left to study anything else.

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