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Math from Three to Seven

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Re: Math from Three to Seven

#61

Post by girvo »

bee_rider wrote: post #8

I think this must be a very stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I always thought the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population wise, and really did punch above their weight. But Soviet Union census of 1970 lists 241,720,134 people, while the US census of 1970 lists 203,392,031 people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Soviet_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_census Is this statis…

To be fair, the US and Western Europe were a somewhat combined bloc wrt. trade and being allies. So in that respect the combined USSRs population is smaller? But purely US v USSR, the latter has always had more people

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#62

Post by ccppurcell »

wwilson wrote: post #24
llm_trw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is wrong. The USSR had a larger population than the US by around 20% from 1950 to 1990: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf Chances are he's only counting the population of Russia proper, which would be a bit like only counting the US East Coast population.

My guess is rather that he's conflating the US with US + Western Europe.

And then you can make the appropriately similar conflation of USSR with Warsaw pact countries.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#63

Post by ccppurcell »

0xdde wrote: post #2

The author raises an interesting question as to how the Soviets produced so much scientific talent, but his discussion of math circles strikes me as more of a tangent than a convincing answer. Were these math circles really so widespread, and were they a big part of producing mathematical and scientific question? He doesn't address this. However, the book he is reviewing is available online [1] and I see from skimmin…

And that one was his own son, if memory serves. Genetics and family culture may play a big role.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#65

Post by shepherdjerred »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #11
bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a good metric for producing scientific talent, and it doesn't distinguish reading fiction from actually educating yourself. For the purposes of producing scientific talent, reading fiction helps you as much as watching TV.

I don’t know any definition of actually educating yourself that would exclude reading fiction. And why are you focused on the purpose of producing scientific talent?

The article is trying to explain why the Soviets were so good at keeping up with the US in science/math

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#66

Post by Tomis02 »

com2kid wrote: post #26

From the book being reviewed: > All joking aside, we fledgling mathematicians understood that the single most important thing was not raw intelligence or knowledge (Americans tend to lag behind in the latter compared to all international students). What mattered was passion. The way to become successful in mathematics, like almost every endeavor, is to care about it, to love it, to obsess over it. And in this, Easter…

> IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field.

IMO it was funding that made the difference. People outside of USA did not have any less passion towards the field.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#67

Post by dang »

lupire wrote: post #7

6 years ago and 10 years ago, with a few comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Math+from+Three+to+Seven This book and the culture it come from are so influential, that many people who did "enrichment" have already been exposed to many of the activities in the book. Most famous may be the Scratch JR / code.org introductory computer programming, but with pencil and paper.

Ah good find. Macroexpanded:

Math from Three to Seven: The Story of a Mathematical Circle for Preschoolers [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17018583 - May 2018 (20 comments)

Math from Three to Seven: Chapters One and Three [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811334 - Dec 2014 (21 comments)

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#69

Post by 082349872349872 »

cyberax wrote: post #41
Onavo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely. Nonsense, sounds like post-hoc rationalization. Maybe talk to some actual Slavic people. Sure the Russians had "math clubs" and "chess clubs" but it wasn't as if the US didn't have RadioShack and garage/ham culture. Talk to some of the older generations that still remember the Berlin Wall and you might also understand why so many women fr…

Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker. I'm not joking. But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. This was very much a cultural thing, pushed by the government (engineers are useful!). Another thing, there was a huge societal pressure to excel at school. It was common for parents to check their children's marks every day. There's a very famous picture about it…

> getting low marks and then overcoming them

Do I understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrS6z4tUtI correctly to mean that it wasn't possible to join a scouting troop without good marks?

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