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Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

134 points by theunamedguy 10y ago

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
It's an anecdote, but... Guy I went thru undergrad with went to a high school where the 10th grade algebra class requires naming the principle to be applied for each step in a problem, as if it were a proof. This is painful. But he'd learned algebra properly. I hadn't. His math grades were much better than mine for a long time.
tgarma1234 10y ago
Because there are a thousand other things you can do that are worthwhile and there is no anxiety to be perceived as "smart" in the way that math requires. Just party on and network and land yourself in a start up. You can pay someone else to do the math because the real money is in MAKING DECISIONS.
groys 10y ago
Christianity
SixSigma 10y ago
Because they don't spell it as Maths, obviously.
- mc32 10y ago
  We spell it the same, we just abbreviate it differently.
11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots. One could argue that for whatever reason, many of the professors, researchers and postdocs at those schools learned math in other countries, but, if these lists are to be believed, the US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world. So two questions: 1) Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education? 2) If the primary and secondary education in the ROW produces such a high level of capability relative to the US population, why aren't their universities better represented in the rankings? [1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mathematics http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mat... [2] http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2015/mathematics http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...
- mioelnir 10y ago
  I've read (once, somewhere, on the internet) that these types of rankings are also distorted by the fact that in the US the top research institutes are usually teaching and part of a University, while they are not teaching in many other parts of the world.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    I'm not sure whether non-US research institutions are less teaching focused overall than their state-side counterparts but there are plenty of other confounding cultural factors. In Russia, for example, the most elite science/engineering university (PhysTech) isn't as well known globally as MIT or Caltech because it is made up of dozens of research institutes that publish under their own name instead of under the umbrella organization. As a result most academics dont know that all of this research is produced by a single (albeit distributed wrt geography and branding) powerhouse.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  We shouldn't mix up the max skill level with the average skill level. They are very different issues, and different educational systems may optimize for different things. For example, maybe if you are a very good mathematician in the US you can get high-paying jobs for intelligence agencies, data analytics, that sort of thing. But if you are a mathematical genius in another country, maybe they don't have the same job opportunities so you have to go into math teaching. That would cause the US to have very good mathematicians and at the same time terrible math teachers.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    To me the state of math instruction is illustrated by a 3rd grade math book, teacher's edition, with the answer key in it. (3rd grade math answers should be obvious by inspection.)
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      That's sad but I totally believe it after some interaction with teachers.
meira 10y ago
Because you don't use math while watching TV and Reading FB newsfeed all day long.
- danharaj 10y ago
  Subscribe to the right fb feeds and you would
fspeech 10y ago
Math is the lingua franca of sciences. It should be taught like a language as well. In our elementary schools we don't have teachers dedicated to teaching math. Instead we have teachers who are afraid of math themselves.
andrewclunn 10y ago
If you convert our scores to metric it's not so bad.
shams93 10y ago
I think it is related to our refusal to embrace the metric system, kids at a young age get thrown off by our archaic system of measurement.
- geomark 10y ago
  I've wondered about that. The imperial system is positively awkward. What about other countries that also use the imperial system instead of metric? Are they also behind?
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    The UK uses their own screwy imperial units for some measures
    - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
      Not really. You still go to the shops and buy things in litres and kilograms, and their entire construction industry is in metric. The only commercial product that isn't in metric, funnily enough, is beer and cider. I guess getting pissed people to change proved harder than everything else.
      - anexprogrammer 10y ago
        ...and milk is always pints. An awful lot of products come in imperial sizes but metric labelling - 454g jars of jam etc. Timber sometimes gets called 2x4 even though it's 50x100, but that seems less common now. Oddly just about everyone still uses feet and inches for their height. I hear kilos more and more often for weight, I don't think I've ever heard cm for height in the UK.
        Frogolocalypse 10y ago
        > ...and milk is always pints. Returned milk is (you know, in dem bottles). But milk you buy in the store is 1L, 2L, etc. > Oddly just about everyone still uses feet and inches for their height. True. Probably because of the recognition of the 6' centering measurement. People know that if you're 6', that's kind of the cut-off for what is referred to as 'tall enough'. Over that, you're generally 'tall'. Under that, and you're average height.
krapht 10y ago
I found math class stultifying and boring until the focus switched from learning algorithms for computation to doing proofs of relations and concepts. Also I began to discover the actual applications for advanced math, instead of learning it for its own sake. I wish in hindsight that instead of taking endless years of calculus there was a high school version of real analysis, and exercise problems rooted in real-life to motivate the learning.
- thearn4 10y ago
  I teach calculus on the side sometimes for beer money (ie. adjunct), and has made me stronger in my long-running feeling that we teach way too much calculus in the STEM fields. Most people "in the trenches" writing tools that would make use of the fundamentals in their field (either in the physical sciences or engineering disciplines) tend to agree that linear algebra has disproportionately little representation compared to calculus. To be fair, that is somewhat of a downstream problem from mathematics departments, and speaks more about the possibility of stagnation in the undergraduate science and engineering curricula. fair caveat though: my PhD is in numerical linear algebra...
- politician 10y ago
  Reading this comment as a programmer, I had the horrific thought that we treat our children the same way we treat our computers: programming them with algorithms, debugging them with failing grades, executing them for test scores. It's barbaric. Leave the program execution to the computers, give the children critical thinking skills.
- Merad 10y ago
  I didn't really get into math until calculus, personally. There was this moment of realization that calc starts to describe the real world, opening up the ability to do all kinds of useful and interesting things. I ate up calc 1-3 and differential equations, even though I have no real use for them today. OTOH, my brain apparently just is not equipped to deal with proofs, either in mathematics or comp sci theory. They were always an enormous struggle for me.
  - 10y ago
danharaj 10y ago
Put 100 mathematicians, math educators, and policy makers into a room and ask them to come up with a good mathematics curriculum. They'll come out with 101 proposals. That's not a problem, really. Mathematics is not merely about mathematical substance, but also mathematical process (the two are intimately related), and not just process, but the process of discovering processes. Curricula, standards, directives, are all substance. Policy makers want to put their name on a thing, a substance and give it to everyone else and hope that process develops... somehow. I think you have to contextualize mathematical in the broader problem with american public schools: they're awful, awful places for many students including me. I ended up studying higher mathematics in college and still study on my own for my own pleasure (and I get to apply some really high powered ideas to programming once in a while which grants a satisfaction that lingers). I think my math education could have been advanced 5 or even 10 years if public school weren't such a soul-crushing stultifying nightmare of procedure and compliance.
- yorwba 10y ago
  > (and I get to apply some really high powered ideas to programming once in a while which grants a satisfaction that lingers) Mind sharing what some of these ideas are?
  - danharaj 10y ago
    Lately I've been experimenting with comonads to structure stateful code. The idea is that a comonad describes the interface for a state machine, and you can convert any comonad in Haskell into a monad transformer which acts as a restricted form of the state monad. The state monad describes expressions that can arbitrarily manipulate a state of some type. The monad you derive from a comonad does not have direct access to its state, the comonad describes all the allowed manipulations and queries. This is all described and implemented here: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/kan-extensions-5.0.1/docs/Control-Monad-Co.html https://hackage.haskell.org/package/kan-extensions-5.0.1/doc... In particular, the type: data CoT w m a = CoT { runCoT :: forall r. w (a -> m r) -> m r } Let's unpack this. The following type represents a state machine whose nodes are labeled with a continuation demanding an `a` and executing an effect: w (a -> m r) The forall quantification in CoT means that it does not care what the result value is. It will take a state machine, manipulate it for a bit, produce an `a`, pick a continuation from the state machine and execute it. That's a lot going on! I don't have time or space to explain how this is actually useful but here's a handy approximation: - `w` is an interface - `w s` is a model labeled with a value of `s` for each state it can occupy. These labels are a sort of view. - `CoT w m a` is a controller that can manipulate a model and compute in some effectful context. High powered MVC. The upshot is that because we're leaning on Functors, Monads, and Comonads there are extremely well behaved and natural composition operations. For example, `fmap` allows us to change the view of a model by applying a pure function. The fact that `CoT` is a monad means that we can run controllers in serial, as well as combine our controller languages in sensible ways. The fact that `w` is a comonad means we can reason about the behavior of models equationally. This lets us transform, compose, and compare models with mathematical precision. This is a project I only seldom work on in my spare time. I have already applied it to writing GUI's and game logic to good effect but I'm still exploring the design space regarding reactivity and temporal behavior. This has led me to reading the mathematical literature pertaining to products of comonads/sums of monads (they're dual).
anexprogrammer 10y ago
Everyone believes they are bad at maths, so they are. It applies just as much to the UK. My youngest believes this strongly, yet when we were quizzing, or helping with homework, she didn't seem to find it too hard, just believed it so. She certainly didn't get those beliefs from home! Looking at my kids maths lessons, especially in late Junior, so much effort was spent to actually hide the maths that I wonder they learnt anything!
- matthewhall 10y ago
  I love math and I think I'm pretty good at it
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    OK, not everyone, but it seems to be the subject that people are most likely to claim to be terrible at. Schools don't help by sucking all the fun out of it. Was always my favourite subject, but that was despite school rather than because of.
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  > Everyone believes they are bad at maths, so they are. Everyone? I love math.
  - dagw 10y ago
    I love math too. Even have a Masters in it. Still wouldn't say I'm particularly good at it, certainly not as good as many of my classmates.
tomc1985 10y ago
If they would teach kids to play with math (or any form of knowledge, for that matter), and not just run through 10,000 rote problems, maybe we'd rank better. Especially word problems -- most of them felt like they were written for students wearing intellectual blinders... if you had any modicum of relevant knowledge outside of the lesson oftentimes word problems were impossible to solve
- increment_i 10y ago
  Could not agree with you more. Another thing I've noticed anecdotally is that many of the math teachers in the secondary system in North America do not have a broad understanding of math themselves. Math is given the most rote treatment of all the subjects, and I suppose this is understandable given the abstract nature of math. But students are never told why they should care about abstractions in the first place, which is unfortunate. Many high schools simply refuse to speak the students' language. I suspect this will change in this century. IMO, if a high school really wanted to be progressive, they would totally reform their math curriculum to include more exposure to applied math and computer sciences. Young folks should be using math to build their own Instagram or Minecraft clones that they can deploy to their devices that VERY DAY - using the concepts they've been introduced to in mathematics.
  - sjg007 10y ago
    Not sure how math helps you deploy instagram clones. I mean set theory, logic, computable functions but that's a big stretch.
    - increment_i 10y ago
      Ok so taken literally, that was a bad example. But instead of giving me a textbook of problems where I solve y = mx + b, can I use mathematical concepts in a creative capacity? To do things I care about as a high schooler? Can I see those concepts on my device today?
    - rprospero 10y ago
      I would argue that every instagram filter is merely a linear algebra problem.
rdtsc 10y ago
> Without the right training, most teachers do not understand math well enough to teach it the way Lampert does. My high school math teacher majored in math and then got a certificate in teaching. She wasn't a teacher who was told to teach math among other classes. She knew all the advanced stuff (beyond what a high school curriculum required), she was excited about it, she could explain things in various ways, give analogies, was available after class to ask questions and so on. And that is post-collapse Soviet Union full of corruption, poverty and other crap like that. Surely if we can spend trillions of dollars on F-35 we can get us some good math teachers...? In this country I see a large disconnect between words "Oh kids are so very very important, they are our future, they can't play outside too far because they will be abducted and we care so much for them" and deeds: I see large classrooms, not enough teachers, teacher are underpaid, not interested in math. Funding comes from local property taxes so rich neighborhood get more money, poor ones get less. Another thing is I remember teachers were respected. Imagine how we react to someone saying "Oh they are doctor. And then everyone nods, right, they are very successful. Or lawyer, or works for Google and so on". Why isn't teaching like that? My mom tells me someone back home thought she was a teacher, because she at her age spoke some English. And she took it as a great complement. In this country you tell someone you thought they were a high-school teacher and they might get offended. Something is very wrong here... As for making it more exciting -- initially I studies math by repetition and it worked pretty well for me. I think works because kids are amazing at memorizing stuff. Why not first take advantage of that? Starting them out with set theory sounds all cool on paper that is not how humans learn. Multiplication table, basic patterns, even operations are fine to memorize first. Later on it makes most sense to introduce proofs, word problems (I remember doing lots of word problems, our teachers were crazy for them) and so on.
- slfnflctd 10y ago
  > She knew all the advanced stuff [...] was excited about it, could explain things in various ways, give analogies I envy you this experience. I still remember telling a math teacher in 8th or 9th grade that I wanted more information on why a formula worked, how it was originally derived, or any different way of looking at it to better understand it. She essentially said, "you don't need to worry about all that, just memorize it." It was intensely frustrating for me, and contributed to me losing interest in academic pursuits. I don't know how you can train teachers to be more open to this kind of thing, but it sure would help.
nemo44x 10y ago
Math is hard work. I was bad at math. I went to college a couple years after I graduated high school where I made little effort to challenge myself. But after figuring things out, at 20 I decided I wanted to do computer science as I enjoyed some of the programming skills I picked up (C++ of all things!). I was very unprepared for the math part of it and it was hard. I tested into a remedial math level and when I looked at the CS requirement I knew that wouldn't be a good way to start. So I bought a used math book and spent a few weeks studying hard so I could get into a decent math placement so I could be where I needed for CS. This was just the start. I had a long road with a lot of frustration but I made it. I made it because I never worked so hard at something up to that point in my life. There were times I thought it was hopeless but I just continued to do rote math problems, over and over again. And slowly the concepts started to sink in more and more. But there was always the frustration of missing the little details and forgetting a concept or not having enough experience honing a certain skill. But if I kept at it, over and over again, I would learn it and it suddenly became easy. I was "bad at math". It would have been so easy to quit and try something else. But I knew I wanted to not only pass my tests but really understand the calculus and differentials, etc I had to do. And it was the best thing I ever did for myself. Not only does working so hard at something prove you can work hard and achieve something but it shapes the way you see the world. Math is hard. Some of us just have to work harder. People should realize that failing is normal and if you keep at it you will eventually get it. For some people it takes longer than others. I could never create math. But with enough time I believe I could eventually truly learn anything because of this experience.
- yazaddaruvala 10y ago
  Congratulations! I'm always disappointed when people say "some people just can't learn X". It isn't that they cannot learn X, they just cannot learn it in the same time frame, and they shouldn't be expected to!
  - nemo44x 10y ago
    I mean that's really the problem. For some reason we think things will just make sense once we are taught the lesson and we try an exercise. But that's so often not the case. Accept you'll never be the genius who creates new things - maybe you will but put that aside. Focus on trying hard and committing yourself. It doesn't matter if it's math or cooking food, the more you try it and think of it and accept failure the better you'll be. Accept your limits as a creator but never accept that you can't understand a concept if you spend the time you personally need at it.
58 10y ago
Might it have something to do with this? https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-u... I'm no fan of the American education system, having suffered through it a full 12 years, but I have to believe it's not the primary cause here. Math is hard, and near impossible if you're stressed. I excelled at math, despite relatively boring math curricula. Why? Because I wasn't stressed as a kid, my family was stable and did not suffer from any serious physical and mental illness, and one parent always made enough money so that the other could stay at home throughout my entire childhood. I had an enormous advantage, and most all of the kids I knew through advanced math classes and math competitions had a similarly charmed existence.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  This article debunks the Washington Post claim about a majority of kids in public school being in poverty. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/no-a-majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-not-in-poverty.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/no-...
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    By failing at reading comprehension. There's a vast difference between public school students and school-aged children. In Chicago, only 10% of public school students are white[1], with a 45% white population[2] (for example.) Conflating the two things seems almost willfully deceptive. edit: [1] http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/Stats_and_facts.aspx http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/Stats_and_fac... [2] http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/1714000 http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/1714000
    - WillPostForFood 10y ago
      What's wilfully deceptive is pointing to one city and claiming it is relevant to national statistics. The WP Article assets a majority of public school students IN THE US are in poverty, that is objectively false. So the reading comprehension problem isn't with the article I cited.
yazaddaruvala 10y ago
One word: Football. One of my friends graduated with an engineering degree from MIT. I once asked him if he could have traded that to be better at Football, would he? His response was that if there was even a remote chance he was good enough to play in the NFL he would have traded education for that chance. Humans innately crave fame, and the lack of scarcity that is perceived to come with it. The USA has sadly, and unknowingly groomed that romanticism of fame, towards consumables (this might be the long term effects of Capitalism). Rather than grooming that romanticism of fame towards research/intelligence/creation (the renaissance). Even local to the film industry, almost 100% of 10 year olds want to grow up to be Brad Pitt or Salma Hayek, not George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg[0]. Even fewer want to be the writer. Even local to football, everyone knows the names of the player that caught that hail marry, got that big hit, recovered that fumble. Few know the names of the people who create those plays. Only in recent years have the masses truly started to recognize creators/intelligence with the title famous (Gates, Jobs, Zuck). But again for the wrong reasons, i.e. for their money. Even artists Picasso, Beethoven (adored for generations) have only truly been appreciated by the aristocracy, i.e. the rich and "mathematically" acute. Which way do you suspect the causal link lies? Are we first intelligent, therefore we appreciate the intelligent? Do we first appreciate the intelligent, therefore we become intelligent? [0] I mean no disrespect to Brad Pitt or Salma Hayek, or actors in general. Good Actors need to be extremely intelligent, but this isn't why they are adored. I'd argue this part of them is even sadly shunned by the media and populace.
- totalZero 10y ago
  MIT has a pretty good football team. https://youtu.be/XnVcaHMsYqM https://youtu.be/XnVcaHMsYqM
droithomme 10y ago
People keep saying Americans stink at math, americans don't understand science, americans are ignorant, etc. And yet at the same time we have these sorts of track records: http://www.popsci.com/us-dominates-at-sending-stuff-to-mars http://www.popsci.com/us-dominates-at-sending-stuff-to-mars It's not just Mars or the moon, or decades ago, the US also is where most operating systems and software and CPUS are conceived of and designed. As well as countless other things that people who are so ignorant would not reasonably be expected to be able to do.
- sssilver 10y ago
  How many of the people involved in those accomplishments are boasting American middle school education?
- tmerr 10y ago
  I agree USA has an impressive track record for space exploration and is at the forefront of computing, but that seems like more of a reflection of our economy and top talent than overall math literacy. Ideally we would have the best of both worlds: good high school education, and a good economy, but for some reason the former lags behind.
saretired 10y ago
Some of it is cultural: Americans don't want their kids to have too much homework, in many cases they don't want to help with homework or are unable to; they want a silver bullet. Some of it is lack of qualified teachers, and part of that is the way public schools are funded from the local tax base--do it cheaply as possible. Some of it is political pressure to dumb things down so that students can be graduated from HS before they reach the legal drinking age. Some of it is the rise of the education ``experts'' who always have some new…silver bullet (Feynman had a lot to say about such experts after reviewing math textbooks for California in the early '60s). The new math came about as an almost hysterical reaction to Sputnik, when, in fact, the U.S. had plenty of highly qualified scientists and engineers who just happened to get beaten to the punch by the URSS. But no, the math curriculum had to change into some kind of Bourbaki for tots, meanwhile in fact the Soviets were teaching math the old-fashioned way--nice cognitive dissonance there. There are a lot of factors, and I don't see any magical way of improving curricula, getting better teachers, requiring more homework, etc.
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  "americans" "Americans don't want their kids to have too much homework this wasn't the case for me. i'm american. maybe you're wrong?
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  "americans" "Americans don't want their kids to have too much homework this wasn't the case for me. i'm american. maybe you're wrong?
rabboRubble 10y ago
In 4th grade, I got a C in math. During my teacher student grade review meeting, my male teacher told me "it's okay, girls don't do as well at math as boys." Yeah, so there's this as a reason. I definitely wasn't a good student until high school. I definitely had a bad teacher who gave me an excuse for YEARS to accept bad results in math. My mother still bitches about that guy to this day. I suspect I have a slight learning disorder that affected my ability to process numbers. I mix 6/9s. 7/9s when transcribing numbers. Made homework difficult. Once I got to the point where letters started replacing numbers in homework, I went from a C student to an A student in math and was competing for the top grade in my math classes. Once I learned that I could do the work, I did the work and excelled. I suspect that this type of bias affected more girls than just me, and these discouraged girls affected US scores.
atemerev 10y ago
The key to math education is practice. Even drilling, maybe. Other fields deal with concepts more or less mapped to the real world. Physics is about real world, more or less (right until you get to quants, then the level of abstraction rises dramatically). Same goes for biology, and even computer science in general. There, you can rely on words, which usually convey meaning. In math, you can't rely on words. You'll never understand even relatively simple things like complex analysis or Fourier transform just by reading about it -- words are never enough to transfer the knowledge to you. You need to play with it, solve actual problems, understand in practice how various "moving parts" are related to each other, and then accept the naming convention (which is almost an afterthought, born as a mean of reference, not as a way to describe things). Therefore, relentless practice and solving abstract problems (a lot of them) is the only way to teach (or learn) mathematical concepts. Some teachers want to make math more accessible with bringing it "down to earth", mapping mathematical concepts to more concrete problems. It is theoretically possible, and I was a supporter of this approach until very recently. However, math just doesn't work this way. Math is pure abstraction; linking the abstractions to earthly affairs too early shuts down mathematical thinking (creates biases that prevents applying mathematical insights to other fields that are different from the one learned). Mathematical abstractions cannot be transferred by words and formulas alone; they need to be internalized by practice and drilling.
- Kenji 10y ago
  Yes, and notation is key. If there is even just one symbol that the student can't understand, then the entire understanding of the paragraph, or even entire book, is at stake. However, I do think that examples and applications help a great deal. Sometimes, a mere description of first principles doesn't do it for me, and then, when I see an actual example, I suddenly understand it and the theory along with it.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Would you say that words and formulas are leaky abstractions then?
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I think they key is being able to jump between the narrative ( story ) domain and the formal symbols domain. At first, it is learning a language. Later, it is learning how to learn that language dynamically.
wirrbel 10y ago
One very interesting thought I read about: Modern math classes tend to be very applied. I.e. the primary objective is to get the student to be able to solve real world problems with math. (A farmer sells 3 potatoes for a dollar. How much do 8 potatoes cost?). There seems to be some indication however, that abstract math is more accessible to some children, especially if they aren't supported by parents during their homework, etc. Because of this real-world to mathematical-world translation step. By exploring ways to make math more accessible, "friendly" and useful, teachers might actually make it harder for students to pick up math. This is an interesting thought for me, because I tutored kids in math who were not doing good in school. I kind of ended up with a typical scheme to get them from "risk of failing the class" to Bs and occasionally As. First I would introduce a a few techniques (equation solving in every case and the mathematical topic of their class - logarithms, binomial terms, etc. - also) and then give them very simple drill exercises. And a lot of them that we would solve together. I.e. simplifying exponentials $exp(3) * exp(5) = exp(8)$ etc. I always made sure that they were able to solve these drill exercises eventually, and they were all able to, because they picked up the scheme. As a next step, I gave them the applied problems their teachers would ask them to solve, and made it into a translation problem. I.e. I explicitly told them that this was now just a translation. They could often identify with this because they self-identified often as language persons ("I like the literature class best", or "I like french class most"). I wouldn't ask them to solve the translation result right away. But they often just naturally did because it was not so different from the drill exercises. Point is, I do not at all understand why I was needed for this. The teachers consistently failed their students in class, by not providing them with the very basic math skills and confidence that they needed to solve more complex problems.
- chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  > The teachers consistently failed their students in class, by not providing them with the very basic math skills and confidence that they needed to solve more complex problems. Finding a good math teacher in America is difficult because the good math students rarely become teachers.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  It seems modern math classes place more emphasis on reading comprehension versus calculation.
kristopolous 10y ago
Where's our Dr Seuss of math?
dimino 10y ago
I've latched onto this as my explanation for why English students are worse with math (English counts numbers weirdly, but Asian languages do math within their language to perform counting): http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-1410304008 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-14103...
vog 10y ago
In contrast to this, note that in International Mathematics Olympiads, pupils/students from the USA are quite good: http://www.imo-official.org/ http://www.imo-official.org/
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Oh sure. The best education in the US is awesome, possibly the best anywhere. But the average is pretty sad, particularly compared to the rest of the first world.
naveen99 10y ago
The funny thing is addition and multiplication are black box operations for most software people (non-ee) also. I wish some analog stuff was included on those books like nand to tetris: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-create-a-circuit-from-basic-components-R-L-C-that-gives-me-an-adder-and-a-multiplier-of-two-analog-signals https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-create-a-circuit-from-basic-c...
ausjke 10y ago
The new SAT etc now puts more weighs on reading comprehension and make math less important, which further weakens the willingness to study math, so the Asians(who are traditionally better at math) will not dominate the SAT high scores. As a country this will only make math education much worse, it should be another way around, otherwise, you can not compete in the STEM field, which is crucial for future.
- ausjke 10y ago
  http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search?subject=engineering&name= http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/sea... Chinese Tsinghua Univ beats MIT to take the top seat at USNews for engineering. I think this is the second time in a row. As far as I know, Chinese universities took the best students without considerations of gender at all. They do have AA for races but it is minimal. USA is moving towards to AA-for-school-and-workplace, I hope this will make more people happier with high self-esteem, in the meantime you lose your competitiveness quickly.
jason_slack 10y ago
I am 39, American, white and I am taking a math class at my local college. I am the oldest person in the class by far. I get A's, so do a few others. Most get C's. I do every homework problem. I do variations of the homework problems. I spend at least 6 hours outside of our class time (3 hours) doing the math. When we have tests the Instructor gives us problems that are not like the homework where she can see if we can evaluate and apply the concepts to things we haven't yet seen.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jimhefferon 10y ago
I teach math. I am impressed that when you read these comments, very few of them show evidence of having read the article. The article is about experience with actual students, with ones who have a real knack for the subject and would learn it despite what any teacher did, and with ones who waver. There proves to be a better way, which the article describes in various ways, including as "sense-making." One of the problems here is that everybody has a pre-formed opinion and does not seem to want to risk having to modify it with the evidence of experience.
- qntty 10y ago
  Do you have an opinion on math-circle inspired schools like Proof School[1]? To me it seems obvious that this is the direction that math education should go in for kids who are passionate about math. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_School
  - jimhefferon 10y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't know anything about it (other than what I read in the link).
- whack 10y ago
  > "One of the problems here is that everybody has a pre-formed opinion and does not seem to want to risk having to modify it with the evidence of experience." That's probably the most accurate description of HN comments I've seen. People see a headline related to something they already have pre-existing beliefs about, they read a few paragraphs just to make sure they're on point, and then they jump straight to the comments to argue in favor of what they already know to be true. I'm willing to wager $10000 that a significant majority of HN commenters in any thread do not read the article in full, and even among those who do, a smaller minority actually post comments addressing the meat of what the article is saying.
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    I concur with this. I have to fight the urge to do it myself.
HarryHirsch 10y ago
Since no one has brought up "Nix the Tricks" yet, here's the link to the ebook: http://nixthetricks.com/ http://nixthetricks.com/ Foreigners are likely unaware that these are the algorithms routinely taught to US students in math class. There are no formal proofs, no emphasis on making sense - the only purpose is to have something memorizeable to have students pass the next test (and possibly the No-Child-Left-Behind test at the end of the year). There is no generalization, no focus on understanding. When you tell an American kid at university level "this is why concept XY makes sense" they don't understand why you might say this, they are only interested in the algorithm and the solution (and passing the next test, of course). Small wonder that anyone exposed to that curriculum sucks at math and on top of that us turned off the subject. It's like Feynman in Brasil!
yanjuk 10y ago
I taught my two kids long division in about ten 40-minute sessions spread over 5 days. I sat with each child as we learnt the procedure. To begin with I held the pencil and asked questions, then the child took over the writing and I monitored to fix mistakes until finally the task could be performed/practiced solo. In this one-on-one practice approach misconceptions are eliminated quickly at the start. It could not easily be replicated in a large group. Instead the approach in the article seems to be about groups of people identifying each other's misconceptions. Either way the effectiveness lies in avoiding bad habit formation. If you look at YouTube each method of arithmetic has variants and you can pick the one that looks best. e.g. I chose a method of multiplication with consistent placing for the carries which reduced error considerably over what I was taught at school.
madengr 10y ago
Americans who need to be good at math, are good at math. If you don't use it, you lose it. Hell, I'm an EE, so I'm probably one of those who would be considered "good at math" (at least by layman opinion), yet I may do at most a couple of integrals a year. I'm mostly just doing basic algebra on an RPN calculator. Though I did ace all that EM theory, random proceses, etc in grad school; do I use the math behind it? Rarely.
pessimizer 10y ago
Looks like the answer is buried at the end: "Finland, meanwhile, made the shift by carving out time for teachers to spend learning. There, as in Japan, teachers teach for 600 or fewer hours each school year, leaving them ample time to prepare, revise and learn. By contrast, American teachers spend nearly 1,100 hours with little feedback."
daodedickinson 10y ago
Well, a lot of people came to America hoping they would need math less. Americans stink at it because they feel they don't need it and when they feel otherwise it will be too late. It's easy enough to encourage seduction too math as the article suggests, but the real challenge is somehow blocking out more and more distractions (other options) when you can't reduce them because freedom and democracy are national ideals. Math can be interesting but how do you keep it more interesting than video games when you don't have a culture willing to regulate them as harshly as South Korea or China? How do you keep people from following Howard Hughes and having fewer friends, staying mostly home, and watching an astonishing amount of recorded video? Howard Hughes was hardly someone who could do nothing with math, but there are a lot of pitfalls in America to which the schools are blinded or can't do anything about. How do the schools, with such little authority, reduce problem behavior AND help something more difficult and at least supposediy more healthful fill the void. This is the problem with the democratic subject that Plato described: in democracy so many behaviors must be acceptable / not disqualifying for power and respect that people cycle through a great diversity of them. This is far more a pressing issue than whether teachers already trying to teach math do it this way or this other way: if they still have to compete with more and more cell phones and games and other entertainments and Babel, they will get diminishing returns.
- daodedickinson 10y ago
  To put it more succinctly, when you have this American phenomena often labeled "ADHD", whatever you think is really happening there, education must be viewed in light of the whole attention economy of the child's life.
rhapsodic 10y ago
Here in America, we call people who excel at football "heroes", and people who excel at math "nerds".
njharman 10y ago
Can't read article, paywall or adblock or something. Is it because our popular culture ridicules being good at math as nerdy? Is it because almost every american can name at least one sports or pop singer who makes multiple millions but probably has never even heard of a mathematician let alone be able to name one. The root cause is we don't value math as a society. Until we do, we won't spend the effort needed to figure out how to teach individuals better.
- mgr86 10y ago
  text dump: http://ix.io/1AfP http://ix.io/1AfP
whoops1122 10y ago
American dont stink at Math, American stinks at training kids in general, you cant give too much home work, kids need time to play, and the Chinese kid in China is at school till 9 pm constantly doing and practice math. yeah, an avg American kid is not going to be as good as avg Chinese kid. However, the top 3-5% of the American kid is going to be just as good if not equal to their Chinese counter parts. In China, education made all kids above avg regardless if you are below or above intellectually. In America, an idiot is going to be an idiot, and a genius will take that step to be a genius.
graycat 10y ago
I'm an American, and I don't "stink at math". I will compare my math SAT and GRE scores with any nation in the world. Similarly for my Ph.D. dissertation in applied math and my peer-reviewed, published papers in applied math. Opps, those paper were already reviewed as "new, correct, and significant" according to international standards. Next, uh, I do have some opinions about the NYT, e.g., their track record on getting and publishing good, correct information. Hint: That opinion could not go much lower.
hackermailman 10y ago
Japan times wrote a response to this article: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/11/23/issues/teaching-quality-lesson-quantity-may-key-japans-top-math-marks/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/11/23/issues/teac... Not mentioned is the Japanese preschool system: http://www.ernweb.com/educational-research-articles/mathematics-teaching-in-japan/ http://www.ernweb.com/educational-research-articles/mathemat... "Seventy percent of all children attend preschool for three years. Young children are gradually trained in important school-related behavior, practicing routines that will be used throughout elementary school." "Two traits pervade the culture and are taught by both parents and teachers: effort and persistence."
joe_karn 10y ago
As far as I'm concerned, higher national IQ, more discipline in the classroom and possibly a longer school day is why America 'sucks' at Math compared to Japan. May be more of one and less of another, and let's not ignore the negative relationship between mean class IQ and the frequency of disruptions. This is only up to a point - potted plants have very low IQ but aren't disruptive, but like American students they also suck at maths. Anyway, I can say to nytimes, without reading the article that panflutes and sandals can only help America's children so much.
macawfish 10y ago
I hear Americans all the time telling themselves that they are bad at math. These are my friends and family. I tell people that I'm into math. >50% of the time the first thing someone says is "I'm bad at math."

134 points by theunamedguy 10y ago

It's an anecdote, but... Guy I went thru undergrad with went to a high school where the 10th grade algebra class requires naming the principle to be applied for each step in a problem, as if it were a proof. This is painful. But he'd learned algebra properly. I hadn't. His math grades were much better than mine for a long time.

tgarma1234 10y ago

Because there are a thousand other things you can do that are worthwhile and there is no anxiety to be perceived as "smart" in the way that math requires. Just party on and network and land yourself in a start up. You can pay someone else to do the math because the real money is in MAKING DECISIONS.

groys 10y ago

Christianity

SixSigma 10y ago

Because they don't spell it as Maths, obviously.

mc32 10y ago
We spell it the same, we just abbreviate it differently.

11thEarlOfMar 10y ago

It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots. One could argue that for whatever reason, many of the professors, researchers and postdocs at those schools learned math in other countries, but, if these lists are to be believed, the US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world. So two questions: 1) Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education? 2) If the primary and secondary education in the ROW produces such a high level of capability relative to the US population, why aren't their universities better represented in the rankings? [1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mathematics http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mat... [2] http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2015/mathematics http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...

mioelnir 10y ago
I've read (once, somewhere, on the internet) that these types of rankings are also distorted by the fact that in the US the top research institutes are usually teaching and part of a University, while they are not teaching in many other parts of the world.
- akiselev 10y ago
  I'm not sure whether non-US research institutions are less teaching focused overall than their state-side counterparts but there are plenty of other confounding cultural factors. In Russia, for example, the most elite science/engineering university (PhysTech) isn't as well known globally as MIT or Caltech because it is made up of dozens of research institutes that publish under their own name instead of under the umbrella organization. As a result most academics dont know that all of this research is produced by a single (albeit distributed wrt geography and branding) powerhouse.
saint_fiasco 10y ago
We shouldn't mix up the max skill level with the average skill level. They are very different issues, and different educational systems may optimize for different things. For example, maybe if you are a very good mathematician in the US you can get high-paying jobs for intelligence agencies, data analytics, that sort of thing. But if you are a mathematical genius in another country, maybe they don't have the same job opportunities so you have to go into math teaching. That would cause the US to have very good mathematicians and at the same time terrible math teachers.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  To me the state of math instruction is illustrated by a 3rd grade math book, teacher's edition, with the answer key in it. (3rd grade math answers should be obvious by inspection.)
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    That's sad but I totally believe it after some interaction with teachers.

meira 10y ago

Because you don't use math while watching TV and Reading FB newsfeed all day long.

danharaj 10y ago
Subscribe to the right fb feeds and you would

fspeech 10y ago

Math is the lingua franca of sciences. It should be taught like a language as well. In our elementary schools we don't have teachers dedicated to teaching math. Instead we have teachers who are afraid of math themselves.

andrewclunn 10y ago

If you convert our scores to metric it's not so bad.

shams93 10y ago

I think it is related to our refusal to embrace the metric system, kids at a young age get thrown off by our archaic system of measurement.

geomark 10y ago
I've wondered about that. The imperial system is positively awkward. What about other countries that also use the imperial system instead of metric? Are they also behind?
- tomc1985 10y ago
  The UK uses their own screwy imperial units for some measures
  - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
    Not really. You still go to the shops and buy things in litres and kilograms, and their entire construction industry is in metric. The only commercial product that isn't in metric, funnily enough, is beer and cider. I guess getting pissed people to change proved harder than everything else.
    - anexprogrammer 10y ago
      ...and milk is always pints. An awful lot of products come in imperial sizes but metric labelling - 454g jars of jam etc. Timber sometimes gets called 2x4 even though it's 50x100, but that seems less common now. Oddly just about everyone still uses feet and inches for their height. I hear kilos more and more often for weight, I don't think I've ever heard cm for height in the UK.
      - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
        > ...and milk is always pints. Returned milk is (you know, in dem bottles). But milk you buy in the store is 1L, 2L, etc. > Oddly just about everyone still uses feet and inches for their height. True. Probably because of the recognition of the 6' centering measurement. People know that if you're 6', that's kind of the cut-off for what is referred to as 'tall enough'. Over that, you're generally 'tall'. Under that, and you're average height.

krapht 10y ago

I found math class stultifying and boring until the focus switched from learning algorithms for computation to doing proofs of relations and concepts. Also I began to discover the actual applications for advanced math, instead of learning it for its own sake. I wish in hindsight that instead of taking endless years of calculus there was a high school version of real analysis, and exercise problems rooted in real-life to motivate the learning.

thearn4 10y ago
I teach calculus on the side sometimes for beer money (ie. adjunct), and has made me stronger in my long-running feeling that we teach way too much calculus in the STEM fields. Most people "in the trenches" writing tools that would make use of the fundamentals in their field (either in the physical sciences or engineering disciplines) tend to agree that linear algebra has disproportionately little representation compared to calculus. To be fair, that is somewhat of a downstream problem from mathematics departments, and speaks more about the possibility of stagnation in the undergraduate science and engineering curricula. fair caveat though: my PhD is in numerical linear algebra...
politician 10y ago
Reading this comment as a programmer, I had the horrific thought that we treat our children the same way we treat our computers: programming them with algorithms, debugging them with failing grades, executing them for test scores. It's barbaric. Leave the program execution to the computers, give the children critical thinking skills.
Merad 10y ago
I didn't really get into math until calculus, personally. There was this moment of realization that calc starts to describe the real world, opening up the ability to do all kinds of useful and interesting things. I ate up calc 1-3 and differential equations, even though I have no real use for them today. OTOH, my brain apparently just is not equipped to deal with proofs, either in mathematics or comp sci theory. They were always an enormous struggle for me.
- 10y ago

danharaj 10y ago

Put 100 mathematicians, math educators, and policy makers into a room and ask them to come up with a good mathematics curriculum. They'll come out with 101 proposals. That's not a problem, really. Mathematics is not merely about mathematical substance, but also mathematical process (the two are intimately related), and not just process, but the process of discovering processes. Curricula, standards, directives, are all substance. Policy makers want to put their name on a thing, a substance and give it to everyone else and hope that process develops... somehow. I think you have to contextualize mathematical in the broader problem with american public schools: they're awful, awful places for many students including me. I ended up studying higher mathematics in college and still study on my own for my own pleasure (and I get to apply some really high powered ideas to programming once in a while which grants a satisfaction that lingers). I think my math education could have been advanced 5 or even 10 years if public school weren't such a soul-crushing stultifying nightmare of procedure and compliance.

yorwba 10y ago
> (and I get to apply some really high powered ideas to programming once in a while which grants a satisfaction that lingers) Mind sharing what some of these ideas are?
- danharaj 10y ago
  Lately I've been experimenting with comonads to structure stateful code. The idea is that a comonad describes the interface for a state machine, and you can convert any comonad in Haskell into a monad transformer which acts as a restricted form of the state monad. The state monad describes expressions that can arbitrarily manipulate a state of some type. The monad you derive from a comonad does not have direct access to its state, the comonad describes all the allowed manipulations and queries. This is all described and implemented here: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/kan-extensions-5.0.1/docs/Control-Monad-Co.html https://hackage.haskell.org/package/kan-extensions-5.0.1/doc... In particular, the type: data CoT w m a = CoT { runCoT :: forall r. w (a -> m r) -> m r } Let's unpack this. The following type represents a state machine whose nodes are labeled with a continuation demanding an `a` and executing an effect: w (a -> m r) The forall quantification in CoT means that it does not care what the result value is. It will take a state machine, manipulate it for a bit, produce an `a`, pick a continuation from the state machine and execute it. That's a lot going on! I don't have time or space to explain how this is actually useful but here's a handy approximation: - `w` is an interface - `w s` is a model labeled with a value of `s` for each state it can occupy. These labels are a sort of view. - `CoT w m a` is a controller that can manipulate a model and compute in some effectful context. High powered MVC. The upshot is that because we're leaning on Functors, Monads, and Comonads there are extremely well behaved and natural composition operations. For example, `fmap` allows us to change the view of a model by applying a pure function. The fact that `CoT` is a monad means that we can run controllers in serial, as well as combine our controller languages in sensible ways. The fact that `w` is a comonad means we can reason about the behavior of models equationally. This lets us transform, compose, and compare models with mathematical precision. This is a project I only seldom work on in my spare time. I have already applied it to writing GUI's and game logic to good effect but I'm still exploring the design space regarding reactivity and temporal behavior. This has led me to reading the mathematical literature pertaining to products of comonads/sums of monads (they're dual).

anexprogrammer 10y ago

Everyone believes they are bad at maths, so they are. It applies just as much to the UK. My youngest believes this strongly, yet when we were quizzing, or helping with homework, she didn't seem to find it too hard, just believed it so. She certainly didn't get those beliefs from home! Looking at my kids maths lessons, especially in late Junior, so much effort was spent to actually hide the maths that I wonder they learnt anything!

matthewhall 10y ago
I love math and I think I'm pretty good at it
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  OK, not everyone, but it seems to be the subject that people are most likely to claim to be terrible at. Schools don't help by sucking all the fun out of it. Was always my favourite subject, but that was despite school rather than because of.
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
> Everyone believes they are bad at maths, so they are. Everyone? I love math.
- dagw 10y ago
  I love math too. Even have a Masters in it. Still wouldn't say I'm particularly good at it, certainly not as good as many of my classmates.

tomc1985 10y ago

If they would teach kids to play with math (or any form of knowledge, for that matter), and not just run through 10,000 rote problems, maybe we'd rank better. Especially word problems -- most of them felt like they were written for students wearing intellectual blinders... if you had any modicum of relevant knowledge outside of the lesson oftentimes word problems were impossible to solve

increment_i 10y ago
Could not agree with you more. Another thing I've noticed anecdotally is that many of the math teachers in the secondary system in North America do not have a broad understanding of math themselves. Math is given the most rote treatment of all the subjects, and I suppose this is understandable given the abstract nature of math. But students are never told why they should care about abstractions in the first place, which is unfortunate. Many high schools simply refuse to speak the students' language. I suspect this will change in this century. IMO, if a high school really wanted to be progressive, they would totally reform their math curriculum to include more exposure to applied math and computer sciences. Young folks should be using math to build their own Instagram or Minecraft clones that they can deploy to their devices that VERY DAY - using the concepts they've been introduced to in mathematics.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Not sure how math helps you deploy instagram clones. I mean set theory, logic, computable functions but that's a big stretch.
  - increment_i 10y ago
    Ok so taken literally, that was a bad example. But instead of giving me a textbook of problems where I solve y = mx + b, can I use mathematical concepts in a creative capacity? To do things I care about as a high schooler? Can I see those concepts on my device today?
  - rprospero 10y ago
    I would argue that every instagram filter is merely a linear algebra problem.

rdtsc 10y ago

> Without the right training, most teachers do not understand math well enough to teach it the way Lampert does. My high school math teacher majored in math and then got a certificate in teaching. She wasn't a teacher who was told to teach math among other classes. She knew all the advanced stuff (beyond what a high school curriculum required), she was excited about it, she could explain things in various ways, give analogies, was available after class to ask questions and so on. And that is post-collapse Soviet Union full of corruption, poverty and other crap like that. Surely if we can spend trillions of dollars on F-35 we can get us some good math teachers...? In this country I see a large disconnect between words "Oh kids are so very very important, they are our future, they can't play outside too far because they will be abducted and we care so much for them" and deeds: I see large classrooms, not enough teachers, teacher are underpaid, not interested in math. Funding comes from local property taxes so rich neighborhood get more money, poor ones get less. Another thing is I remember teachers were respected. Imagine how we react to someone saying "Oh they are doctor. And then everyone nods, right, they are very successful. Or lawyer, or works for Google and so on". Why isn't teaching like that? My mom tells me someone back home thought she was a teacher, because she at her age spoke some English. And she took it as a great complement. In this country you tell someone you thought they were a high-school teacher and they might get offended. Something is very wrong here... As for making it more exciting -- initially I studies math by repetition and it worked pretty well for me. I think works because kids are amazing at memorizing stuff. Why not first take advantage of that? Starting them out with set theory sounds all cool on paper that is not how humans learn. Multiplication table, basic patterns, even operations are fine to memorize first. Later on it makes most sense to introduce proofs, word problems (I remember doing lots of word problems, our teachers were crazy for them) and so on.

slfnflctd 10y ago
> She knew all the advanced stuff [...] was excited about it, could explain things in various ways, give analogies I envy you this experience. I still remember telling a math teacher in 8th or 9th grade that I wanted more information on why a formula worked, how it was originally derived, or any different way of looking at it to better understand it. She essentially said, "you don't need to worry about all that, just memorize it." It was intensely frustrating for me, and contributed to me losing interest in academic pursuits. I don't know how you can train teachers to be more open to this kind of thing, but it sure would help.

nemo44x 10y ago

Math is hard work. I was bad at math. I went to college a couple years after I graduated high school where I made little effort to challenge myself. But after figuring things out, at 20 I decided I wanted to do computer science as I enjoyed some of the programming skills I picked up (C++ of all things!). I was very unprepared for the math part of it and it was hard. I tested into a remedial math level and when I looked at the CS requirement I knew that wouldn't be a good way to start. So I bought a used math book and spent a few weeks studying hard so I could get into a decent math placement so I could be where I needed for CS. This was just the start. I had a long road with a lot of frustration but I made it. I made it because I never worked so hard at something up to that point in my life. There were times I thought it was hopeless but I just continued to do rote math problems, over and over again. And slowly the concepts started to sink in more and more. But there was always the frustration of missing the little details and forgetting a concept or not having enough experience honing a certain skill. But if I kept at it, over and over again, I would learn it and it suddenly became easy. I was "bad at math". It would have been so easy to quit and try something else. But I knew I wanted to not only pass my tests but really understand the calculus and differentials, etc I had to do. And it was the best thing I ever did for myself. Not only does working so hard at something prove you can work hard and achieve something but it shapes the way you see the world. Math is hard. Some of us just have to work harder. People should realize that failing is normal and if you keep at it you will eventually get it. For some people it takes longer than others. I could never create math. But with enough time I believe I could eventually truly learn anything because of this experience.

yazaddaruvala 10y ago
Congratulations! I'm always disappointed when people say "some people just can't learn X". It isn't that they cannot learn X, they just cannot learn it in the same time frame, and they shouldn't be expected to!
- nemo44x 10y ago
  I mean that's really the problem. For some reason we think things will just make sense once we are taught the lesson and we try an exercise. But that's so often not the case. Accept you'll never be the genius who creates new things - maybe you will but put that aside. Focus on trying hard and committing yourself. It doesn't matter if it's math or cooking food, the more you try it and think of it and accept failure the better you'll be. Accept your limits as a creator but never accept that you can't understand a concept if you spend the time you personally need at it.

58 10y ago

Might it have something to do with this? https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-u... I'm no fan of the American education system, having suffered through it a full 12 years, but I have to believe it's not the primary cause here. Math is hard, and near impossible if you're stressed. I excelled at math, despite relatively boring math curricula. Why? Because I wasn't stressed as a kid, my family was stable and did not suffer from any serious physical and mental illness, and one parent always made enough money so that the other could stay at home throughout my entire childhood. I had an enormous advantage, and most all of the kids I knew through advanced math classes and math competitions had a similarly charmed existence.

WillPostForFood 10y ago
This article debunks the Washington Post claim about a majority of kids in public school being in poverty. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/no-a-majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-not-in-poverty.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/no-...
- pessimizer 10y ago
  By failing at reading comprehension. There's a vast difference between public school students and school-aged children. In Chicago, only 10% of public school students are white[1], with a 45% white population[2] (for example.) Conflating the two things seems almost willfully deceptive. edit: [1] http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/Stats_and_facts.aspx http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/Stats_and_fac... [2] http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/1714000 http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/1714000
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    What's wilfully deceptive is pointing to one city and claiming it is relevant to national statistics. The WP Article assets a majority of public school students IN THE US are in poverty, that is objectively false. So the reading comprehension problem isn't with the article I cited.

yazaddaruvala 10y ago

One word: Football. One of my friends graduated with an engineering degree from MIT. I once asked him if he could have traded that to be better at Football, would he? His response was that if there was even a remote chance he was good enough to play in the NFL he would have traded education for that chance. Humans innately crave fame, and the lack of scarcity that is perceived to come with it. The USA has sadly, and unknowingly groomed that romanticism of fame, towards consumables (this might be the long term effects of Capitalism). Rather than grooming that romanticism of fame towards research/intelligence/creation (the renaissance). Even local to the film industry, almost 100% of 10 year olds want to grow up to be Brad Pitt or Salma Hayek, not George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg[0]. Even fewer want to be the writer. Even local to football, everyone knows the names of the player that caught that hail marry, got that big hit, recovered that fumble. Few know the names of the people who create those plays. Only in recent years have the masses truly started to recognize creators/intelligence with the title famous (Gates, Jobs, Zuck). But again for the wrong reasons, i.e. for their money. Even artists Picasso, Beethoven (adored for generations) have only truly been appreciated by the aristocracy, i.e. the rich and "mathematically" acute. Which way do you suspect the causal link lies? Are we first intelligent, therefore we appreciate the intelligent? Do we first appreciate the intelligent, therefore we become intelligent? [0] I mean no disrespect to Brad Pitt or Salma Hayek, or actors in general. Good Actors need to be extremely intelligent, but this isn't why they are adored. I'd argue this part of them is even sadly shunned by the media and populace.

totalZero 10y ago
MIT has a pretty good football team. https://youtu.be/XnVcaHMsYqM https://youtu.be/XnVcaHMsYqM

droithomme 10y ago

People keep saying Americans stink at math, americans don't understand science, americans are ignorant, etc. And yet at the same time we have these sorts of track records: http://www.popsci.com/us-dominates-at-sending-stuff-to-mars http://www.popsci.com/us-dominates-at-sending-stuff-to-mars It's not just Mars or the moon, or decades ago, the US also is where most operating systems and software and CPUS are conceived of and designed. As well as countless other things that people who are so ignorant would not reasonably be expected to be able to do.

sssilver 10y ago
How many of the people involved in those accomplishments are boasting American middle school education?
tmerr 10y ago
I agree USA has an impressive track record for space exploration and is at the forefront of computing, but that seems like more of a reflection of our economy and top talent than overall math literacy. Ideally we would have the best of both worlds: good high school education, and a good economy, but for some reason the former lags behind.

saretired 10y ago

Some of it is cultural: Americans don't want their kids to have too much homework, in many cases they don't want to help with homework or are unable to; they want a silver bullet. Some of it is lack of qualified teachers, and part of that is the way public schools are funded from the local tax base--do it cheaply as possible. Some of it is political pressure to dumb things down so that students can be graduated from HS before they reach the legal drinking age. Some of it is the rise of the education ``experts'' who always have some new…silver bullet (Feynman had a lot to say about such experts after reviewing math textbooks for California in the early '60s). The new math came about as an almost hysterical reaction to Sputnik, when, in fact, the U.S. had plenty of highly qualified scientists and engineers who just happened to get beaten to the punch by the URSS. But no, the math curriculum had to change into some kind of Bourbaki for tots, meanwhile in fact the Soviets were teaching math the old-fashioned way--nice cognitive dissonance there. There are a lot of factors, and I don't see any magical way of improving curricula, getting better teachers, requiring more homework, etc.

ihaveahadron 10y ago
"americans" "Americans don't want their kids to have too much homework this wasn't the case for me. i'm american. maybe you're wrong?
ihaveahadron 10y ago
"americans" "Americans don't want their kids to have too much homework this wasn't the case for me. i'm american. maybe you're wrong?

rabboRubble 10y ago

In 4th grade, I got a C in math. During my teacher student grade review meeting, my male teacher told me "it's okay, girls don't do as well at math as boys." Yeah, so there's this as a reason. I definitely wasn't a good student until high school. I definitely had a bad teacher who gave me an excuse for YEARS to accept bad results in math. My mother still bitches about that guy to this day. I suspect I have a slight learning disorder that affected my ability to process numbers. I mix 6/9s. 7/9s when transcribing numbers. Made homework difficult. Once I got to the point where letters started replacing numbers in homework, I went from a C student to an A student in math and was competing for the top grade in my math classes. Once I learned that I could do the work, I did the work and excelled. I suspect that this type of bias affected more girls than just me, and these discouraged girls affected US scores.

atemerev 10y ago

The key to math education is practice. Even drilling, maybe. Other fields deal with concepts more or less mapped to the real world. Physics is about real world, more or less (right until you get to quants, then the level of abstraction rises dramatically). Same goes for biology, and even computer science in general. There, you can rely on words, which usually convey meaning. In math, you can't rely on words. You'll never understand even relatively simple things like complex analysis or Fourier transform just by reading about it -- words are never enough to transfer the knowledge to you. You need to play with it, solve actual problems, understand in practice how various "moving parts" are related to each other, and then accept the naming convention (which is almost an afterthought, born as a mean of reference, not as a way to describe things). Therefore, relentless practice and solving abstract problems (a lot of them) is the only way to teach (or learn) mathematical concepts. Some teachers want to make math more accessible with bringing it "down to earth", mapping mathematical concepts to more concrete problems. It is theoretically possible, and I was a supporter of this approach until very recently. However, math just doesn't work this way. Math is pure abstraction; linking the abstractions to earthly affairs too early shuts down mathematical thinking (creates biases that prevents applying mathematical insights to other fields that are different from the one learned). Mathematical abstractions cannot be transferred by words and formulas alone; they need to be internalized by practice and drilling.

Kenji 10y ago
Yes, and notation is key. If there is even just one symbol that the student can't understand, then the entire understanding of the paragraph, or even entire book, is at stake. However, I do think that examples and applications help a great deal. Sometimes, a mere description of first principles doesn't do it for me, and then, when I see an actual example, I suddenly understand it and the theory along with it.
Swizec 10y ago
Would you say that words and formulas are leaky abstractions then?
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I think they key is being able to jump between the narrative ( story ) domain and the formal symbols domain. At first, it is learning a language. Later, it is learning how to learn that language dynamically.

wirrbel 10y ago

One very interesting thought I read about: Modern math classes tend to be very applied. I.e. the primary objective is to get the student to be able to solve real world problems with math. (A farmer sells 3 potatoes for a dollar. How much do 8 potatoes cost?). There seems to be some indication however, that abstract math is more accessible to some children, especially if they aren't supported by parents during their homework, etc. Because of this real-world to mathematical-world translation step. By exploring ways to make math more accessible, "friendly" and useful, teachers might actually make it harder for students to pick up math. This is an interesting thought for me, because I tutored kids in math who were not doing good in school. I kind of ended up with a typical scheme to get them from "risk of failing the class" to Bs and occasionally As. First I would introduce a a few techniques (equation solving in every case and the mathematical topic of their class - logarithms, binomial terms, etc. - also) and then give them very simple drill exercises. And a lot of them that we would solve together. I.e. simplifying exponentials $exp(3) * exp(5) = exp(8)$ etc. I always made sure that they were able to solve these drill exercises eventually, and they were all able to, because they picked up the scheme. As a next step, I gave them the applied problems their teachers would ask them to solve, and made it into a translation problem. I.e. I explicitly told them that this was now just a translation. They could often identify with this because they self-identified often as language persons ("I like the literature class best", or "I like french class most"). I wouldn't ask them to solve the translation result right away. But they often just naturally did because it was not so different from the drill exercises. Point is, I do not at all understand why I was needed for this. The teachers consistently failed their students in class, by not providing them with the very basic math skills and confidence that they needed to solve more complex problems.

chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
> The teachers consistently failed their students in class, by not providing them with the very basic math skills and confidence that they needed to solve more complex problems. Finding a good math teacher in America is difficult because the good math students rarely become teachers.
gm-conspiracy 10y ago
It seems modern math classes place more emphasis on reading comprehension versus calculation.

kristopolous 10y ago

Where's our Dr Seuss of math?

dimino 10y ago

I've latched onto this as my explanation for why English students are worse with math (English counts numbers weirdly, but Asian languages do math within their language to perform counting): http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-1410304008 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-14103...

vog 10y ago

In contrast to this, note that in International Mathematics Olympiads, pupils/students from the USA are quite good: http://www.imo-official.org/ http://www.imo-official.org/

johan_larson 10y ago
Oh sure. The best education in the US is awesome, possibly the best anywhere. But the average is pretty sad, particularly compared to the rest of the first world.

naveen99 10y ago

The funny thing is addition and multiplication are black box operations for most software people (non-ee) also. I wish some analog stuff was included on those books like nand to tetris: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-create-a-circuit-from-basic-components-R-L-C-that-gives-me-an-adder-and-a-multiplier-of-two-analog-signals https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-create-a-circuit-from-basic-c...

ausjke 10y ago

The new SAT etc now puts more weighs on reading comprehension and make math less important, which further weakens the willingness to study math, so the Asians(who are traditionally better at math) will not dominate the SAT high scores. As a country this will only make math education much worse, it should be another way around, otherwise, you can not compete in the STEM field, which is crucial for future.

ausjke 10y ago
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search?subject=engineering&name= http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/sea... Chinese Tsinghua Univ beats MIT to take the top seat at USNews for engineering. I think this is the second time in a row. As far as I know, Chinese universities took the best students without considerations of gender at all. They do have AA for races but it is minimal. USA is moving towards to AA-for-school-and-workplace, I hope this will make more people happier with high self-esteem, in the meantime you lose your competitiveness quickly.

jason_slack 10y ago

I am 39, American, white and I am taking a math class at my local college. I am the oldest person in the class by far. I get A's, so do a few others. Most get C's. I do every homework problem. I do variations of the homework problems. I spend at least 6 hours outside of our class time (3 hours) doing the math. When we have tests the Instructor gives us problems that are not like the homework where she can see if we can evaluate and apply the concepts to things we haven't yet seen.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jimhefferon 10y ago

I teach math. I am impressed that when you read these comments, very few of them show evidence of having read the article. The article is about experience with actual students, with ones who have a real knack for the subject and would learn it despite what any teacher did, and with ones who waver. There proves to be a better way, which the article describes in various ways, including as "sense-making." One of the problems here is that everybody has a pre-formed opinion and does not seem to want to risk having to modify it with the evidence of experience.

qntty 10y ago
Do you have an opinion on math-circle inspired schools like Proof School[1]? To me it seems obvious that this is the direction that math education should go in for kids who are passionate about math. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_School
- jimhefferon 10y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't know anything about it (other than what I read in the link).
whack 10y ago
> "One of the problems here is that everybody has a pre-formed opinion and does not seem to want to risk having to modify it with the evidence of experience." That's probably the most accurate description of HN comments I've seen. People see a headline related to something they already have pre-existing beliefs about, they read a few paragraphs just to make sure they're on point, and then they jump straight to the comments to argue in favor of what they already know to be true. I'm willing to wager $10000 that a significant majority of HN commenters in any thread do not read the article in full, and even among those who do, a smaller minority actually post comments addressing the meat of what the article is saying.
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  I concur with this. I have to fight the urge to do it myself.

HarryHirsch 10y ago

Since no one has brought up "Nix the Tricks" yet, here's the link to the ebook: http://nixthetricks.com/ http://nixthetricks.com/ Foreigners are likely unaware that these are the algorithms routinely taught to US students in math class. There are no formal proofs, no emphasis on making sense - the only purpose is to have something memorizeable to have students pass the next test (and possibly the No-Child-Left-Behind test at the end of the year). There is no generalization, no focus on understanding. When you tell an American kid at university level "this is why concept XY makes sense" they don't understand why you might say this, they are only interested in the algorithm and the solution (and passing the next test, of course). Small wonder that anyone exposed to that curriculum sucks at math and on top of that us turned off the subject. It's like Feynman in Brasil!

yanjuk 10y ago

I taught my two kids long division in about ten 40-minute sessions spread over 5 days. I sat with each child as we learnt the procedure. To begin with I held the pencil and asked questions, then the child took over the writing and I monitored to fix mistakes until finally the task could be performed/practiced solo. In this one-on-one practice approach misconceptions are eliminated quickly at the start. It could not easily be replicated in a large group. Instead the approach in the article seems to be about groups of people identifying each other's misconceptions. Either way the effectiveness lies in avoiding bad habit formation. If you look at YouTube each method of arithmetic has variants and you can pick the one that looks best. e.g. I chose a method of multiplication with consistent placing for the carries which reduced error considerably over what I was taught at school.

madengr 10y ago

Americans who need to be good at math, are good at math. If you don't use it, you lose it. Hell, I'm an EE, so I'm probably one of those who would be considered "good at math" (at least by layman opinion), yet I may do at most a couple of integrals a year. I'm mostly just doing basic algebra on an RPN calculator. Though I did ace all that EM theory, random proceses, etc in grad school; do I use the math behind it? Rarely.

pessimizer 10y ago

Looks like the answer is buried at the end: "Finland, meanwhile, made the shift by carving out time for teachers to spend learning. There, as in Japan, teachers teach for 600 or fewer hours each school year, leaving them ample time to prepare, revise and learn. By contrast, American teachers spend nearly 1,100 hours with little feedback."

daodedickinson 10y ago

Well, a lot of people came to America hoping they would need math less. Americans stink at it because they feel they don't need it and when they feel otherwise it will be too late. It's easy enough to encourage seduction too math as the article suggests, but the real challenge is somehow blocking out more and more distractions (other options) when you can't reduce them because freedom and democracy are national ideals. Math can be interesting but how do you keep it more interesting than video games when you don't have a culture willing to regulate them as harshly as South Korea or China? How do you keep people from following Howard Hughes and having fewer friends, staying mostly home, and watching an astonishing amount of recorded video? Howard Hughes was hardly someone who could do nothing with math, but there are a lot of pitfalls in America to which the schools are blinded or can't do anything about. How do the schools, with such little authority, reduce problem behavior AND help something more difficult and at least supposediy more healthful fill the void. This is the problem with the democratic subject that Plato described: in democracy so many behaviors must be acceptable / not disqualifying for power and respect that people cycle through a great diversity of them. This is far more a pressing issue than whether teachers already trying to teach math do it this way or this other way: if they still have to compete with more and more cell phones and games and other entertainments and Babel, they will get diminishing returns.

daodedickinson 10y ago
To put it more succinctly, when you have this American phenomena often labeled "ADHD", whatever you think is really happening there, education must be viewed in light of the whole attention economy of the child's life.

rhapsodic 10y ago

Here in America, we call people who excel at football "heroes", and people who excel at math "nerds".

njharman 10y ago

Can't read article, paywall or adblock or something. Is it because our popular culture ridicules being good at math as nerdy? Is it because almost every american can name at least one sports or pop singer who makes multiple millions but probably has never even heard of a mathematician let alone be able to name one. The root cause is we don't value math as a society. Until we do, we won't spend the effort needed to figure out how to teach individuals better.

mgr86 10y ago
text dump: http://ix.io/1AfP http://ix.io/1AfP

whoops1122 10y ago

American dont stink at Math, American stinks at training kids in general, you cant give too much home work, kids need time to play, and the Chinese kid in China is at school till 9 pm constantly doing and practice math. yeah, an avg American kid is not going to be as good as avg Chinese kid. However, the top 3-5% of the American kid is going to be just as good if not equal to their Chinese counter parts. In China, education made all kids above avg regardless if you are below or above intellectually. In America, an idiot is going to be an idiot, and a genius will take that step to be a genius.

graycat 10y ago

I'm an American, and I don't "stink at math". I will compare my math SAT and GRE scores with any nation in the world. Similarly for my Ph.D. dissertation in applied math and my peer-reviewed, published papers in applied math. Opps, those paper were already reviewed as "new, correct, and significant" according to international standards. Next, uh, I do have some opinions about the NYT, e.g., their track record on getting and publishing good, correct information. Hint: That opinion could not go much lower.

hackermailman 10y ago

Japan times wrote a response to this article: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/11/23/issues/teaching-quality-lesson-quantity-may-key-japans-top-math-marks/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/11/23/issues/teac... Not mentioned is the Japanese preschool system: http://www.ernweb.com/educational-research-articles/mathematics-teaching-in-japan/ http://www.ernweb.com/educational-research-articles/mathemat... "Seventy percent of all children attend preschool for three years. Young children are gradually trained in important school-related behavior, practicing routines that will be used throughout elementary school." "Two traits pervade the culture and are taught by both parents and teachers: effort and persistence."

joe_karn 10y ago

As far as I'm concerned, higher national IQ, more discipline in the classroom and possibly a longer school day is why America 'sucks' at Math compared to Japan. May be more of one and less of another, and let's not ignore the negative relationship between mean class IQ and the frequency of disruptions. This is only up to a point - potted plants have very low IQ but aren't disruptive, but like American students they also suck at maths. Anyway, I can say to nytimes, without reading the article that panflutes and sandals can only help America's children so much.

macawfish 10y ago

I hear Americans all the time telling themselves that they are bad at math. These are my friends and family. I tell people that I'm into math. >50% of the time the first thing someone says is "I'm bad at math."