6 ms·

Would guess that it is at MIT/Stanford. A key thing to remember is that the top minds of the world aren't really emigrating to go to China to study or bring the

by aje403 9y ago

Would guess that it is at MIT/Stanford. A key thing to remember is that the top minds of the world aren't really emigrating to go to China to study or bring their family and that isn't going to change anytime soon. All roads still do not lead to China, and for good reason. Another important thing to take into consideration is having your trig identities memorized slightly better doesn't equivocate even remotely to higher intellectual output.

nopinsight 9y ago
By harder, I meant problems more intellectually challenging to solve. Compare hard questions in Chinese Gaokao exam to the hardest questions in SAT Math: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-examples-of-hard-Chinese-Gaokao-math-questions https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-examples-of-hard-Chinese... By the way, SAT Math questions are generally considered a piece of cake by most good students in East Asia (and they often get 800 or close without much extra preparation), which says something about the level of average American high school math education.
- aje403 9y ago
  Wow, that is a huge leap in difficulty. The SATs are simple math. The GREs are as simple, which is presumably four years farther along than the SATs. However, it's hard answering all those questions correctly in the given time frame (presumably). You'd need a randomly sampled set of chinese kids taking the SATs to see where they fit against our distribution of scores to draw further conclusions. Bear in mind, too, top american students are studying advanced math in high school (advanced meaning, enough to reasonably answer the questions on the quora page, with time to practice and get used to things like the proof questions) Note: I'm not trying to justify the american education system, just providing commentary and trying to level the comparison a bit.
  - nopinsight 9y ago
    Check out PISA 2015 which tests Chinese students from 4 provinces (200+ million population). They are on average above Massachusetts, the top scoring American state, in math. Note that fewer percentage of Chinese youths attend high school than American, so that might skew the comparison.
    - aje403 9y ago
      I think I've heard of that. Went ahead and looked at the charts and it looks like the only mention of China were Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. That's kinda biased. For example, we could equivalently grab all the students from stuyvesant high school or phillips exeter academy, make sure they know some set theory and basic calculus and what not, then make them take the exam. Anyway, don't mean to argue - it does appear on the news a lot "the chinese are out mathing us! America sucks!" with some political finger pointing, and my reaction is usually a facepalm coupled with wondering how controlled the comparison is.
      - nopinsight 9y ago
        No, the result I mentioned is not for those countries/territories. It is by mainland Chinese students. See: http://ncee.org/2016/12/pisa-2015-results/ http://ncee.org/2016/12/pisa-2015-results/ The range of schools in PISA is much broader than the top sliver of students in Phillips Exeter etc you mentioned.
      - MagnumOpus 9y ago
        > the only mention of China were Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore 0/4, none of these are really under the aegis of the Beijing regime - and while it is flattering of you to compare the entirety of the population of four countries with 40 million people to the single most selective school in the US, it is rather inaccurate to do so. If you look closer, PISA 2015 also had China in there, where the four provinces Jiangsu, Guangdong, Beijing, and Shanghai participated. Now poor illiterate migrants' kids might not get hukous to Beijing schools, so you might be right that this might be slightly biased - but even these four richer provinces have nearly the population of the US, so even if only 200 million Chinese are "outmathing us", it still makes a massive difference.
        aje403 9y ago
        I see now, interesting, the chart I was looking at completely omitted China for whatever reason, so that was what I was assuming he meant

by aje403 9y ago

nopinsight 9y ago

By harder, I meant problems more intellectually challenging to solve. Compare hard questions in Chinese Gaokao exam to the hardest questions in SAT Math: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-examples-of-hard-Chinese-Gaokao-math-questions https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-examples-of-hard-Chinese... By the way, SAT Math questions are generally considered a piece of cake by most good students in East Asia (and they often get 800 or close without much extra preparation), which says something about the level of average American high school math education.

aje403 9y ago
Wow, that is a huge leap in difficulty. The SATs are simple math. The GREs are as simple, which is presumably four years farther along than the SATs. However, it's hard answering all those questions correctly in the given time frame (presumably). You'd need a randomly sampled set of chinese kids taking the SATs to see where they fit against our distribution of scores to draw further conclusions. Bear in mind, too, top american students are studying advanced math in high school (advanced meaning, enough to reasonably answer the questions on the quora page, with time to practice and get used to things like the proof questions) Note: I'm not trying to justify the american education system, just providing commentary and trying to level the comparison a bit.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  Check out PISA 2015 which tests Chinese students from 4 provinces (200+ million population). They are on average above Massachusetts, the top scoring American state, in math. Note that fewer percentage of Chinese youths attend high school than American, so that might skew the comparison.
  - aje403 9y ago
    I think I've heard of that. Went ahead and looked at the charts and it looks like the only mention of China were Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. That's kinda biased. For example, we could equivalently grab all the students from stuyvesant high school or phillips exeter academy, make sure they know some set theory and basic calculus and what not, then make them take the exam. Anyway, don't mean to argue - it does appear on the news a lot "the chinese are out mathing us! America sucks!" with some political finger pointing, and my reaction is usually a facepalm coupled with wondering how controlled the comparison is.
    - nopinsight 9y ago
      No, the result I mentioned is not for those countries/territories. It is by mainland Chinese students. See: http://ncee.org/2016/12/pisa-2015-results/ http://ncee.org/2016/12/pisa-2015-results/ The range of schools in PISA is much broader than the top sliver of students in Phillips Exeter etc you mentioned.
    - MagnumOpus 9y ago
      > the only mention of China were Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore 0/4, none of these are really under the aegis of the Beijing regime - and while it is flattering of you to compare the entirety of the population of four countries with 40 million people to the single most selective school in the US, it is rather inaccurate to do so. If you look closer, PISA 2015 also had China in there, where the four provinces Jiangsu, Guangdong, Beijing, and Shanghai participated. Now poor illiterate migrants' kids might not get hukous to Beijing schools, so you might be right that this might be slightly biased - but even these four richer provinces have nearly the population of the US, so even if only 200 million Chinese are "outmathing us", it still makes a massive difference.
      - aje403 9y ago
        I see now, interesting, the chart I was looking at completely omitted China for whatever reason, so that was what I was assuming he meant