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A paraphrased anecdote I heard about French math education: "In America, they start by teaching you how to add two numbers, then once you've mastered that you

A paraphrased anecdote I heard about French math education: "In America, they start by teaching you how to add two numbers, then once you've mastered that you learn to subtract, then once you've got that down you learn to multiply and divide and so forth. In France they tell you: this is an arithmetic object. The operations on it are add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It's simple! It's a good way of cranking out a bunch of Fields medalists, while everyone else has no idea what's going on."

Koshkin 6y ago
To the question "what is 2 + 3" a French primary school pupil replied: "3 + 2, since addition is commutative". He did not know what the sum was equal to and could not even understand what he was asked about! https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
- agumonkey 6y ago
  To be honest, what he's criticizing is also what is lacking in post-primary school math education. The mechanical reduction (3 + 2 -> 5) leads to a road block when you start thinking into solving equations.. because there's no single path of reduction. You need to see the formulas as material you can transform in your mind.
mianos 6y ago
'Fields' or 'fields' or both, I laughed out loud. Mathematicians might find this quite funny.
nestorD 6y ago
Note that this was true at a time (some of my math teachers learned group theory in middle school) but that nowadays math education is much less abstract until the end of highschool. At this point there is a specialized track (preparatory classes) to get into the most prestigious engeneering and buisness schools that will have you cram mathematics / physics / computeur science / english / a mix of litterature of philosophy in two or three years. The student then get into the various school according to their grades on a serie of national exams. This track is very competitive (and as such often decried) but I believe that it is a very efficient way to get the top talents to the top institutions with a maximum of learning on the way (also note that this education is free and that the very best school will even pay you). Note that a student can also choose to get to college and ignore this track.
alexanderchr 6y ago
Tangent joke: > A British mathematician was giving a talk in Grothendieck's seminar in Paris. He started "Let X be a variety...". This caused some talking among the students sitting in the back, who were asking each other "What's a variety?". J.-P. Serre, sitting in the front row, turns around a bit annoyed and says "Integral scheme of finite type over a field". found it on /r/math: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7qjxbe/whats_your_favorite_math_joke_that_requires_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7qjxbe/whats_your_fav...

Koshkin 6y ago

To the question "what is 2 + 3" a French primary school pupil replied: "3 + 2, since addition is commutative". He did not know what the sum was equal to and could not even understand what he was asked about! https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html

agumonkey 6y ago
To be honest, what he's criticizing is also what is lacking in post-primary school math education. The mechanical reduction (3 + 2 -> 5) leads to a road block when you start thinking into solving equations.. because there's no single path of reduction. You need to see the formulas as material you can transform in your mind.

mianos 6y ago

'Fields' or 'fields' or both, I laughed out loud. Mathematicians might find this quite funny.

nestorD 6y ago

Note that this was true at a time (some of my math teachers learned group theory in middle school) but that nowadays math education is much less abstract until the end of highschool. At this point there is a specialized track (preparatory classes) to get into the most prestigious engeneering and buisness schools that will have you cram mathematics / physics / computeur science / english / a mix of litterature of philosophy in two or three years. The student then get into the various school according to their grades on a serie of national exams. This track is very competitive (and as such often decried) but I believe that it is a very efficient way to get the top talents to the top institutions with a maximum of learning on the way (also note that this education is free and that the very best school will even pay you). Note that a student can also choose to get to college and ignore this track.

alexanderchr 6y ago

Tangent joke: > A British mathematician was giving a talk in Grothendieck's seminar in Paris. He started "Let X be a variety...". This caused some talking among the students sitting in the back, who were asking each other "What's a variety?". J.-P. Serre, sitting in the front row, turns around a bit annoyed and says "Integral scheme of finite type over a field". found it on /r/math: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7qjxbe/whats_your_favorite_math_joke_that_requires_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7qjxbe/whats_your_fav...