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Russia has an amazing math education tradition. I always recommend Russian math books and Russian math programs. They are excellent.

by rsj_hn 6y ago

quacked 6y ago
Every Russian and ex-Soviet I've ever met was extremely proud of their school system, which arose from the Soviet system.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  They really did a great job at math. The humanities were terrible, it was hopelessly politicized. But if you didn't want to deal with constant lectures about the struggles of the working classes, or constant coursework on marxism-leninism, you studied math or physics, or engineering. It helped, of course, that the government had as a national policy the promotion of STEM. But they did an amazing job at it, and produced a fantastic crop of world-changing talent.
  - geomark 6y ago
    What a great approach. The easy social studies courses are made so horribly boring that it drives students to study the hard sciences.
geomark 6y ago
Any titles you can recommend? I'm homeschooling my kid and have been using sample problems from both Russian and Singapore math. But I only have a single source for Russian math problems, which is a pdf of a paper by a Russian educator who taught in the US and then wrote a paper comparing the two educational systems. It's interesting because he talks about how algebra is a big scary subject that is introduced late in the American system, while in Russia they start doing algebraic-type problems early in primary but they are solved with pictures. So when algebraic notation is introduced later it's just a next step to the types of problems that students have already been solving.
- quacked 6y ago
  If you don't already have it, "Thinking Physics" by Lewis Carroll Epstein is very good. Also: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360071
  - geomark 6y ago
    "Thinking of Physics" is pretty great. Thanks for the rec.

Russia has an amazing math education tradition. I always recommend Russian math books and Russian math programs. They are excellent.

by rsj_hn 6y ago

Russia has an amazing math education tradition. I always recommend Russian math books and Russian math programs. They are excellent.

quacked 6y ago

Every Russian and ex-Soviet I've ever met was extremely proud of their school system, which arose from the Soviet system.

rsj_hn 6y ago
They really did a great job at math. The humanities were terrible, it was hopelessly politicized. But if you didn't want to deal with constant lectures about the struggles of the working classes, or constant coursework on marxism-leninism, you studied math or physics, or engineering. It helped, of course, that the government had as a national policy the promotion of STEM. But they did an amazing job at it, and produced a fantastic crop of world-changing talent.
- geomark 6y ago
  What a great approach. The easy social studies courses are made so horribly boring that it drives students to study the hard sciences.

geomark 6y ago

Any titles you can recommend? I'm homeschooling my kid and have been using sample problems from both Russian and Singapore math. But I only have a single source for Russian math problems, which is a pdf of a paper by a Russian educator who taught in the US and then wrote a paper comparing the two educational systems. It's interesting because he talks about how algebra is a big scary subject that is introduced late in the American system, while in Russia they start doing algebraic-type problems early in primary but they are solved with pictures. So when algebraic notation is introduced later it's just a next step to the types of problems that students have already been solving.

quacked 6y ago
If you don't already have it, "Thinking Physics" by Lewis Carroll Epstein is very good. Also: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360071
- geomark 6y ago
  "Thinking of Physics" is pretty great. Thanks for the rec.