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You’re vastly overestimating the quantity of high talent internationally. Take a look at the proportion of Colombia’s students that can answer these math proble
by CheezeIt 5y ago
You’re vastly overestimating the quantity of high talent internationally. Take a look at the proportion of Colombia’s students that can answer these math problems:
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/test-2012/form/ https://www.oecd.org/pisa/test-2012/form/
For example, 25% of Americans could solve problem 4, and 39% of Canadians, but only 2% of Colombians. (But 8% of Chileans, 15% of Serbians, 21% of Croatians.) Problem 5 is USA 9% to Colombia ~0% (Chile 2%). Problem 6, Taiwan is at 18%, USA 2%.
Colombia’s IMO team, drawn from its 50 million people, also gets trounced by Mongolia, population 6 million. And Mongolia isn’t just poor and polluted, half of that 6 million are horses. Only 3.3 million Mongolians are human.
Taking the 25% vs. 2% comparison, we could say Colombia’s quality-weighted population is effectively 50 million divided by 12.5, so it’s effectively a 4 million person country, measured in Americans.
- abraxas 5y agoChina is scoring very well and has a population that trounces all of the western world
- reidjs 5y agoDo you think math ability is the most important metric to hire by? I guess it’s correlated to intelligence but I’m not sure if many businesses are looking for intelligence, unfortunately.
- CheezeIt 5y agoThe context was software developers, so yes, that’s what’s relevant. The problems 1 through 5 are basic word problems and if you can’t reliably figure those out at 15, you aren’t going to be any good at software development. (I think, for problem 6, given a dysfunctional education system, you could excuse ignorance of what “average speed” means.) And businesses are looking for intelligence in other roles, too. That’s what gives you an advantage. Especially basic stuff like, being able to answer what is the smallest number in a chart.
- ulucs 5y agoA dysfunctional education system does much worse than failing to teach what average speed means. I seriously, seriously doubt the reasoning "Colombians can't math" is accurate, and don't believe the causes reliably imply "Don't hire Colombians for dev roles"
- akomtu 5y agoFor software devs? Yeah, absolutely. We aren't talking about cleaning crews here.
- nsonha 5y agoif that was true FAANG would have been hiring with math questions. In reality, by and large, math skills are not tested for software engineers, with the exeption of trading and such. It is relevant only to the degree of whether or not you can do high-school maths, and the assumption is anyone who can write code can.
- addicted 5y agoIf 25% of Americans can solve a problem, you only need 2.5% of the rest of the world to be able solve that problem to have double the absolute number of non Americans vs Americans who can solve that problem. You might need maybe 5% of the non US/non EU countries if we also exclude the EU countries, to get double the absolute number of non Americans who can solve it.
- addicted 5y agoAlso, that test is almost entirely culturally driven. The kind of problem is far more common in North America with its standardized testing driven education, than pretty much anywhere else in the world. I suspect if you asked someone to perform long division, or adding large numbers with decimals and carry overs by hand, instead, the non US countries would perform far better than Americans, who may not even have been taught how to do that.
- hnfong 5y agoNot sure whether you're looking at the same stats, but Asian countries/cities seem to have the best scores...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]