"Superior" is only one bit of information, in that it only says "x is greater than y"...but not by how much, and with no measure of statistical significance. F

"Superior" is only one bit of information, in that it only says "x is greater than y"...but not by how much, and with no measure of statistical significance. Finland's technological and industrial output clusters with Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to a far greater extent than it does with countries outside Northern Europe. In the same way, when you look at the TIMSS, intra-European variance exists and is nontrivial, but European and East Asian nations do tend to cluster together quite a bit: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf See Table 3 on page 19. Top 5 countries in grade 8 in math: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan. The very top European countries are towards the lower end of the East Asian distribution in math, and are only close in 4th grade (before puberty onset).