6 ms·

Yes I’ve seen these statistics a number of times and it really goes against so much of the “lol Americans are bad at math” meme all over the internet. America

by dmix 4y ago

Yes I’ve seen these statistics a number of times and it really goes against so much of the “lol Americans are bad at math” meme all over the internet. America is a society of disparate cultures, regions, communities, and outcomes (often in the same cities) that is far too fine grained to reduce it to generalities (with a few exceptions such as heavily nationally influenced/consistent things like health care insurance, defence spending, Wall St/banking policies, etc). Some people try to minimize it all to “class” like they found some Pandora’s box for all of life’s problems but that’s just as often flawed as any other generalization.

Jensson 4y ago
But those numbers are a lie, American whites scored 503, just look at the report page 34, it clearly says that white Americans scored 25 points higher than the average 478 at math. 478 + 25 = 503. He must have taken the wrong graph. Edit: Anyway, 503 is pretty average for Europeans, so it means that Americans are pretty average at math, as you'd expect for a large country. So it is still proof that Americans aren't bad, they are typical.
- slackerchews 4y ago
  I didn't lie... Page 16 of my OECD link shows that the average was 505 for 2018... EDIT:: Nevermind I'm a dumbass. that graph is for reading and literacy.... guess I know how I'd score...
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    We’ve all been there. At least all of us who care enough to argue about shit online and support it with sources.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Bad at math and reading?
- dmix 4y ago
  Fair enough. Although being the median with such a large country is still pretty divergent from the popular narrative I was comparing to. Those sorts of generalized nationwide numbers wasn’t my point anyway, rather proper data analysis and putting data into the wider context of the various communities/finer demographics/etc leads to far more useful conclusions than national level ones alone. Similar to critiques of the GDP as a metric for success. It’s not surprising the default critique on Reddit/Twitter is always using some European country with a homogeneous culture and a small population centered around ~2-3 major cities at most vs the entire US.
  - bandrami 4y ago
    There is an entire education consultancy industry whose financial viability depends on convincing people that American public education is in some kind of crisis when it isn't; it's actually a little above average, as we see. Now, would I like it to be way above average? Sure, and I'm willing to make the public investment to make that happen. But starting from the premise of "we're failing miserably" is going to lead to the wrong conclusions.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > Those sorts of generalized nationwide numbers wasn’t my point anyway, rather proper data analysis and putting data into the wider context of the various communities/finer demographics/etc leads to far more useful conclusions than national level ones alone. What conclusions would those be? > It’s not surprising the default critique on Reddit/Twitter is always using some European country with a homogeneous culture and a small population centered around ~2-3 major cities at most vs the entire US. If you'd prefer you could compare whatever nation you'd like with individual US states. You have plenty of US states to pick and choose from. Regardless, I don't see this sort of statistics rigour when comparing the US to "Europe" as a whole, in spite of the heterogeneous nature of the whole continent (some countries even have regions where people speak entirely different languages) and the fact that the population of "Europe" is well over twice that of the US. But I guess the point might just be to shut down discussions to avoid conclusions and introspection.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dr_dshiv 4y ago
Poverty is different from class. The poverty achievement gap is 2x the race achievement gap. The following article describes a study that claims that poverty “entirely accounts” for racial gaps. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/achievement-gaps-in-schools-driven-by-poverty-study-finds/2019/09/22/59491778-dd73-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/achievement-g...
- paisawalla 4y ago
  I can't read the article, but does it control for race within poverty? A lot of poverty conclusions are confounded by race, yet even within poor cohorts you will find significant disparities by race. For example, > Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 130 points higher than the national mean for all blacks. https://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html https://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html This chart visualizes that point: SAT scores of whites in the poorest segment exceed those of blacks from all but the richest segment, and Asians exceed them no matter their income: https://resources.corwin.com/sites/default/files/singleton_2e_figure_3.2.pdf https://resources.corwin.com/sites/default/files/singleton_2...
  - simplotek 4y ago
    I'm not sure you read your own source. It seems you just cherry-picked a couple of passages that support racist views and decided to ignore everything else. Your own source mentions not only the correlation between income and SAT scores, but it also points out a link between quality of the education services provided to some communities and social pressure. It's also telling that the outliers are explained in a way that boils down to "they succeed in spite of everything we throw at them".
    - derangedHorse 4y ago
      It seems like you’re projecting racist views onto the parent comment. It never discounted the possibility of other race-related factors being the cause of the achievement gap, it was just challenging whether all of it could be accredited to wealth disparities.
monero-xmr 4y ago
America also accepts way, way more immigrants than any other developed nation. Japan? None. Norway? Zilch. Netherlands? Come onnnn. They get handfuls but as a percentage of population the USA takes in boatloads and bus loads of immigrants every month. When you look at statistics that say the US is lower in this or that, remember that America takes in millions of dirt poor immigrants each year, and their circumstances skew the numbers. However they get assimilated and integrated, and a generation later their kids are going to the Ivy League and starting businesses.
- himlion 4y ago
  Ironically, as a Dutch tech worker without a degree the USA is one of the very very few countries I can't emigrate to.
  - bandrami 4y ago
    The US tech obsession with degrees is stupid and self-defeating. You'll regularly see ads for a web programmer requiring a BS in computer science. Somebody with a BS in comp sci should be able to write a (very simple) operating system, which is not what you need. It's even weirder because some jobs simply require any bachelor's degree, whatsoever, which is how I became a sysadmin after being a classics major. This is just explicit class gatekeeping.
    - localplume 4y ago
      If anything I feel like the US is an outlier in qualification requirements. It feels like every European country requires degrees for every single tech job, whereas in the US you can get by without one or just a BS. The amount of jobs I have seen in the EU that require an MS even though it really shouldn't is insane. I think every single technical ESA role requires an MS at minimum, whereas you can easily work at NASA with just a BS, which doesn't really make much sense. Also you can still go to community college/a state school to get a BS? Or join the Army or something, take a low risk MOS, get them to fund your bachelors. The US is way less class prohibitive and has far more class mobility than the EU as a whole so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
misssocrates 4y ago
I bet everyone can guess who leads the US Math league to victory?
simplotek 4y ago
> Yes I’ve seen these statistics a number of times and it really goes against so much of the “lol Americans are bad at math” meme all over the internet. I never came across any of the sort. What I come across frequently is the extension of the American exceptionalism mindset that leads some US natives to believe they are exceptional at math in spite of evidence failing to support their exceptionalism views. > America is a society of disparate cultures, regions, communities, and outcomes (often in the same cities) that is far too (...) I also see this all too often: the follow-up to the exceptionalism mindset failing to support their beliefs in a rational basis, and proceeding to cherry-pick subsets that suit their exceptionalism views. It's like claiming that Americans are all tall athletic and exceptional basketball players, and supporting that exceptionalism view by pointing out that Michael Jordan and LeBron James are US citizens. Meanwhile, ignoring that the average us citizen might have more in common with Danny DeVito. The US population is over 330M people, and its an unrivaled economic and technological powerhouse. Of course you can find hundreds of exceptional individuals. But being able to find a champion among the masses is not the point of a statement like "Americans are good at math". Baselines matter a lot, and even you admit that the US does not look great by attempting to cherry pick your way out of that.
rhaway84773 4y ago
Other societies are also societies of disparate cultures. Most other societies also don’t tend to have every group at average, but some groups above average and others lower. If you break other societies with higher average scores down by groups along fault lines in those societies, the top groups in those societies will also be doing much better than the bottom groups, and considering they have higher average scores, the top groups will likely be doing better than the top groups in the US.
heywhatupboys 4y ago
> America is a society of disparate cultures, regions, communities, and outcomes (often in the same cities) There are cities in Europe with histories spanning thousands of years, but were apart until only 30 years ago. There are countries with multiple ethnicities, multiple official languages.

by dmix 4y ago

Jensson 4y ago

But those numbers are a lie, American whites scored 503, just look at the report page 34, it clearly says that white Americans scored 25 points higher than the average 478 at math. 478 + 25 = 503. He must have taken the wrong graph. Edit: Anyway, 503 is pretty average for Europeans, so it means that Americans are pretty average at math, as you'd expect for a large country. So it is still proof that Americans aren't bad, they are typical.

slackerchews 4y ago
I didn't lie... Page 16 of my OECD link shows that the average was 505 for 2018... EDIT:: Nevermind I'm a dumbass. that graph is for reading and literacy.... guess I know how I'd score...
- tstrimple 4y ago
  We’ve all been there. At least all of us who care enough to argue about shit online and support it with sources.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Bad at math and reading?
dmix 4y ago
Fair enough. Although being the median with such a large country is still pretty divergent from the popular narrative I was comparing to. Those sorts of generalized nationwide numbers wasn’t my point anyway, rather proper data analysis and putting data into the wider context of the various communities/finer demographics/etc leads to far more useful conclusions than national level ones alone. Similar to critiques of the GDP as a metric for success. It’s not surprising the default critique on Reddit/Twitter is always using some European country with a homogeneous culture and a small population centered around ~2-3 major cities at most vs the entire US.
- bandrami 4y ago
  There is an entire education consultancy industry whose financial viability depends on convincing people that American public education is in some kind of crisis when it isn't; it's actually a little above average, as we see. Now, would I like it to be way above average? Sure, and I'm willing to make the public investment to make that happen. But starting from the premise of "we're failing miserably" is going to lead to the wrong conclusions.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > Those sorts of generalized nationwide numbers wasn’t my point anyway, rather proper data analysis and putting data into the wider context of the various communities/finer demographics/etc leads to far more useful conclusions than national level ones alone. What conclusions would those be? > It’s not surprising the default critique on Reddit/Twitter is always using some European country with a homogeneous culture and a small population centered around ~2-3 major cities at most vs the entire US. If you'd prefer you could compare whatever nation you'd like with individual US states. You have plenty of US states to pick and choose from. Regardless, I don't see this sort of statistics rigour when comparing the US to "Europe" as a whole, in spite of the heterogeneous nature of the whole continent (some countries even have regions where people speak entirely different languages) and the fact that the population of "Europe" is well over twice that of the US. But I guess the point might just be to shut down discussions to avoid conclusions and introspection.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dr_dshiv 4y ago

Poverty is different from class. The poverty achievement gap is 2x the race achievement gap. The following article describes a study that claims that poverty “entirely accounts” for racial gaps. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/achievement-gaps-in-schools-driven-by-poverty-study-finds/2019/09/22/59491778-dd73-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/achievement-g...

paisawalla 4y ago
I can't read the article, but does it control for race within poverty? A lot of poverty conclusions are confounded by race, yet even within poor cohorts you will find significant disparities by race. For example, > Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 130 points higher than the national mean for all blacks. https://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html https://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html This chart visualizes that point: SAT scores of whites in the poorest segment exceed those of blacks from all but the richest segment, and Asians exceed them no matter their income: https://resources.corwin.com/sites/default/files/singleton_2e_figure_3.2.pdf https://resources.corwin.com/sites/default/files/singleton_2...
- simplotek 4y ago
  I'm not sure you read your own source. It seems you just cherry-picked a couple of passages that support racist views and decided to ignore everything else. Your own source mentions not only the correlation between income and SAT scores, but it also points out a link between quality of the education services provided to some communities and social pressure. It's also telling that the outliers are explained in a way that boils down to "they succeed in spite of everything we throw at them".
  - derangedHorse 4y ago
    It seems like you’re projecting racist views onto the parent comment. It never discounted the possibility of other race-related factors being the cause of the achievement gap, it was just challenging whether all of it could be accredited to wealth disparities.

monero-xmr 4y ago

America also accepts way, way more immigrants than any other developed nation. Japan? None. Norway? Zilch. Netherlands? Come onnnn. They get handfuls but as a percentage of population the USA takes in boatloads and bus loads of immigrants every month. When you look at statistics that say the US is lower in this or that, remember that America takes in millions of dirt poor immigrants each year, and their circumstances skew the numbers. However they get assimilated and integrated, and a generation later their kids are going to the Ivy League and starting businesses.

himlion 4y ago
Ironically, as a Dutch tech worker without a degree the USA is one of the very very few countries I can't emigrate to.
- bandrami 4y ago
  The US tech obsession with degrees is stupid and self-defeating. You'll regularly see ads for a web programmer requiring a BS in computer science. Somebody with a BS in comp sci should be able to write a (very simple) operating system, which is not what you need. It's even weirder because some jobs simply require any bachelor's degree, whatsoever, which is how I became a sysadmin after being a classics major. This is just explicit class gatekeeping.
  - localplume 4y ago
    If anything I feel like the US is an outlier in qualification requirements. It feels like every European country requires degrees for every single tech job, whereas in the US you can get by without one or just a BS. The amount of jobs I have seen in the EU that require an MS even though it really shouldn't is insane. I think every single technical ESA role requires an MS at minimum, whereas you can easily work at NASA with just a BS, which doesn't really make much sense. Also you can still go to community college/a state school to get a BS? Or join the Army or something, take a low risk MOS, get them to fund your bachelors. The US is way less class prohibitive and has far more class mobility than the EU as a whole so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

misssocrates 4y ago

I bet everyone can guess who leads the US Math league to victory?

simplotek 4y ago

> Yes I’ve seen these statistics a number of times and it really goes against so much of the “lol Americans are bad at math” meme all over the internet. I never came across any of the sort. What I come across frequently is the extension of the American exceptionalism mindset that leads some US natives to believe they are exceptional at math in spite of evidence failing to support their exceptionalism views. > America is a society of disparate cultures, regions, communities, and outcomes (often in the same cities) that is far too (...) I also see this all too often: the follow-up to the exceptionalism mindset failing to support their beliefs in a rational basis, and proceeding to cherry-pick subsets that suit their exceptionalism views. It's like claiming that Americans are all tall athletic and exceptional basketball players, and supporting that exceptionalism view by pointing out that Michael Jordan and LeBron James are US citizens. Meanwhile, ignoring that the average us citizen might have more in common with Danny DeVito. The US population is over 330M people, and its an unrivaled economic and technological powerhouse. Of course you can find hundreds of exceptional individuals. But being able to find a champion among the masses is not the point of a statement like "Americans are good at math". Baselines matter a lot, and even you admit that the US does not look great by attempting to cherry pick your way out of that.

rhaway84773 4y ago

Other societies are also societies of disparate cultures. Most other societies also don’t tend to have every group at average, but some groups above average and others lower. If you break other societies with higher average scores down by groups along fault lines in those societies, the top groups in those societies will also be doing much better than the bottom groups, and considering they have higher average scores, the top groups will likely be doing better than the top groups in the US.

heywhatupboys 4y ago

> America is a society of disparate cultures, regions, communities, and outcomes (often in the same cities) There are cities in Europe with histories spanning thousands of years, but were apart until only 30 years ago. There are countries with multiple ethnicities, multiple official languages.