Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

by aet • 12 years ago

32 4 12 years ago

nytimes.com

mobiuscog• 12 years ago

Because they're missing the ematics ?

cmollis• 12 years ago

a serious issue and an impressive indictment of the NEA. We spend an incredible percentage of the tax 'largesse' on education and yet we're still behind our peers (as defined by international assessment standards). Why? I don't believe it's the 'lack of resources' mantra drummed repeatedly by the education lobby during election season. It has to be in some large part that our teachers are compensated (relatively) poorly, and the methods they employ are woeful at best.

Typically, as evidenced by the article, we create something of value which is implemented better somewhere else (hello: manufacturing). Partly this is a socio-economic function germane to the US, but given the amount of focus given to education, it must be something more.

I find it difficult to believe that Asian and Finnish students are simply smarter than US students. Clearly not due to the cheap polemics of Gladwell, et al, that it's due to the three dimensional components of Asian languages (seriously??).

We are taught relatively poorly, as compared to other students internationally.

I am a typical example of this fact. I was never 'good at math'.. scoring fairly average on all assessments throughout lower and high schools. I went to College (above average State school), and decided to major in Computer Science and Mathematics and received my degree. I was taught (perhaps ironically) by mostly Asian teachers in my majors in ways that required us to think past the rote regurgitation of formulae.

I found a new appreciation for math for not only a formalism of logic, but of the Universe. I'm still not 'good at math'.

dventimi• 12 years ago

The question as asked is too much like, "When did you stop beating your wife?"

It presupposes something that isn't necessarily true. More concretely, it doesn't establish how it came to the conclusion that "Americans stink at math." Which Americans? What math? Where is the evidence?

Cannot recommend. But then again, the Times isn't really a very good newspaper.

cafard• 12 years ago

"A survey found that three-quarters of doctors inaccurately estimated the rates of death and major complications associated with common medical procedures, even in their own specialty areas."

Is that necessarily an indictment of their math, or could it be want of attention?

Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

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