How bad American mathematics is, listen to what netizens say …

When people who have lived in America mention American mathematics, they will say, Hey, that's too bad. In fact, as we all know, this mainly refers to ordinary people, which is definitely not the case in higher-end fields, not to mention the top scientific research level in various fields. That is to say, among the winners of the Nobel Prize in Mathematics-Fields Prize, the number of American winners is still the largest.

Here, we mean that the average American is far from China in mental arithmetic and oral expression. It is no exaggeration to say that any old lady who sells vegetables in China is better than a master's or doctor's degree in the United States.

Here's the case. Example 1: My sister helps an American family take care of their children after school. The oldest child in that family is a teenage girl. One day, the girl asked my sister a question: What is seven plus eight? My sister came as soon as she opened her mouth: fifteen. The beautiful girl got up from the sofa and looked at my sister skipping. She shouted excitedly, "I find you are a genius!" " "Faint, elder sister is really smart. It is common to be praised as smart in China, and she has always been calm after listening to it. But the little girl's praise shocked her for a long time. By this standard, we in China are all geniuses!

Another thing my friend told me was that another friend remembered to exchange money for washing clothes after shopping in the store. In the United States and Canada, there is a coin called 25 cents, which is a quarter of 1 dollar, which is 25 cents. Many public washing machines, such as telephones, are started by inserting this coin. A friend handed the cashier a dollar and said, "please change it into quarters." "The cashier has some quarters in his hand and turns them upside down. She didn't understand how many quarters to give her. Finally, I made up my mind and counted five quarters and handed them to her!

To tell the truth, I just heard this story, and I don't believe it at all. How bad can math be? Does everyone know that this dollar is exchanged for four quarters? My friend reported the time, place and store name of her coin exchange one by one to prove that what she said was true.

Later, after living in the United States for a period of time, I gradually understood that one of the reasons why they played such a ridiculous joke in our view was that American schools basically did not cultivate children's computing ability. Students can use calculators from primary school. They focus on the understanding and application of mathematics, which is different from what we pay attention to. Another reason is that many people who work as cashiers can't even graduate from high school, and they owe money in education. They are not only poor in mathematics, but also poor in other aspects of knowledge. You know, you don't have to take high school exams in America. As long as you go to class honestly and stay out of trouble, you can get your diploma. Anyone who wants to go to college can go to the university above. The only difference is what kind of university he goes to.

But the story told by another friend made me overturn my conclusion. Some people with higher education are still confused about the basic concepts of mathematics.

This friend has been engaged in bridge design and reconstruction in an American company. One day, when he was reviewing his colleagues' drawings, he found an angle calculation error, so he corrected it and told his colleagues.

The young man is a newly recruited engineer in the company and has just obtained a master's degree in engineering.

After a while, the young man came to him with a drawing and asked him: How did this data come out? The friend said, "It's very simple. The sum of the internal angles of a triangle is equal to 180 degrees. Subtract this number from 180 degrees to get the correct angle. "

He nodded and stood wondering.

Then, he asked a question: "Do you say that the sum of the internal angles of all triangles is equal to 180 degrees?"

My friend will faint on the spot. ...

From Netease

Americans are poor at math.

However, it is not that simple to answer this question carefully. First of all, there are Asians in America. In fact, Asians are good at math, especially those who came to America in high school. Second, in the United States, some professional people, such as engineering, computer or mathematics, are also quite good at mathematics, but after all, there are few. Considering the above two reasons, the answer to this question can be summarized as follows: most whites and blacks who have received American education since childhood in the United States have poor math scores.

I have come into contact with Asians who have lived in the United States since childhood, or ABC (American-born China), but I have no deep friendship. Perhaps there are not many second-generation immigrants like me, so it is not easy to guess, but Americans have always had a long-term first impression of Asians: they are good at math. So, maybe Asians who have received American education since childhood are better at math than other Americans, but I don't have first-hand information.

Tell me about my classmates. My postgraduate major is big data analysis, which should be similar to the domestic management information system. There are 65,438+0/3 whites (including 65,438+0/5 Hispanics), 65,438+0/3 Indians and 65,438+0/3 East Asians (one Japanese, one Korean's parents are white, and the others are from China).

Because we have to do projects together all semester, at the beginning of the semester, we were divided into five groups, and the school took great pains for this. Each of the above three ethnic groups must include at least one person. My team consists of three American friends Cody, George and Dave, and an Indian friend Raj (Raj is among at least three Indian friends in our major).

Things have to start from a class we had last semester. The name is data mining, and the Chinese name seems to be data mining. This professor is from Taiwan Province Province. In fact, I have six teachers throughout the semester, three of whom are from China. This course is really difficult, and a lot of it is about matrix, vector, algorithm and data flow operation. Because I majored in economics in China, I didn't have a foundation in this field, and I forgot the high number when I was a freshman, so I still spent a lot of time on this course.

This course requires a high level of logical thinking, that is, a high level of mathematics. The mid-term exam was extremely difficult, and it took me half an hour to work out three difficult problems (of course, I think that if I still have the calculation ability of senior three, each problem will take 10 minutes).

The result of the exam was that I got full marks. In the afternoon, when the group did the project, they were shocked to learn that I got full marks. Later, they learned that out of 64 people in this major, three got full marks, you Ye Jun (Japanese), Helen (my parents are white) and me, two and a half Asians. Dave asked me, how do you know how to do it? I said it was in the book, and he said, why the fuck didn't I find it?

Then I taught him, only to find out later that he can't even convert decimal to binary, let alone Cody, who has never heard of it. What are you studying? Note that we are all children who graduated from undergraduate courses. Dave's fine. He is one of the better white people in our class, and his brain is very smart. I taught him about 10 minutes, and he will understand.

But I taught Cody binary for 20 minutes, and he still didn't understand. Since then, at Jorge's strong request, every time before the group project, it will say "Teacher Pan will open a small stove for you". I will explain to my friends how to do data mining homework on the whiteboard, and everyone will listen carefully. Not to mention Cody. Either I go to his house or he comes to my house to talk for an hour or two. Once the lecture was too difficult, he gave up and left.

Cody and I have a good relationship. I invited him to my house for hot pot (the bottom material brought by China). When there are parties, he always invites me to his house (the adventures at the party will be mentioned in later chapters), and I also give him a Chinese name "Dai Meng". I told him that the pronunciation is diamond, and as the name implies, he is really cute.

It was the end of the semester in the blink of an eye, and the day before the data mining exam, everyone had a headache. Actually, I had reviewed it at that time. At everyone's strong request, I went to school to surprise everyone before the exam. My code of conduct has always been "cultivate one's morality, keep the family in order, govern the country and level the world". Although the first step is not completed, I have to help my brothers occasionally.

From 2 pm to 10 pm, I don't know how painful it is to discuss things related to mathematics with Americans. Of course, I also hold the mentality of consolidating knowledge. Basically, I explain the whole process, and Raj will help me write down the steps. I will write down every operation in detail on the whiteboard. I think some logic algorithms are very simple, and I have to explain them two or three times.

When Jorge asked me how to get Y+aY =( 1+a)Y, I was speechless at once. What's more, it took me two hours to teach him how to solve a quadratic equation with one variable, and the formulas for finding roots were all written for him. The key people don't know which one is A, B and C, and how to substitute them. For example, 2x 2+bx+c = 0, how to use the root formula?

Let's talk about something more retarded It's 63*5. Cody subconsciously went to get the calculator, but I stopped him. He read for 30 seconds and wrote down 153. Damn it. Another difficulty, I once taught him homework, 78+56, and I wrote the answer directly. After reading it, he was shocked. It's really the feeling that my chin is going to fall off.

When I told him that calculators were not allowed in China's SAT (American College Entrance Examination) math test, I found the fill-in-the-blank question (Question 8 or Question 9) in the 20 14 Jiangsu College Entrance Examination and translated it into English for him to see. I felt that his worldview collapsed after working out the answer with half a whiteboard.

Finally, I was lucky in the final exam, and I got full marks. Because I get full marks in the mid-term, final and usual homework, I am the only one, and the final grade is naturally A+, which still needs to be complacent.

The story is not over yet. On the third day after the exam, Cody suddenly called and asked me if I would help his brother Kathy with his math, and said he would pay me. I know his brother, and Cody invited me to his house for a holiday on Thanksgiving Day, and had a good time. The first time I saw a local tyrant in America, Cody's backyard was bigger than our whole house. It was so cool.

It turns out that Cody's father is the dean of the School of Journalism in our school. This TM is hidden. It turns out that local tyrants are around. I met his brother Kathy on Thanksgiving Day, and he was very nice. Just a few days before the winter vacation, nothing happened, so I agreed to help him make up the pre-calculus, that is, the basic knowledge before calculus.

Because I'm not good at math, I know I'm far behind the students who took the postgraduate entrance examination. I don't even understand half of the questions in my domestic postgraduate entrance examination mathematics. What non-homogeneous linear equations, Lagrange theorem, compound derivatives have become legends in my mind. In order not to make a fool of myself, I also reviewed it myself. I think that this pre-calculus should be similar to the first chapter of advanced mathematics in the National People's Congress Edition, which is about the basic properties of functions.

I started teaching Kathy, and I was surprised. In the final exam, I read the examples given by them, all of which are multiple-choice questions with three knowledge points, the concept of finding the extreme value of quadratic function, the rate of change (ask you 20, 40, 65, 95, whether the rate of increase is increasing or decreasing), and the basis of exponential function (really the basis, such as 65,438+0,000 yuan principal and 5% annual interest rate of banks). It is really the content of junior high schools in China, and it is only the first grade at most. As a 20 10 Jiangsu college entrance examination was destroyed by Ge Jun, I really laughed.

So I taught him patiently, thinking about how the teacher taught me before, and gave him a question to do, telling him how to draw a picture to see the opening direction of the quadratic function. Two afternoons, about seven hours, Cody actually gave me $280, and I was a little embarrassed. The bloodiest thing is that after Christmas, Cody suddenly told me a good news. Kathy won the math exam in class, and the whole family was very happy.

I laughed and peed, because I received a short message from his mother before I taught Kathy, saying that it was very troublesome for me, and Kathy had fallen behind a lot in this class. So, naturally, Kathy consulted me again this semester. He only taught it once a few days ago. In the last semester of high school, he finally learned imaginary numbers at the beginning of school. After reading the textbook, he found that there was an elliptic conic curve behind him.

I already feel a big wave of dollars approaching.

From Zhike. com