What is Digg?338 Comments
- CoBLeviathan, on 10/12/2007, -14/+470Maybe the following evolution of math education in America can explain why we can't solve the problem:
1. Teaching Math In 1950
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
2. Teaching Math In 1960
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
3. Teaching Math In 1970
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?
4. Teaching Math In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
5. Teaching Math In 1990
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands.. He does this so he can make a profit of $20.
What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)
6. Teaching Math In 2006
Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. - dognose, on 10/12/2007, -13/+228"Two lines can't be perpendicular if they don't intersect!"
That is not true. - Revan01, on 10/12/2007, -43/+256This is a good thing, i want those people to know exactly where to sew my nikes
three dimensional geometry should help - ldhertert, on 10/12/2007, -23/+218Also, at what point does it make sense to take a single question from a test and count that as representative of the test as a whole. I'm sure if I took the easiest problem on the Chinese test, and the hardest problem on the English test, the story would be completely the opposite. This is a ridiculous comparison.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -20/+192Here is the US test
http://aycu31.webshots.com/image/15230/2002636055432707393_rs.jpg - ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+105It's a good thing you don't have to take their English exam. Your head would asplode!
- JCSaint, on 10/12/2007, -5/+86So I guess the phrase "harder than Chinese algebra" is pretty spot on.
- wheresmyreagan, on 10/12/2007, -11/+90But if some students can't solve the problem it will hurt their feelings. We should stick to stuff that everyone can learn.
Who needs them books anyway. Learnin' is for suckas! - klown256, on 10/12/2007, -6/+80The chinese university exams are incredibly difficult. Student's senior year is basically solely to prepare students for the test. My (chinese) girlfriend says she had around 4 hours of homework a night, every night in highschool.
- rhesuspieces00, on 10/12/2007, -6/+80overhyped. the chinese math problem is a pain in the ass, but not really "hard," per se. you don't need anything beyond high school math to solve it, but it would take a while to do so.
- apophisitis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+74Mathematician here. Almost exclusively all high school students here in the USA have enough background to solve this "dreaded chinese entrance exam" question.
The difference is that they are never expected to, have never seen such a problem before, find the number of unknown intimidating, are too lazy to try, and would give up after a minute or two because they think they are "not good at math". - abid786, on 10/12/2007, -11/+69@preved (#6336715)
Ummm no. The Chinese test uses a three dimensional figure. The English test requires you to just know pythagoras' theorem (which is taught in grade 8). - Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+56I was thinking the complete opposite. I would have been able to solve it easily just after high school, where I'd been working calculus problems and thinking about trigonometry a whole lot in my last year or so. Geometry was 8th grade stuff.
Nowadays, having not done any of that for a few years, I'd have to look up some of the relevant formulas and it would take me much longer. In college, I didn't take much mathematics. Calc3 was as far as I went.
The difference between the USA's educational system and the Chinese one is not a matter of the educational capability. The Chinese *require* their kids to learn. The USA only allows them to learn, if they want to. I cannot comment on the UK's educational system, having never seen it and frankly not understanding it anyway. Why do they add an "s" after "math", anyway? - kelbear, on 10/12/2007, -3/+54I am American and I can confidently say that I was taught well enough to solve the UK problem by early highschool.
I can also say that I completely forgot and would have to google how to get an answer if I had to answer the question today. - mrgreg, on 10/12/2007, -7/+56Entrants should be sure to set their calculators to "Maths" before attempting this problem.
- owenadam, on 10/12/2007, -7/+53So? Imagine if that test was in Chinese!
- walfredo26, on 10/12/2007, -5/+49I have done some research on the matter and I have come to the conclusion that the difference pertains to the fact that one test is written in Chinese and the other is written in English.
- jspegele, on 10/12/2007, -4/+44@over
Are you kidding? The English question hardly required any thinking. It's a 3-4-5 right triangle. I knew the answers to parts i and ii before I even read parts i and ii. - brufleth, on 10/12/2007, -11/+49...so? In high school I had 3+ hours of homework just for AP physics plus all other classes stacked on top of that. Many people in the class didn't put in that time though and they still got by but did poorly on the AP test.
You can challenge yourself in a US high school or you can slack off and let others do the thinking or have teachers hold your hand. You might get similar grades either way but you'll learn a lot more doing the work. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36The Chinese tests are harder in-line with the population of China-- more potential candidates for limited places. The bar is simply pushed higher.
- fredrated, on 10/12/2007, -4/+40@over9: are you kidding me? The Chinese problem involves the angle between planes, the English problem is a simple 3-4-5 right triangle, solvable by inspection by someone with trig.
@dayz: almost right, the answer to 2 is 6m^2
@Beaver _|_ means the sides are perpendicular - Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36I guess the computer your typing that on was made with magic, then?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+34Answer 1: When you stop being ignorant of other countries' history, tradition and culture. And England did make English.
- Roger, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28No its 42.
- xtmno3, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28@hikaruzero:
First of all let me welcome you to the Internet, as you are obviously new here. As a welcoming present, I give you this informative link to help you get going in the right direction:
http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/
Second, you have just been exposed to something we call 'sarcasm'. Although many people on digg will give people the extra helping hand in recognizing sarcasm by providing a '/sarcasm' at the end of their statement, some do not. This is the latter case. The parent commenter is making a statement about how the U.S. society is babying its children too much in the fear that we might hurt someone's feelings. - Electric_Sheep, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27Maths is a colloquialism, as is Math.
Maths = MATHematicS.
Both are acceptable. But Maths is predominantly said in the UK. - mtrip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25Everybody who's stated that the Chinese one would be simple for them to solve, strangely enough, hasn't provided their solution.
- trieste, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24and we spell 'wierd' differently too. How weird is that.
- sid0, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25You think this is easy? Some of the questions in the entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Technology will blow your mind. Here's one of the easier ones that I came across:
Prove for all positive numbers a, b, and c, that ((1+a)(1+b)(1+c))^7 > (7^7) (abc)^4.
Two thumbs up to whoever solves this within 10 minutes. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24But if the west gave students a harder test someone might get mad at the school or teacher. SOMEONE COULD BE OFFENDED!! WE MUST AVOID THAT AT ALL COSTS!!
- sovereign3, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23If you're in the UK...
Remember, there are more dialects than American English. - godofgodlygods, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23@CoBLeviathan
That is the most BRILLIANT thing I've heard on digg. Rofl. Still laughing my ass off. - b0wl0fud0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18Education today is in serious decay in America. One of the significant problems are an unwillingness to learn and pressure by parents to force their students to overachieve despite a fact that their child may not be capable of it. Students today merely copy material off the internet or each other, refuse to read the material assigned to them and for the most part are apathetic to school in general.
"These days, the wrong answer is no longer wrong. There has to be some reason why the kid answered the question this way. No... it's not wrong, that will hurt the child's emotional well being, the child was just being creative."
"What are you saying about my child? How dare you claim that my child can't handle this work! My child is more intelligent than any of your other students."
"Why are you giving so much homework to my child? What happened to childhood? You're causing an unbelievable amount of stress on them at such a young age which can cause permanent damage!"
I'm sorry but sometimes some students NEED to be left behind... or they SLOW everyone else down. Sure, we need to guarantee a bottom level of education... but we shouldn't do so at the cost of the education of our brightest students. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24@Otto: a better question would be why did the US remove the "s" in maths, considering that England did make the language. There are many peculiarities in the English language. For example "metre" which is spelt "meter" in the states, but why the isn't apple spelled appel for instance.
- arnar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I bet you're one of those people who loved history classes then ;-P
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22Because they can be perpendicular if one of them is on a different Z than the other. They are still perpendicular in the X and Y planes, but are on different Zs, so they never touch, and hence, no point of intersection.
- Roger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16"I know they do some amazing stuff (although I don't really know what) "
Don't you have a cell phone? A TV? A Computer? A watch? Any piece of technology?
Making all that stuff just boils down to math. Search online if you wanna see exactly whats involved. - pollardito, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17the English test wasn't a test required to pass a course or gain entry into a university, it was a test to "assess the strength of incoming science undergraduates' maths skills", and therefore has to offer problems with a wide range of different difficulties in order to differentiate among people at different parts of the scale. so we can't really determine anything about the range of difficulty of problems on this test from just looking at one of them.
also, i imagine in England (like a lot of the western world) a huge percentage of the population goes on to university, so a test to determine the relative skill of students in a university will probably have an even wider range than it would in a much larger population country that allows much fewer students to attend a university - jmkiii, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22Looks like a medium GMAT question, and the GMAT is really just highschool stuff that you have not seen for a while.
- coolspray, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14@Otto (#6340290)
I think in England (and most other English speaking countries) we keep the 's' from the end of mathematics, giving 'maths', wheras in North America, it's just 'math'. Couldn't be sure though. - adrenaline33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12In the U.S. I can't imagine the brighter students ever having more than 2 hours of homework except maybe for a big project that they put off or something. And thats with a full course load(4-5 IB/AP classes). The kids that seem to spend the most time on HW are the ones that are extremely dedicated to their studies but not as smart. It takes them far longer to do the work at night.
- halavais, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12> The U.S. blows every other country out of the water when it comes to post-secondary education. Period.
This is a comforting fiction that is going to come back and bite us. Hard.
Many of our undergraduates are graduating, including from some of the better schools, without being able to construct a business letter. Few are graduating with the ability to critically analyze a problem. Undergraduate education has been in steady decline over the last two decades, and if you look at surveys of businesses seeking new employees, they are desperate for universities to teach students how to think and write.
Some of this is the increase in the number of students who go on to college. When a college degree is required for some retail sales positions, everyone thinks they need to get a degree. That's a good thing, to my mind, but it means the level of preparation of an average college student is down, and it is more likely you are in a 100 person class (or 1000 person class) with a bunch of people that never would have gotten into college in the 60s and 70s.
As for graduate school, the quality of masters-level education has dropped significantly over the last decade, and Ph.D. programs--once they become profit centers--are next. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17@sovereign3 'The American university system is the best in the world, bar none.'
hahahaahaha hahahahahahahahaha LMFAO
They FLOCK (as you say) from the four corners of the world to live in America to earn MONEY.. So they can have a house with a white picket fence and drive a mercedes, not to worship at the alter of American education. An academic in Poland earns $200 a month a doctor maybe $300 in America that is $5000 and $15000 a month.. For doing the same job and being able to enjoy pizza, Macdonalds etc.. So they can live the American dream, or what's left of it...
In China it's $50 a month for an academic and $75 for a doctor in India it's about $150 a month for an academic and $250 for a doctor, in Russia it's about $300 for an academic and $400 for a doctor... Do I need to go on??????? - Just1nD, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13they don't allow excess babies so the answer is ERROR
- sobe86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Interestingly though, only one chinese person has ever managed to win a fields medal (highest honour award in maths), wheras mathematicians from the UK win it fairly regularly....
- sid0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11It's taken 10 minutes for me to solve just the first part of that problem, using vectors. It isn't too hard, though.
Hint: Start by assuming A as the origin, AB on the X-axis, AC on the Y-axis, and AA1 on the Z-axis. It becomes quite easy from there on. - Nichevo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@Maffiou
Your definition is good for all of n-space.
I notice a lot of people saying that the Chinese question isn't that hard. It looks pretty hard to me.
My "brute force" general solution would look something like:
1) Use basic geometry and trig to find the required unknowns
2) Find the normal of the planes in question (via the cross product of two of it's intersecting lines)
3) Use the dot product to find the angle between the normals
4) Use basic geometric reasoning to find the angle between the planes
Any of you math whizzes want to cough up an elegant approach? - bvnay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Its testing your analytical skills...and its definitely not a WAIST of time.
- Gugel, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15Secondary education and below might be better in China and the former USSR.
The U.S. blows every other country out of the water when it comes to post-secondary education. Period. - abid786, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11@Philluminati (#6340230)
That's the thing though; these questions wouldn't be considered 'impossibly hard' in China. -
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