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Comment by rdiddly | Hacker News Reader

I mean, could it be as simple as "Learning math is more important to Russians than to Americans?" And before you dismiss this as simplistic, consider everything that's competing for attention with "learning math." What things are Americans either preoccupied with or beset with, that Russians esp. Soviet Russians, weren't? I'm thinking, the profit motive. Particularly as concerns textbook publishers. And parents who need to pay for healthcare and that oversized house. And textbook readers who wonder how the hell they'll ever use this to find a job.

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I think technical education in the soviet union was a lot stronger than it was in the free world, at least in the 20th century. When I was 16, I was enrolled in the top high-school maths units in the early 1980s in Australia. Maths was about 1/3 of the academic contact hours and the curriculum was pretty standard across all the Australian states.

A family from the Ukraine somehow managed to immigrate to Australia and their 16 year old girl was enrolled on our maths classes. She was years ahead of the rest of the class.

She said she was a very mediocre maths student at home in the Ukraine, said quite a few times that in her opinion we had been taught basically nothing in the Australian system. I don't know how much maths the average soviet citizen learned, but I got the strong impression that soviet students who were actually interested in the subject got a much better mathematical education than they would have in Australia/US/UK.

My 3rd grade Ukrainian math education carried me through 10th grade ("Accelerated" classes in a 36/36 school district). An anecdote, but basically I fell behind my Ukrainian peers very early. I remember coming back and a friend who was younger than me was already doing calculus when we weren't.

Russia had brilliant mathematicians even before the October revolution, however, the Soviet Union gave another incentive to become an academic - it pretty much guaranteed a highly respected job, even if the salary was modest, but also allowed most of the academics to not get involved in politics. So in a country where you couldn't form a business, being an academic or a doctor was pretty much the best career choice.

At least the engineers were too useful to the state to get purged frequently.

Although there were exceptions. If you got hitched to a high-visibility program, failure was considered a sabotage.

So I guess the best position in a communist country is to be extremely useful and extremely obscure.

You could say that. I'm from Poland, so compared to Soviet Union it was communist-lite. I had a brilliant math teacher in high school. He had the reputation that if he was your math teacher you were automatically accepted at the local university. He was a legend in my town, and managed to stay under the radar of the communist regime.

No, learning math was never more important to an average Russian than it was to an average American. An average Russian has never knew math any better than an average American.

Source: attended school in both countries.

I guess its just anecdotes at this point, not data. But all my peers and friends from different schools, were solving quadratic equations in 4th grade in USSR/Russia. This was early 90's. I then studied in Canadian and US high schools and it took me until 9th grade to start learning any new math again at school.

In Soviet Union, quadratic equations were introduced in 7th grade, not 4th [1], so if you did in fact study them in 4th grade your experience is not typical. And while American 7th grade program does not cover quadratic equations, it includes intro to probability and statistics, which is far more useful in real world, and which was not covered in Soviet math classes until much later (if at all).

[1] http://fremus.narod.ru/schoolbk2.html#mat2

> And while American 7th grade program does not cover quadratic equations, it includes intro to probability and statistics

Depends on your program, of course. I did quadratic equations in 7th grade, and the first class that actually did any non-trivial probability was in 10th grade.

But how can they teach probability and stats without any calculus or real analysis? Are they just teaching a few cookbook formulas and leaving it at that?

You really don’t need any calculus to learn all you will ever need to know about probability and statistics.

Are you in your early, early 20s? Because the Russian education system fell apart recently. Bribes and teachers moving to Europe and all that.

I'm 28. We emigrated to Australia(from Russia) when I was in approximately grade 3-4. I basically did no mathematical study for 4-5 years, the system was that far ahead. From family in Russia I hear that ridiculous amounts of homework(2hrs daily if you're on top of everything) is still a thing for young children although there's all sorts of strange pro-putin insertions in the curriculum but ultimately I don't know, it seems like Russia as a whole has very quickly lost the few positives the Soviet Union brought. I felt the quality of teaching was much better aswell. It seemed like many Australian teachers did not fully grasp many of the concepts themselves. From what I understand the American curriculum is even more relaxed so I'm not entirely sure where the above commenter gets their information from or if they're being entirely honest.

I'm not entirely sure where the above commenter gets their information from or if they're being entirely honest

You left Russia when you were 10, so you were basically a child. Then you "heard from family" something you've never actually experienced. On the other hand, I was there in Soviet Union/Russia going through all 10 grades in three different schools, and then getting my masters in engineering, while tutoring high school students in math to make some cash. Then I tutored undergrads as a TA here in US while getting my phd.

You have very little actual experience of Russian education, and zero experience of American education, and you're questioning my honesty?

I think we are just saying that you had an uncommon experience. Were you in a small town by any chance?

Also, going back to the parent's post: "it seems like Russia as a whole has very quickly lost the few positives the Soviet Union brought"

Right, kind of tragic.

Were you in a small town by any chance

Average town (0.5M), average family (engineers), average school (not the best, not the worst), though the high school I attended had math specialization, so by the end of it I knew more math than an average Russian (or an average American).

it seems like Russia as a whole has very quickly lost the few positives the Soviet Union brought

Now imagine North Korea collapses, becomes like South Korea 30 years later, and someone makes a statement like that about it. Puts it in a different light, doesn't it?

No, I learned the multiplication table back in 1985.

Any data to reinforce your opinion? Moreover average as a statistical measure seems a bit misleading for that case.

Soviet/Russia never considered human as something important. Russian management way sharper in moves and less humane. Soviets proved to people that thousands can be killed - rich, clever, creative, dissidents or you were just unlucky. They showed life doesn't worth anything. But Communist Party and ideology is important. Who cares how hard is it for you to study, Communist Party decides who can publish, which books you can read. You didn't decide anything. This system is still alive and works. It just slightly changed outside to pretend to be democracy.

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