Why We're Failing in Math and Science | Hacker News Reader

Why We're Failing in Math and Science

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28 pointstoffer40 comments

This article is complete bullshit.

I'm an academic. I do math and science for a living. I'm also an immigrant. I lived most of my life in India. I also have a lot of European friends, and actually just got back from a Europe trip hanging out with a number of European academics. Finally, I've also looked at the statistics on this subject.

Every way you look at it, the U.S actually kicks ass in math an science, whether you look at top research or the averages. Take SAT math. Think of a country that has a reputation for excellence in high school math. Eastern Europe immediately comes to mind. Shall we say Romania? Guess what, cynics? U.S scores are on average 30 points higher than Romania's. Or take Nobel prizes. No other country even comes close to the U.S. If we're so bad at science and math, why do we have Silicon Valley and no one else has anything remotely as good?

For several years I've been trying to understand where this self-loathing perception comes from. My friend (also an academic) says that academics spread the "sky is falling" perception in order to get more funding dollars from the NSF/NIH/DARPA, and the media picks it up and runs with it because they always love a scare story. That's the best explanation I have so far. Anyone got a better one?

when i arrived at a chicago airport recently, there was a poster thingie saying

"home to 90 nobel prize winners..."

i thought holy shit that's a lot O_O i remember China only having a handful. we have here in just one shitty city an order of magnitude more. factor in per capita and it's really a huge difference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_laureates_by_country

Yeah, let's factor in per capita: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_laureates_per_capita

The article talks about children and pre-university education. In my opinion as a foreigner, the USA fails at pre-university, scores ok at undergrad level, and excels amazingly at grad level and afterwards.

The USA imports people all the time, including thousands of graduates. Like you and me. Very few countries do it at a comparable scale; perhaps only the UK and Switzerland.

Not better, just jaded.

If you suck at math, you feel better by blaming the problem on the people who are good at math ("they didn't teach me well enough!"). So, self-loathing rather than coming to grips with one's mediocrity and doing something constructive about changing it. There could also be a feedback loop that gives others an excuse for failing: it's a failure of 'the system' (the competent people), not a failure of those who won't keep up.

Citations required. What is this math and science that you do?

Since when does Romania take SAT's?

Nobel prizes don't say much about the majority of the population.

My experience is quite the opposite - the national Russian curriculum includes over a dozen subjects every year throughout high school - including algebra, geometry, chemistry, physics, etc.

Relative to the US, the social structure there offers little opportunity for growth after college, which is why people move here. But compared to Russia, the middle/high school curriculum in most American high schools is a joke.

"In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In American today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears and that is our problem"

Thomas Friedman talking about the waning interest in engineering & science in America's youth in his book "The World is Flat"

But is that really true? From what I hear, the great unwashed Chinese masses are just as capable of getting excited over dumb pop-culture ephemera as our own.

Ultimately it's the top few percent who produce technological innovation anyway.

Yes, one of America's biggest exports is their pop culture. The whole Baywatch being the most watched TV show of all time. The fact that washed-up American C-list celebrities can have a second life in Asian markets (alluded to in Lost in Translation).

It's hard to prove that Chinese culture places a greater value on education than Americans. And you can argue that Chinese education is slanted towards perfection of memorization (tangent: is that why they can copy anything?) But consider that the elite Politburo is ruled by engineers - how many people on Bush's cabinet have engineering pedigree?

"For the first time ever, all the members of China's elite Politburo Standing Committee, the highest tier within the Communist Party, are card-carrying engineers."

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/1231 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Part...

East Asia also has a pop music industry that surpasses the USA in manufacturing and promoting disposable celebrities. If you combine J-Pop, K-pop and "C-pop" music there are dozens of new asian Britney Spears equivalents on the scene every year who achieve at least minor levels of success.

Thats even worse for us. China's top few percent is a lot larger than ours and considering the ratio of graduates in technical fields, is going to stay that way.

But it's not the top few percent of any sub-population. It's the top few percent worldwide, regardless of where they are. If all of the Chinese PhD students in the US went back to China, then they (China or any other country) would be a lot better off. As long as a majority of the top students are studying, working, and researching at US universities, labs, and companies, America will produce the best innovations. If they go back to their home countries, well, we're in a heap of trouble.

If they go back to their home countries, well, we're in a heap of trouble.

Maybe not. Maybe they can improve the quality of living there which adds to social stability, or come up with an innovation that can be shared with the planet, as information as easily shared these days. Things may work out in any case.

How is that 'worse'? Having those people busy inventing cool stuff will make the whole world better, rather than having them working in rice fields, or locked up building nukes.

Thanks for the Friedman quote, I always love the opportunity to repost this review of the World is Flat:

He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius.

http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

Every time someone quotes Friedman in seriousness my jaw opens some. I am continually shocked at how many people take this simpleton seriously.

God, that article was awesome. Though Friedman seems genuinely affable, and though I bear him no ill will, every time I see his face or hear his name I reflexively exclaim "That guy is such a fucking hack!" I'm so glad I'm not alone: I'm happy as a clam not to be nutty as a fruitcake.

My word. To quote from a personal favorite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ByyMd_qDA): that is how you review a book.

short summary: America, for its fear and litigious society, is neutering herself.

This does not nail it though on why the country is failing at Math & Science. Parental influence is the top correlation between children and success in school. It's not a surprise that 50% of STEM degrees are going to International students (who make up less than 10% of the general US student populous) -- their parents push them towards the most difficult degrees -- Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

If you've got an extra 9 minutes, there's an entertaining clip over at ted also about our safety craze that I just watched last night with my parents, who got a kick out of telling me about all the dangerous stuff they had when they were kids, which of course they never let me near until I was quite a bit older.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangero...

I gotta remember Tinkering School with Gever Tulley for when I have kids. I just pressed Ctrl+D in my head :)

My parents limited me to 1 hour per day of computer / video games. I was allowed to watch TV pretty much as long as I wanted to though. Funny enough, I spent most of my time reading programming books and making designs all day, and then furiously coding for that precious hour. (And of course finding all kinds of hacks to get more than an hour in - waking up extra early, jumping from the chair to my bed with a book in hand when a parent walked down the hall, etc)

Article, if taken seriously, might explain something about chemistry. But maths?

Math is easy to explain. The only place where a student can be exposed to real mathematics is in select universities. All the other places teach arithmetic which is most useful to a dumb calculator. The central problem with teaching arithmetic is that it is only suitable for the average calculator and so the average human gets bored and over time, we get the perception that mathematics is boring and "just a dumb tool," neither of which lend themselves to a high proficiency in mathematics.

Very true. It wasn't until I went to university that I learnt my first interesting maths. It was literally mind-expanding, suddenly a whole class of things I couldn't even think about before was, not easy, but certainly possible.

I simply could not appreciate mathematics until university. Memorizing times tables and repetitive drilling is not the way it should be taught at the earliest introduction. I don't know how it can be done properly, but the way it is done at the early phases bored the hell out of me. Later, much later, I learned to appreciate it's power and beauty.

I remember, and it couldn't have been more than 15 years ago, when you could buy compasses in stores. At that time any curious 10 year old could pick up Calculus and get cranking.

But today parents will get worried. Why isn't he out playing baseball or texting people? The police might even get involved. "Are you making vectors kid?"

Today everyone says they should just go to school and do multiplication tables like all the rest. That way they won't grow up weird.

Where's this paranoia coming from? Do you really live in a world where the police are the thing that stops ten-year-olds from reading Calculus textbooks?

Er. No.

I really doubt America is worse off than anywhere else in the world. The difference is that America is generally very self-critical.

The article is very fun to read, despite the sad contents.

But it misses one big point: the image of a scientist. When I reply to "what do you do for a living?" and I say "I'm a neuroscientist", people smile condescendingly and pat me on the back. Because I'm not a lawyer, medical doctor or businessman (i.e. in my way to big money) and thus I can only be either stupid or a fool.

That's interesting. If I ever met any kind of scientist I'd be like "Wow, that's so cool," and ask questions about what you're researching, etc.

A part of me always wanted to be a scientist. Hopefully I'll start a (programming) project to help in scientific research one day.

That's interesting. If I ever met any kind of scientist I'd be like "Wow, that's so cool," and ask questions about what you're researching, etc.

Are you a cop?

The article was about police who were suspicious of science and scientists doing experiments in home labs.

My question about whether felideon (the commenter who said he/she would like say "wow that's so cool" upon meeting a scientist was a cop or not was a serious question. We could use more police with a science-friendly attitude.

Sounds like you're misinterpreting people. Typical aspergers case maybe. People are probably either disbelieving you or are impressed enough to feel awkward.

I bet a bigger part of the answer is that I live in an environment where becoming rich is the only measure of success. That is West Los Angeles.

This is a neurosis that scientists hold, not really what people are thinking. Most people have no idea how much money a scientist is or isn't making.

It is a valid neurosis, though. Even 20-25 years ago, a scientist wasn't that bad off, economically. My uncle made enough money to buy a house in the Bay Area as a microbiologist at a government lab. Nowadays there is no way someone in the same position could buy a house in the same area. Even renting your own apartment would be painful. The salary has remained the same, whereas life has gotten much more expensive.

Is the US failing at math and science? I don't take a metric like test scores or diplomas at face value. Maybe I could entertain international patents granted, but not without some more detailed analysis.

I don't think I've ever seen a proper analysis of the question of whether the US really is all that poor on math and science.

I think the huge US military industrial complex may play a big role in confusing the issue. An enormous amount of US scientific prowess is busy serving the pentagon. The casual observer sees the technological output of, say, Japan more readily because it's in consumer goods.

Related to this, when we talk about a nation falling behind in math and science, what we actually care about is applied math and science (technology innovation) and how it affects economic competitiveness. A nation of Grothendiecks, Erdoses and Perelemans would not be a huge player in the world economy.

What these metrics don't measure is that a lot of people who create important technology advances and businesses are dropouts, misfits, guys who did bad on their exams and people from completely different fields.

...a nation of Grothendiecks, Erdoses and Perelemans...

mmm

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