[Post] How bad is American mathematics?

When people who have lived in the United States talk about American mathematics, they say: Hey, it's too bad. In fact, this mainly refers to the civilian population, and the American mathematics professor is certainly not bad. Among the winners of the Nobel Prize in mathematics, the fielz prize, the United States has the largest number of winners.

To be more accurate, the mathematical difference we mean is that ordinary Americans are far different from Chinese in their mental computing ability, just find out that the elderly who have not received much education in China are better than their local masters in the United States.

A friend told me that when he first came to the United States, his wife helped an American to take care of the children. The child had a sister in her teens. One day, this sister asked my friend a question: How much is the value of seven plus eight?

A friend opens his mouth: equal to fifteen.

The girl stood up from the sofa and watched him jump. She was so excited.

My friend looked strange and asked her why she was so happy. She said, "I found you a genius !"

This little girl's conclusion is correct. My friend is indeed a genius, and he is very smart. It's common to be praised by others. But the little girl's praise shocked him for half a day and didn't say anything.

According to this standard, all Chinese people are talented!

Another friend came to the store to buy things and thought he was about to change the change for laundry. There is a currency shard called quarter in the United States and Canada. The value is 1/4 of the dollar, that is, 25 cents. Many public washing machine telephones are started with coins like this.

A friend handed the cashier a dollar and said he would change it to quarter.

The cashier held a few quarter in his hand and turned them upside down. He hadn't figured out how many quarter he should have given her.

Finally, I made up my mind and handed her five quarters!

To tell the truth, I don't even believe this story. Can mathematics be worse?

Everyone knows this dollar for four quarter, right?

My friend reported the name of the store where she changed the coin to prove that she was honest.

I think they will make such a strange joke in our opinion. One of the reasons is that American schools basically do not train their children in terms of computing power. Since I was a child, students can use calculators, they focus on understanding and applying mathematics, which is different from what we pay attention.

Another reason is that many of the employees who work at the cashier's level cannot even complete their careers in high school. They are not only in poor mathematics, but also in poor education, other aspects of knowledge are also very poor.

You need to know that you do not need to take an exam when you are in high school in the United States. You can get a diploma as long as you honestly go to class without causing any troubles. Anyone who wants to go to college can go to the above level. The only difference is what kind of university they want to go.

However, the story told by another friend overturned my conclusion. Some highly educated people still had a mess about the basic concepts of mathematics.

This friend has been working on bridge design and transformation in American companies. One day, when he reviewed his colleagues' drawings, he found a wrong angle of calculation, I changed it and told my colleagues.

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

After a while, the young man took the drawing and asked him: How did you calculate the data you changed? The friend said: "It is very simple. The sum of the inner angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. You can use 180 degrees to subtract this number to get the correct angle ."

He nodded and stood there wondering.

Then, he asked me a question and asked my friend to faint after hearing it on the spot.

He asked: "Do you mean that the sum of the inner angles of all triangles is 180 degrees ?"