Gladwell why asians are better at math

Been a long time since I read it. Implicit in the premise of the chapter is that categories such as "Asian" and attributes like "better at math" exist objectively. Gladwell never defines Asian, instead shifting between definitions that rely on nationality cherrypicked test scores from a number of well-off Northeast Asian countries , language where he brings up the Chinese counting system used only in some but not all Asian Languages , and ethnicity where he compares Asian-American children to other American children, many of whom share little to no commonalities with the former two groups.

He uses the classic tactic of generalizing these three groups as one through the nefarious concept of "culture", which is poorly defined and can not objectively measured. He then makes the claim that "Asians" are "better at math" without backing up the point with anything other than cherrypicked standardized test scores.

Aside from that, he only shows vague correlations without ever proving causation in any rigorous way. Even if the Chinese counting system leads to a faster understanding of arithmetic, Gladwell does not prove that this leads to significantly better math performance.

When it comes to math, the best students are the ones willing to spend a lot of time figuring out how to solve a problem. If Asians are more willing to work hard, then it can explain part of why Asians are good at math. Completing a question questionnaire takes diligence. If you average the number of questions completed by kids in each country, places like South Korea, China, and Hong Kong come out on top.

Asian kids demonstrate the most diligence. Interestingly, you can predict which countries will score highest on the math portion of the test by looking at their average completion of the questionnaire. The kids who demonstrate the most diligence are the same kids who are the best at math. Is this a mere correlation, or is it a causal relationship?

It seems that Asian kids are good at math because of their diligence. Where does this diligence come from? So why are Asians so good at math? It starts with diligence. And Diligence may stem from a legacy of rice farming. Rice farming requires extraordinary precision and skill.

Rice farming is difficult work. Rice farming requires extreme diligence. Western farming, on the other hand, requires little to no work during the winter.

Fields need to be left fallow for periods to prevent exhausting the soil. In 18th-century Europe, farmers worked from spring through autumn, followed by long stretches of idleness. They worked about twelve hundred hours annually. Traditional western farming does not require as much diligence as rice farming. For hundreds of years, rice farmers produced the foundational crop of most Asian meals, and landlords incentivized farmers by allowing them to keep or sell whatever they produced above what was required as rent.

Like the garment workers in Europe and New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rice farmers saw the clear relationship between increased effort and increased wealth. Even if their families no longer work in the rice paddies, Asian kids inherit the cultural legacy of diligence, and this shows up most prominently in their math abilities. This is a big part of why Asians are good at math.

For instance, Chinese is more efficient than English for learning math. The chapter starts with the Chinese proverb:. Simply put, the harder and smarter you work on a rice paddy, the greater the output. In Western agriculture, you increase output by purchasing more land, or replacing labor with technology.

A peasant farmer in eighteenth-century Europe worked about twelve hundred hours per year. A peasant in Southern China worked an average of three thousand hours a year. Gladwell summarizes the benefits of rice farming this way: the work was meaningful, complex, autonomous and exacting.

He shared proverbs from peasants in Europe and China. But what does that have to do with math? My son is currently learning 7th grade algebra. A typical problem can take many minutes to solve, sometimes with a lot of trial and error which is normal. He often gets frustrated and would give up after a few minutes if not pressed.

Gladwell shows that the main culprit in the gap between grades and test scores of students from wealthier families versus poorer families is summer vacation. Students from low-income and high-income families have comparable scores on the California Achievement test at the beginning and end of the school year.

But after summer vacation, the score gap increases significantly. This implies that if you keep kids in schools longer, and out of the family home, you can minimize the achievement gap. They reference a charter system called the KIPP academy.

Students are in school from am to pm every weekday. Saturdays they are in school 9am to 1pm. In the summer, they come in from 8am to 2pm.