and the opposite of donald trump is an
asian man who likes mass
so let me share the math
that's former u.s presidential candidate
andrew young
and he's roofing off a stereotype that's
long been attached to chinese people
that they are all good at math so how
did chinese people
even get this reputation and is it even
true
this is why chinese a series where we're
debunking common stereotypes about
chinese people
one google search at a time
to test this hypothesis we organize a
method
okay so remember the rules i will say a
question first and then you guys
try to solve it as fast as you can and
when you think that you have the right
answer
quickly press the bell
icon
for all time
i really i basically looked at yours and
just hit the bell is it eight
is it wrong it's wrong your answer's
wrong
90
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bro i just wrote it down how did you get
it already
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three out of five
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i didn't i really summoned the 15.
six and nine it's not right either it
doesn't matter it's amazing
well skip
twelve and three with fifty dollars
two
[Music]
i need a calculator bro jesus christ my
math is terrible
16 and 9. no swearing dude
wait what are we doing oh no red is
nine louis 16. uh one of those nine
dollars there's
16. what do these guys think of the
stereotype
i don't think the stereotype is they're
good at math i think
it's since they're very young age
they've been trained to just
keep memorizing like the times table
doing kumon so they're
naturally better at math well to me it
kind of goes
together with the stereotype that asians
are like dweeby and nerdy right
which is the other thing which is that
asians are like uncool therefore they're
good at math
he's just exceptionally good i'm a math
and physics teacher
i mean not every chinese is good but for
example my
lovely girlfriend here thinks that she's
not very good at maths and she's still
way better than that average person in
the uk so in general all my
chinese students are just the next level
above
all the non chinese but is it just an
impression i think it's more than just
an impression i think there is evidence
that they are
pretty good in mathematics fredrik leung
is a math educator and researcher
he studies how culture affects students
learning math
and he says one of the reasons why china
does so well in math
is its confucian culture professor
leong's project
is called the trends in international
mathematics and science study
every four years they give a math test
to students age 10 to 14
in over 60 countries and regions
consistently in the top five are
singapore hong kong
japan korea and taiwan
and mainland china isn't on this list
because they didn't participate in the
study
so the only things that in common other
than you know they're located in east
asia
is that they share the confusion culture
it's a culture that prices hard work
above all else
in this old confucian culture there's
distress
on education and this approach to
education
is very different from approaches in the
west so in london when i interview the
parents and i ask them oh your child is
not doing very well in mathematics why
do you think it's the case
he said oh yes he's not very good in
mathematics you know
i was not good enough next myself you
know and but he's very good in
basketball or music
or art in beijing the same question to
the parents
oh he's lazy so this is a big contrast
western parents they attribute
more the success and failure of their
child
especially in mathematics to
innovatively but in the
chinese culture now of course the
talents
of children especially mathematics they
differ but even if you are not so good
in mathematics if you put in
enough effort you can do it
there's a proverb in chinese
practice makes perfect and diligence
cures lack of talent
i don't know what they've heard of imo
the international mathematics
olympiad countries send the best of
their best to
join this competition and since they
first participated in 1985
china has achieved the highest team
score 20 times
more than any other country
we wanted to meet some of these math
prodigies so we found some in hong kong
student at singapore school educational
college so what is the international
math olympiad
it's a series of very very hard problems
which
require very minimal knowledge
so most of the problems can be solved
with pre-university level mathematics
but
it's actually really hard i think at
math competitions then
it's true it's existing like
chinese or asian or students
normally do perform better than other
students
training for this competition is really
intense
online
i think about math everywhere like on
the bus
store even just walking to school we
wanted to know
did sufong and chok hey feel like they
were good at math
because of natural talent or constant
training
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um
to nurture his interest his parents
started challenging him
according to one study chinese parents
tend to spend more time with their kids
on math and counting compared to
american parents so when chinese kids
enter kindergarten
they are often ahead of their american
counterparts in basic arithmetic
which brings us to reason number two why
chinese people
are good at math is an ho love for
examinations
examination is so important you know an
establishment
in the chinese culture in ancient china
passing exams was one way to move up the
social ladder
and land a prestigious government job we
are the first country
in the world with a national examination
which
started with the sri dynasty the exams
had many levels
and were extremely difficult to pass
they tested people on classic confusion
texts
law and politics i think it's the only
culture in the world but through
examination you can
move up the ladder in this way so
through generations we have this
very deep trust in examination to this
day
exams are how people get into
universities and land government jobs in
china
which is why parents pay for cram school
one study found that more than 90
percent of parents in china
pay for cram schools making it a 383
billion dollar industry
in 2019. we had dinner with a family
friend over the weekend and
this kid is nine years old his mom is
clearly a tiger mom
he has violin lessons he has piano
lessons he has a math tutor
and uh he's up until two every night
working on homework it doesn't mean that
they're good at math because they're
chinese right so i think it's they're
good at math because they have
very motivated parents that push them
into all these different classes and
tutoring
and believe it or not some studies say
it's easier to learn math and chinese
which brings us to reason number three
language as we all know is a very
important
component of culture and does the
language make a difference in terms of
learning mathematics
research has shown that some languages
are better for learning math
there are some very trivial things like
the number system
take the number 11 for example in
english we have a unique word for it
but in chinese is spoken as 10 and 1.
it's the same in arabic japanese korean
and turkish
this digit system is very very simple
in chinese so making at least arithmetic
very easy
to learn the other thing is about the
spoken language you know chinese is
mono syllabic right one word one song
and then
that makes committing to memory easier
we don't call the table we call it a
song
like nine factor song
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chinese also has tones which means
people remember things by sound
but once you've learned it it's just
like a song
now again she said oh time stable is
very low level mathematics
no it's very important when you try to
do complicated mathematics if
it eases your memory low and simply
learning the language
can train one's memory which is our
final reason why chinese people
are good at math chinese language is
very difficult to learn
it's what we call a logographic language
each word
is located in an imaginary square
and each character contains many strokes
that go in different directions
when kids learn chinese they count each
stroke while writing a character
leong believes this helps wire the brain
in ways
that are useful later for learning math
and geometry
the the different languages affects you
know how
easy it is to memorize things especially
numbers
but it's also that the different
language sort of
codify your brains in different ways
chinese students often solve math
problems using memory skills
rather than tackling them step by step
to get good at mental arithmetic
you need to memorize about 60 things you
need to memorize about 50 times tables
and then a few of these number bonds
like basic sums of digits and if you
have them
quickly then you can do it so i think
probably
if you're used to memorizing things it's
not so much a problem
memory is the basic ingredient when you
learn mathematics
this new studies in neuroscience are
telling us that
actually because of our experience of a
language you know our brains are
programmed
differently when we do mathematics and
that may
explain why these chinese students are
so good
in mathematics
you