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[Skyrunner]

Topic says it.

Western people almost always seem to have the impression that all Asians are natural math geniuses, doing everything without even breaking a sweat (and I probably didn't help—I was in a grade half a year lower than what I was supposed to be in xD). But it's not the case. Even in the US, I've had friends who struggle with math, and in Korea, I see even more people who give up on math.

So... why?

[Darvi]

My guess? Because Asia=Japan=Robots=Engineering=Maths

Actually, no, that would require people to realize that engineering is a lot of maths.

[Max White]

Not sure. The students from Asia were mostly struggling back when I was studying software, but a lot of them didn't speak English very well, so that might have been part of the problem.

Anyway, I am under the impression that there is much more pressure on students over there, especially in STEM subjects, so I guess with more study they just do well?

[Osmosis Jones]

It's more the whole fact that a lot of asian immigrants to western countries have very overbearing parents (e.g. like this guy), that force them to excel in everything academic to the detriment of all else.

While it's by no means universal, there is a bit of truth to it; I went to a school that was known for it's good grades, so we got a lot of kids from parents trying to make sure their children were the best. I knew several kids that whose parents hired tutors for them on weekends despite them already being straight A students.

Hell, one guy I knew had a forced curfew of 10pm everyday (including weekends), seperate maths, science english and music tutors, out of school hours drama lessons, church on sunday mornings, AND involvement in a sports team (I think soccer, but it was a while back) forced on him. The hours he had to himself were literally measured in single digits per week.

The overwhelming majority of these were either asian (mostly chinese and singaporean) or indian.

[Muz]

Asians in Asia aren't really math geniuses. Asians in Western countries are, because their traditional learning methods (sit down and do this a thousand times) give them good grades, compared to the traditional American learning methods (if you're gifted, you'll know math automatically).

It might not even be Asians, it could just be only Chinese who do that. I've noticed that a lot of Chinese (from China) families are very good at gaming any system. Give them a metric of measurement (IQ, SAT, grades, sales, item prices) and they'll match it at detriment of everything else.

But like everything, it bites them back under different conditions. Even college level math, which is more about logic than memorizing a few tricks.

[scriver]

Because Japan=Tech Stuff, and all Asians look like nerds. Since all nerds are good at math, they must also be good at math.

[Starver]

I'd say it is because of the higher-than-background visibility of various stereotypes, as they've been introduced to our respective (non-Asian) society through the media/etc.

Everyone knows (FCVO 'know') that every Chinese business is a restaurant or a laundry or an illegal gambling and/or opium den with links to the Triads.  Everyone knows that when an oriental person gets threatened that they have uber-KungFu skills at their disposal, and because of the strangeness of the abacus in culture (compared with its virtual non-existence in ours) everyone's always seen super-proficient mathematical geniuses.  And that's just the (largely) positive stereotypes.  (To even things up, every Kenyan is a long distance runner, every Nepali man is a sherpa, every Argentinian is a goucho, every American from the Deep South is either a redneck or a river-cruising gambler, every Canadian is a mountie, and every Brit is a.... well, I'm not sure which of many possible stereotypes you'd put at the top of the list, but I'm also betting that they're all also 'true' (FCVO...))


Perhaps related, or at least in addition to this, in a discussion with an acquaintance yesterday about the apparent predominance of doctors of Asian (subcontinental, rather than oriental) descent in the UK (which was his postulation)... well, some people notice them more, I suppose...  but I suppose there's also the fact that immigrant families tend to push offspring a lot.  Those that get pushed and succeed at their(/their parents') chosen field get noticed.  Those that rebel or fail despite trying submerge into the rest of the population and don't get counted against the medical stereotype (but may get added to one of the others, with a perhaps less positive net worth to society).  Doctoring is one of the traditional (perhaps now over-stale, but we're still seeing the fruits) aspirational path for the children of immigrants or, rather, of the parents, by proxy), etc.  And to get into medicine, you need maths (along with the sciences), so that's one of the push-points.

By contrast "Tarquin", offspring of a hyper-aspiring middle-class couple of pretty much standard central-England stock, might have been encouraged to go into 'the city' (whether or not good at maths, for some reason that's not thought to be as necessary ), or perhaps organic farming.  And I imagine many Tarquins can still be found running second hand electrical retail outlets, living rough on the streets or any number of non-Banking occupations that also aren't small-scale agribusiness-related in any way.


What I'm saying (while trying not to be deliberately provocative with regard to stereotypes...  because that's what I'm saying they are, so I hope you don't think I'm fooled by them) is that it's a predominant image that sticks.  A meme that 'works' (FCVO...).  It may help or hinder someone who falls under the racial or physical descriptor of the meme, although they also need to have the innate or drilled-in ability to make use of it.  And if it all comes together, we hear of the young kid (of Asian/oriental background) factorising 10-digit numbers in his head (using a "mental abacus", probably), or of the person who thinks they've solved some other obscure Fields Medal-worthy problem, who grew up in poverty in some village somewhere before finding their potential in academia.  This all makes a good tale and is memorable.


Stereotypes are stereotypes, then?  Whod've thunk.


(BTW, I have tried to be a bit more precise (where I want to be), given "Asian", to me and my British background is subcontinental India, rather than Japan/China/etc.  Similarly, it's possible that my view of stereotypes (albeit at least advised also by US movie representations of cultural tropes) is slightly askance from your (the OP and intervening posters') own group of known stereotypes, even once we get the geography sorted!)

[Eagle_eye]

I'd say it's probably just the fact that most Asians in the US are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and for the most part only wealthy or extremely talented people can immigrate to the US easily, so the intelligence of Asian immigrants is going to be higher than that of people from those areas overall. Combine that with the whole tiger mom thing, and you get a lot of kids who are very good at grade school math.

[da_nang]

PISA, that's why. Which doesn't necessarily show the whole picture but people have a tendency to leave the salt on the dinner table.

[mainiac]

Schools don't teach math, they teach elaborate arithmetic.  Kids sense something is wrong so they rebel against what's going on.  Asian kids do a better job knuckling down and learning what they are being taught in place of math.

[Levi]

Relevant, sorta. 

[RedKing]

Relevant, sorta. 

ROFLMAO...ok, I gotta start watching that guy's stuff. 

[Neonivek]

They actually solved this a long time ago.

It is because Asians have a strong tendency, not genetic, to have siblings help eachother with their homework.

YES that is it.

[Vector]

Language-based rumors:

Rumor 1: Because Asians (by which they mean Japanese and Chinese people) have an easier counting system, so that kids get to arithmetic faster (posited by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers)

Rumor 2: Because Asians come from a strong Confucian culture and arrive in a place where they are going to have a devil of a time with anything that's language-based, so they focus their energies on mathematics and do really well at it.  It's the false creation of a "well, this is what I'm best at, so I'll just work on it!" zone.

[Rose]

Rumor 3: In the future Vector finds a time machine and travels to ancient china to teach them the true way.