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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Because Asian Americans top the demographic trend when compared to other American ethnicities.

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

MSH->MZ

Vector-> ....Confucius?

[Darvi]

-> Isaac Newton?

[Siquo]

Relevant, sorta. 

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

Make sure to watch everything by Freddy Wong, he's good.

At maths, too, I guess.

[scriver]

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)

That was an interesting rumour. In what way is it simpler?

[RedKing]

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)

That....makes absolutely no sense to me. Japan and China are base-10 just like the rest of the planet. The "numerals" are different, but I can't see anything inherently better or worse about Sino-Japanese numerals versus Arabic numerals.

The one thing that might be different is that (in Chinese, at least) linguistically it iterates ones (yi), tens (shi), hundreds (bai), thousands (qian), ten-thousands (wan). Having ten-thousand as a ordinal unit is sort of helpful in doing quick mental arithmetic of numbers in a certain range, but that's about it. Especially given that wan was often used classically to mean a generic "many", as in the Daodejing:

Dao give birth to One
One gives birth to Two
Two gives birth to Three
Three gives birth to ten thousand things.

It's got to go beyond East Asia, because the stereotype is typically extended to Indians as well. They're also base-10, and while 10,000 is rendered as "ten thousand", the hundred-thousand has its own unit, the lakh. So one million is rendered as ten lakh, and then ten million (or 1,000 lakh) is one crore (koti in several major dialects). I know the crore still has pretty wide usage in modern India, especially in reporting of financial news.

[Vector]

All counting numbers are single-syllable, and instead of having particular words for things like "fourteen" and "forty" you get "ten four" and "four ten" (fuck you very much, German!).  There's a lot less specialized vocabulary, is what I'm saying, whereas in English learning to count up to 20 is a pain in the ass (and in French, there's even more things to run around with things like "eighty" being denoted "four twenties" but "forty" being, well, "forty.").

[Darvi]

All counting numbers are single-syllable, and instead of having particular words for things like "fourteen" and "forty" you get "ten four" and "four ten" (fuck you very much, German!).  There's a lot less specialized vocabulary, is what I'm saying, whereas in English learning to count up to 20 is a pain in the ass (and in French, there's even more things to run around with things like "eighty" being denoted "four twenties" but "forty" being, well, "forty.").

In French, 98 is "four twenty and ten eight". That's four mostly unrelated numbers for a two digit number.

[Levi]

All counting numbers are single-syllable, and instead of having particular words for things like "fourteen" and "forty" you get "ten four" and "four ten" (fuck you very much, German!).  There's a lot less specialized vocabulary, is what I'm saying, whereas in English learning to count up to 20 is a pain in the ass (and in French, there's even more things to run around with things like "eighty" being denoted "four twenties" but "forty" being, well, "forty.").

In French, 98 is "four twenty and ten eight". That's four mostly unrelated numbers for a two digit number.

That sounds horrifying.   

[Darvi]

Well, depending on region there's words for seventy, eighty and ninety, but it's probably far from the norm.

[RedKing]

Now I'd love to see if anyone has ever done a study to see if the French lose wars in the modern era because of their fucked-up counting system.

"Fire on map grid soixante-quinze!"
"Wait..you mean map grid tres vingt et quinze?"
"No, no, no you fools, it's sept dix et cinq!"

[MetalSlimeHunt]

German counting is the same as English, with the caveat that the base comes second. So 54 is literally "Four Fifty". Ugh.

[Pnx]

Vector-> ....Confucius?

Somehow I think if Vector were secretly Confucius, she'd take the patriarchal aspects out of the society.

German counting is the same as English, with the caveat that the base comes second. So 54 is literally "Four Fifty". Ugh.

Dutch does the same thing, the Dutch counting system used to give me a lot of trouble. The other thing was that they randomly add a "t", to the beginning of eighty in a series that is mostly just "single digit name + tig to denote times ten".

[da_nang]

Try Danish numerals...

[Ultimuh]

Try Danish numerals...

Eh.. Having lived most of my life in Greenland (Danish is like second language there.),
I don't have much problems with these numerals.
Just don't ask me about the Greenlandic language,
I have always sucked at it despite the fact that I have lived there.

[alway]

In 2011, some 7 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds had completed at least a master's degree. From 1995 to 2011, the attainment rate of a master's degree or higher increased for Whites (from 5 to 8 percent), Blacks (from 2 to 4 percent), and Asians/Pacific Islanders (from 11 to 17 percent). In 2011, the percentage of Asians/Pacific Islanders who had attained at least a master's degree in 2011 (17 percent) was higher than that of their peers of any other race/ethnicity

sauce: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=27

Looks like there are similar trends of BS degrees.

So that's part of it.