I'm not quite sure why my comment about asian parents hitting their kids when they don't learn their math was deleted. The culture of corporal punishment in asia is totally different, and the ends to which it is used is totally different. There is a lot more riding on asian kids getting good at math than for american kids.
Does it help delicate western sensibilities if I point out I'm asian?
This is bullshit. The first example with memorizing the numbers doesn't work with Japanese - "hachi, ni, yon, roku, shichi, go, ichi" isn't faster than "eight, two, four, six, seven, five, one", but the Japanese are no different from the Chinese when it comes to their math prowess.
I don't understand why it's so hard for Americans to admit that Asian success in areas like math is simply because they work harder at it. In Asian cultures, there's a belief that your success is dependent on how hard you work, not your innate "intelligence". In America, if a child does well in school, he gets told over and over that he's smart, while a child who doesn't do well is told he's stupid. In Asia, if a child does well, he's told that he did a good job studying hard, while those who don't do well are told to try harder.
> "hachi, ni, yon, roku, shichi, go, ichi" isn't faster than "eight, two, four, six, seven, five, one"
Japanese has two sets of numbers. One is the one you gave, which is based on Japanese, and the other got imported along with kanji from China. Using the shortest forms of the kun readings, it would be "ya, fu, yo, mu, na, i, hito". I don't know if a typical Japanese speaker would memorize them that way, but since those forms are ingrained in the language, they should be able to do so without significant effort.
Now, to an English speaker, it may look like a wash; both appear to be strings of eight syllables. But the kun-based numeral sounds are in fact quite a bit faster.
> One is the one you gave, which is based on Japanese, and the other got imported along with kanji from China.
Wrong. "hachi", "ni", "roku", "shichi", "go", and "ichi" are Chinese-origin (on'yomi), not Japanese-origin (kun'yomi). The only number in my example that is Japanese-origin is "yon"[0], which is interchangeable with "shi" (the on'yomi equivalent) in many contexts.
> Using the shortest forms of the kun readings, it would be "ya, fu, yo, mu, na, i, hito".
Those readings are not used to count by native Japanese speakers (I speak Japanese and have lived in Japan), and I can't think of any examples off the top of my head where they would be used on their own.
> I don't know if a typical Japanese speaker would memorize them that way, but since those forms are ingrained in the language, they should be able to do so without significant effort.
My bad on flipping kun and on, but that doesn't change my point.
>Those readings are not used to count by native Japanese speakers (I speak Japanese and have lived in Japan) ... They do not.
Have you asked a native speaker? Speaking Japanese as a second language is not the same as speaking it natively, so unless you have discussed this with a native speaker, I don't think that's a sufficient credential.
Yes. I have been taught how to count correctly in Japanese in a college class by native Japanese instructors with graduate degrees in the instruction of Japanese to foreign learners.
And as for my experience not being "a sufficient credential", I don't think you realize (and I really do mean this in the nicest way possible) how ridiculously absurd your suggestion that anyone counts "eight, two, four, six, seven, five, one" as "ya, fu, yo, mu, na, i, hito" in Japanese sounds. It can be considered (very) roughly equivalent to suggesting that English speakers would memorize numbers using Latin or Greek prefixes.
Interesting, but your ability to memorize sequences of numbers is almost completely irrelevant to your ability to do higher-level math, and the hypothesis that memorization "compounds into more knowledge and better math skills for these Chinese children" is shaky at best. Also, the statement "Asians are better than Americans at math" needs some qualification. Most of the world's best mathematicians come from either the USA or Europe (although there are of course many talented Asian mathematicians, like Tao, Mochizuki, etc).
>Interesting, but your ability to memorize sequences of numbers is almost completely irrelevant to your ability to do higher-level math
Your digit span does affect your ability to do mental arithmetic, and mental arithmetic is an indispensable tool when meditating on equations and algorithms so that you can understand their behavior.
Mental arithmetic is not that useful in higher math - past calculus you're more likely to use letters than numbers, and in many cases you're not working directly with numbers anyway.
I think they mean algebra and higher, not arithmetic. So basically junior high school and better. Even algebra doesn't benefit that much from simple counting and arithmetic.
"Good at math" means different things based on age, but an adult who is good at adding numbers and doing percentages is probably at a supermarket or a waiter, or MAYBE a bookkeeper or a baseball fan, not a "good at math" engineer or scientist. I don't think people are complaining that Asians are taking all the valuable service industry jobs adding prices and computing tips in their heads.
I always found more (Russian) jews in upper level math classes than Asians, though. The most-Asian major at MIT was "anything plausibly pre-med", like bio, chem, or chem-eng. 8 and 18 were mostly Jewish, mostly non-US origin.
Ironically, French tend to be good at math (they told me so when I was over there). Zero through 69 uses forms similar to counting in English (inferior to Chinese per the OP), and then it goes all wonky. 70 is sixty-ten, 71 is sixty-eleven,... but then 80 is four-twenty, and then 90 is four-twenty-ten, -eleven,... Ouch!
The rational is that they get very good at adding, multiplying, and then simplifying funky numbers in their heads (e.g. 73 + 92 would be sixty-eleven + four-twenty-twelve = hundred-sixty-five). Or maybe they get really good at memorizing addition tables, which would enhance their memorization skills. Or maybe they were just bragging over beer (good beer, excellent wine, très bon food ;-).
I was kinda skeptical as well, because I actually don't speak much Chinese (even though I learned it at a young age), so I think in English, yet I was very good at math in HS (competitive).
Yet, looking back, I realized that I did think of numbers like "four two" instead of "forty two", so doing calculations like "[four | two] plus [two | eight] equals [six | ten] -> 70". Hence, faster.
It’s actually interesting — I kind of see this article as more of an analogy. I'm don't think it's the main cause of a performance gap, but it definitely could contribute.
Imagine: what if this article was about developing a typical business app with C# vs. C++ — instead of “you can count from 0-10 faster”, it’s “you can manipulate strings faster” (measured in dev time, not CPU cycles).
Developers will switch to newer languages that make it more efficient. Eg, Paul Graham's arguments about how LISP made Viaweb successful.
So, I'm curious. Developers will switch languages because they're more efficient and expressive. But it's hard to switch languages. Not impossible, though.
Will English evolve to become more efficient over time? Or will we all switch to a newer language because it's more efficient?
Based on this concept, I've created a base-100 number system that encodes each digit into a single simple syllable which is designed so that they can be strung into unambiguous sequences. So if your mental phonological loop can hold 10 fast syllables, you can hold the equivalent of 20 decimal digits in this system.
The system is logically arranged so it's pretty easy to memorize, and since it's base 100, the conversion to and from decimal is simple. The next step after is to memorize the addition and multiplication tables using them, which are of course much larger than in base 10. Once those become second nature, it should be possible to do mental arithmetic more quickly and with more mental registers to work with for larger numbers. I'm not nearly to that point yet, but it's a fun experiment.
If people are interested, I can toss what I have up on github and write up a detailed explanation of the system. So far, I have a few little HTML5 drills for learning to convert, and an Anki deck for the addition tables.
Most Asian counting systems are similar to the Chinese.
>How does pronouncing numbers help with anything more complex than counting?
Majority of the population don't use much beyond very basic math. The ability to do simple arithmetic on a day to day basis for most is an important skill to have.
I've seen this argument come up from time to time in blogs and newspapers, but I don't buy it.
While I agree that this may allow for Asian students to do basic arithmetic slightly faster at a younger age, learning concepts such as a geometry, linear algebra or calculus do not depend on my ability to count.
This is kind of true. In my freshman year, I didn't even use calculator for my calculus class. However, for highly abstract math, I don't think I have an advantage.
Does it help delicate western sensibilities if I point out I'm asian?