#9 Asians and Math

Unless you are from Neptune you know that Asians are good at math, among other things. But do you know why? I did not. Is it OK to ask this question? I say yes. Sure, some people might say this is a stereotype, and therefore the subject should be off-limits. To this, I say nonsense. There is something valuable in understanding why a group shows a result tied to ethnicity, positive or negative. If we don’t properly study these things, people are left to make self-serving idiotic assertions.

Relative to Asians and math, I was further intrigued by the circumstance of my neighbors, a Japanese family that’s been in the US for eight years. They have four boys from 12th to 4th grade. The oldest three boys, born in Japan, are high achievers, while the youngest is below average and worrisome to the family. On top of being a bit pampered, he is the only one that has not attended Japanese school (on Saturdays) and does not speak Japanese. I suspected that these differences matter, and there is research to support this notion.

Stanislas Dehaene's, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the College de France (here), has researched Asian language numbering systems, which are remarkably brief, easy to understand, and aid the memory. He also found that more numbers can be accurately held in memory, via these languages, compared to Western languages. Add this advantage with another piece of data, where Asian cultures score high in the persistence category, and the result is killer math scores.

My neighbors, as a single data point, offer that these cultural advantages can be mitigated if you replace the language and weekend Japanese school, with a new inconsistent language/less persistent culture. By example, in Japan the school year is 243 days versus 180 in the US. Long summer vacations are ruinous to gains.

I am not arguing that Asians are or are not smarter, rather I am saying that groups thrive or stumble based up cultural influences that go much farther back in time than we think.

James C. Collier

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