Why are Asians so good at math
In chapter 8 of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes cultural legacy to explain a very interesting phenomenon (to me at least): why Asians are so good at math? I mean, if you look at the ranking of countries at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) you will see that China is occupying the first positions in most years. If you prefer graphs, here’s a short timeline video Top 20 Country by International Mathematical Olympiad Gold Medal (1959–2019).
Asians have a built-in advantage when it comes to mathematics. An “unfair advantage”, if you will. And there are three key factors playing a role in that:
1. Asian languages have a logical counting system
There’s a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. So one might expect to also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and fiveteen. But we don’t. Instead, we use another form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Likewise, we say forty, sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety (which sound like four, six, seven, eight, and nine). But we also say twenty, thirty, fifty, which don’t sound like two, three, and five.
The English number system is very irregular. Not the case in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Their counting system is much more logical and intuitive. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on. It seems like the way you learn to count in primary school. Starting with units, then tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on.
This contrast means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American’s. Four-year-old Chinese kids can count, on average, to forty. American kids at the same age, on the other hand, can count only to fifteen, and most don’t reach forty until they’re five. By the age of five, American children are already a year behind their Asian correspondents in one (if not the most) essential math skill.
Besides, adding numbers is far more convenient in Asian languages. Please take a moment to add thirty-seven to twenty-two. Well, that’s thirty plus twenty added to seven plus two, which equals fifty-nine, right? Yep, but let’s take a look at how it’s done in an Asian language. We saw that they count in a much more logical and coherent way. In this case, it’s being asked to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two. Did you notice anything intriguing? The equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. It’s much more transparent than the English system, which involves an annoying number translation (that takes some extra seconds). The attitude toward math is different. In the Asian system, there’s a pattern I can figure out. Math does make sense. Maybe that makes Asian children more likely to enjoy math, which maybe makes them search for new challenges, creating a sense of a flow experience. A meaningful work, if you will.
2. Chinese number words are brief (aka faster to read)
Another major difference is that Chinese numbers are far quicker to read. Human brain stores digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. Therefore, we most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second interval. Unlike English, Chinese allows its speakers to remember a sequence of numbers (e.g. 2, 5, 3, 7, 4, 9, 6) perfectly almost every time because of the succinctness of its number words.
As the French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene states in his book The Number Sense:
Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is “si” and 7 “qi”). Their English equivalents — “four,” “seven” — are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English ,and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers.
3. Rice paddies culture
What the hell?! How growing rice makes people better at math? Well, let’s see what the anthropologist Francesca Bray says (paraphrased by Gladwell):
[…] rice agriculture is “skill oriented”: if you’re willing to weed a bit more diligently, and become more adept at fertilizing, and spend a bit more time monitoring water levels, and do a better job keeping the claypan absolutely level, and make use of every square inch of your rice paddy, you’ll harvest a bigger crop. Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.
What really stands out, however, is the nature of that work. It was meaningful. If you remember at least some of the eight elements of enjoyment that M. Csikszentmihalyi presented in Flow, you’ll understand why. Can’t recall any of them? Or didn’t even read the book (strongly recommend doing so)? Fine, we’ll work through this together.
First, there is a clear and immediate feedback mechanism. It’s simple, the harder you work on cultivating rice, the more you produce.
Second, it’s complex work. It requires sharp skills, concentration on the task at hand, and deep involvement. It’s not limited to planting in the spring and harvesting in the fall. The rice farmer runs a sort of small business, balancing the family workforce, building a sophisticated irrigation system, and coordinating the process of harvesting.
And finally, there’s a sense of control. It’s autonomous. A rice economy calls for farmers to go out into the fields each and every morning. Their destiny depended on how much effort they put in.
Persistence, doggedness, and willingness to work hard are required to succeed on a rice farm. Imagine a country where these values are embedded deeply. Now that would be a country good at math.
No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
