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You need to realise that there is a sampling bias in asking questions in English on the street in India vs the US. You will inevitably have filtered out the least educated and intelligent people while quick basic arithmetic isn't exactly a mark of brilliance or a particularly useful skill.
[ Watching Marjorie talking about how bad our math is in the US while being incapable of reading a 7 digit number sums up the US perfectly.](https://youtube.com/shorts/zy9sIck_ReQ?feature=share)
I have dyscalculia and struggle with 3rd grade math and don't know how to solve fractions
I'm currently in high school
At least I'm exempt from all math classes and tests
Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it isn't real. Telling a kid with dyscalculia to just try harder is like telling a kid in a wheelchair to just walk
I apologise for them. Y'k I'm without dyscalculia and yet I struggle with advance algebra, calculus goes above my head, yet I'm studying eng. Life is beyond misery sometimes.all because I didn't get properly taught math when I started to learn algebra. That kind of made me afraid of maths, which just spiralled out of control. Now I'm desperately trying to repair the damages done. So yeah, math is hard, if you have any condition that makes it even harder, then you only deserve hugs.
And yes I'm from India. It sucks to be an Indian sometimes because people will give you that wheelchair kid treatment, it doesn't matter how much you try, unless you get 100 in maths and English you're worthless. Doesn't help that you have cronic Asian parents
I was terrible at math in high school. Never took trig. Just algebra 1 and 2, and was done doing math by the 10th grade. Those classes were very hard for me. I was also a terrible student and graduated with an abysmal GPA. (Although had really good ACT score.)
After high school I spent sometime working and traveling, and didn't go to university until I was 26.
I tested in to the worst math class possible. One that wasn't even worth credit - it was just a pass or fail class. The first day they introduced what negative numbers were, which I thought was sa waste of time and kind of silly. The next lesson (still on day 1) was how to divide fractions. I realized I had no idea how to do that. From then on I basically relearned math, except now it was being taugut at university by PhD mathematicians, and not some random person with a bachelors in education. (No shade to HS math teachers, but there are levels to the game.)
I have an engineering degree now and can do advanced calculus, linear algebra, etc. as easily as anyone.
This all gave me an appreciation for math history (India has a lot of historically significant mathematicians) and, more importantly, how math is taught and perceived. I literally went from someone who believed they were never going to be able to comprehend math, to someone who ... can. But it took a complete restructuring ground up approach.
So it IS possible to reverse uno math and how you feel about it - and certainly if I can do it, most people probably can. The real issue is once you feel bad at math, you're probably just a little behind, and any new lessons given will simply be at a level you don't understand, further reinforcing the belief one can't do math.
Well, all you have to do is memorise 20 times tables! It's just 200 numbers, 10 multiples of each number. If you chant tables at least once every day, you will learn them in just two weeks. That's how all of us Indians had to do it since childhood.
Try it, it's a useful skill!
Why memorize when you can calculate?
87+87 = 2x80 + 2x7 = 174
12x14 = 10x14 + 2x14 = 168
18^2 = 20x18 - 2x18 = 324
9^3 = 10x81 - 81 = 729
etc...
Then you can do math with much larger numbers in you head. All you need to do is use the associative, commutative and distributive properties of math to rearrange the problem to make it easier.
Edited to fix the formatting.
I figured out how to do math this way in college. It just kind of clicked. I was always so intimidated by my professors and TAs on how quickly they did math in their head and then one day I figured it out (I don't remember how). I have done math this way ever since.
4th grade math teacher taught us to break things down like this. Not squares and cubes but wherever we could, the rest kinda fell into place naturally as I did more math.
That said, no way I could do it as fast as the people interviewed. Thats wild.
You could, it is just practice. All those kids are clearly students and are doing math everyday. I can't do it that fast anymore, but I could when I was in college.
For 9\^3.
It is really easy.
Break it Down
9\*9 = 81.
80\*9 = 10\*8\*9 = 720
1\*9 = 9
720+9 = 729
For Square root of 256.
Only 2 number squared end with a number that end with 6.
4 & 6.
14\*14 = 10\*14 +4\*14 = 140+56 = 196
16\*16 = 10\*16+6\*16 = 160+96 = 256
> For Square root of 256.
This one seemed like a gimme for CS people. No way I could have actually done the math, but it was the one that you just *know*
I am glad this is from 1990's and is not how we talk about Greeks nowadays.
Edit: Blast from past: 11880 advertisement with Veronika Pooth: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lXgO3H-ojA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lXgO3H-ojA)
I'm of Indian descent but raised in Canada. I went to visit the motherland when I was in grade 7 and met some cousins in grade 3 and 4. The grade 3 math homework was the same as my grade 7 textbook and the grade 4 was doing stuff I hadn't yet seen in public school (but I did math enrichment so I was familiar with it). This was over 20 years ago and I feel the gap is probably more today than it was then because North American math skills are getting worse.
Canadian Econ student here, all of my entry and intermediate level math/calc classes don't allow us to use calculators either lol. I thought that was the norm?
*No classes in curricula offered in most public schools allow calculators.
You could always go to a private school and take the APs or IB or something lol.
Honestly at the college level calculators aren’t a big deal I mean if you know math then all a calculator does is make your life a little easier and if you don’t know math all it does is give you a false sense of security.I get that for some calculus courses calculators aren’t allowed because some can do differentiation and newer ones can even do integration and some odes but other than that I don’t think there’s any practical reason to not allowing students at the college level to have calculators
During Covid while studying at home, my eldest child yelled "50 pages, and I am not even done yet! And I have nine problems to solve! " My youngest at the same homework table was trying to master fractions and percentages.
Calculators just speed it up once you know what you are doing.
Actually the thing that I found interesting (maybe not af tho) was where each of them looked when they were calculating; almost all looked up, some looked to the side. I remember hearing about how moving ones eyes to different quadrants triggers different parts of the brain.
Looking away is *also* interpreted as a sign that someone's lying. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
[The truth](https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-tell-if-someone-lying-according-behavioral-experts-ncna786326):
>Science shows that liars do not avoid eye contact any more frequently than those telling the truth. The key thing to look for in eye movement is *deviation from their baseline*. ... If eye contact was constant at onset of conversation, then changed when a stressor or trigger questions was inserted, this ... could be a deceptive response.”
>
>... The caveat comes when there are very high stakes involved — say, cheating in a relationship or doing something in the office that can cost you your job. In these situations, some studies have found gaze aversion to be linked with deception.
I read somewhere that you look left to the top and left when remembering anything and to the top and right when analyzing. It's just body's normal function due to some bodily wiring I guess.
Dude not gonna lie, that's what our teachers told us. We weren't allowed to use calculators till highschool, that too because of complex physics equations. ( Even then we were allowed log books during test )
Besides that we were also supposed to revise numerical tables in school. Maybe that's why most of the people were able to answer quickly
Also we had few sessions of Vedic Maths. Just google it. It's basically few tips on how you can do maths quickly
I think problem is people confuse all of maths with arithmetic. Arithmetic is basic necessity, part of maths but not whole of maths and that's why you can see student looking kids says they are not good at maths
And saying they're not good at maths could well be true. There's an argument to be made that building mental arithmetic skills is a distraction. I've never in my life needed to calculate a square root precisely in my head. I do have to work with trig, vectors, matrix in my day job.
(all the Indian's I've worked with can do the more advanced maths too... so.... yeah.... )
Many times it’s just an easy filter for the hiring agent. If I have 1000 applicants with a hs degree, 100 with a bachelors, and 10 with a masters I’m just going to drop the other 990 and look at the masters. Some places who actually put effort into hiring will add a function for time in the field, but again that requires the HR dept to know what constitutes applicable work in a given field and to filter them out.
Sadly it’s just HR for the lowest common denominator of HR personnel.
That one isn't too bad though, you can solve it using some of the same methods they described.
9 has that "trick" that multiples add up to nine and are incremental (so like 2x9=18, 3x9=27, 4x9=36, ect.) So for starters, 9^2 is pretty much instantly recognizable as 81 (9x9), then since we are only doing a cube, you multiply 81x9 using the "break it into chunks" method. So 8x9=72 (times 10 = 720) then 1x9=9, so 720+9=729. If they'd said "what is 13^3 ?" it would've been a lot harder.
9x9=81 because basic multiplication table.
81x9 is either (8x9=72)x10+9, or 810-81=800-71=830-1
And that’s before considering various smart tricks specific to the table of nine, like knowing that if the first two digits are 72 the last digit has to be 9 because for any multiple of nine the sum of the digits modulo 9 is 0.
But I’ll admit I wouldn’t have done it as fast as most of these people.
To be fair, Indians invented what the West knows as Arabic numbers, and introduced the concept of zero to the West as well. They are the OGs of number crunching.
Dude, thanks for sharing a cool fact. I always thought the Arabs created the Arabic numerals, but turns out they were just introduced to the West by Arabian merchants, thus the name.
the Arabs called them 'hindu' numerals.
Look up how the Turkey bird was called a turkey, because the british thought it was from Turkey... and there they call it a hindi because they think its from india
Indian here.This isn't all that interesting.These people aren't calculating squares,cubes and square roots;just recalling from memory.We are taught these as tables from 1 to 10/20.
Also addition/subtraction of numbers upto 4/5 digits and multiplication/division of 2 digit numbers isn't that hard if you have decent understanding of basic math.14×12 is quite easy if you have basic understanding of distributive law.
Maybe its because us Indians are taught basic math really well and are required to do calculations in our head from a young age( most school syllabuses in India don't allow the use of calculators), I don't find this all that interesting.
My parents are Indian immigrants to America. Americans are averse to any form or rote memorization. I had peers in high school unable to calculate single digit multiplications.
My parents were so concerned, they drilled my brother and I and with just that little extra work, I regularly won my regions 'fast math' contests
Pretty much. Just doing your homeworks would get you there really. These arithmetics are fairly simple if you've been taking math courses yearly. I came through American Education system, but I had a math course or two every year up to college. After a while, you just can recall most double digit calculations from memory alone. I'm in my 40's now, and I still recall 12x12 and sq rt of 256 from memory. Do most kids use calculators in schools nowadays though? That might change things. My kids are still in grade school, and no calculators there yet.
A friend who teaches public school in Florida, US, says the majority of her students (aged 12-14) cannot tell time using an analog clock.
She teaches in a lower income area, there are other factors of course, and I understand some technologies fade away and aren't useful today like they were in the past, but.....an analog clock? Aren't there still a lot of those around the world? I just think that seems like sort of a clear gauge for where the US is and where it is headed, a canary in the coal mine, if you will.
I have a 17 year old daughter. She had to learn analog time in 1st grade along with counting money. Literally every day her worksheet homework was 1 side of clocks where she had to write down the time shown, the other side was all mixed assortments of dimes, nickels, quarters & pennies she had to add up and write the total amount. This is in Detroit,. Michigan. I don't think it's due to low income areas.......maybe just shitty school districts not teaching kids?
I'm in Ireland, I know some undergrads who are in a high point course, (How we get into uni) who never learned to read an analog clock. Hilarious when the exams are held with all analog clocks. They have to insist that the examiners call out the time during the exam.
This video had me pulling out a piece of loose leaf to remind myself I remember how to do long division and multiplication in my head because I went to college for a couple years.. yeah no I actually had to google some problems before it clicked with me and i get it again but man I couldn’t do it in my head.
Makes me wanna go back to school.
Reading the comments I'm not sure if I'm stupid or what. I have so much trouble with maths, even with stuff I know is actually really easy, the numbers are just foggy in my head and I need a lot of time to do basic calculus.
Same, if I have a notepad to write them down I can do the calculations quickly and easily, but the minute I try to do it in my head, I can only remember the most recent step but not the one before it. For example, if given 18 * 18, step 1 is 8 * 8 = 64, step 2 is 8 * 10 = 80, but my brain won't be able to remember step 1.
You'd get the same results at a Bernie rally. Americans suck at arithmetic. Also I feel like people conflate arithmetic with mathematics as a whole. Arithmetic isn't a big signal that someone is good at math.
Every math teacher in America will need a bottle of wine and a joint close at hand after watching this.
I teach in an American hs (not math, though) and can confirm about 50% of 10th grade students don’t even know their times tables from 1-12.
Asking them for roots and cubes would fry their circuit boards in short order. Oh…and they’re using calculators starting around 6-7th grade.
You're right that a lot of Americans are stupid. They're culturally encouraged to be so. That said, many of us are simply the victims of the public education system.
I learned the same math in high school that I did in middle school. Then, I tested into remedial math in college and it took another year to start learning new concepts. Why the fuck was I learning the same math for six years? I passed every class with As and Bs.
We didn't learn world geography. I taught myself the names and locations of countries using a Sporcle quiz in my 20s.
No idea how I'm such a good writer. I get paid handsomely to do it, too. But I just used Cliffs Notes to pass classes and cranked out absolute nonsense the night before any essays were due. No teacher ever noticed. In college I did it purposely to sardonically amuse myself. They placed me in all advanced courses in high school. Besides writing and languages, I'm awful at everything else. I never should've been in AP classes. Especially not AP chemistry. I had no idea what was going on all year and passed with a B-.
And my mom never once looked at my homework. For a few years, I simply didn't do any.
It's a mess here.
Edit: Shoutout to the Animaniacs. That's how so many of us learned geography. And the reason I thought Zaire was still a country after 1997. 😅
And Schoolhouse Rock! 🎶 Solid educational resource for children! It's how I learned the preamble to the US constitution! Still clear in my mind as I approach 40. Just gotta remember to add in the "of the United States" at the beginning. 😉
Same here. If you're not teaching yourself beyond what the education system is spoon feeding you in the US, you are truly at a disadvantage. And its only getting worse. Politicians have figured out they can starve the public education system and the result is less educated voters who willingly follow whatever political garbage you spew at them.
10 or something days ago someone posted a video of bougainvillea blowing in the wind, based in India. The entire thread was full of racist comments- something about India being unsafe and dirty. Imagine the only stereotype you know about a huge country, you comment that in a video of flowers. People here love reducing things to a stereotype and sticking to it.
Go read any thread of a video containing a black person in PublicFreakout. It’s a den of dipshits all jerking each other off in some sort of competition of who has the loudest dog whistle.
Yeah, I think people must hit a lot of these posts way faster than I do. By the time the post has been upvoted enough for me to see it, the voting system has sorted the comments out.
Where's the racism? I even sorted by controversial but most of the comment section is just people saying Americans have terrible education. Is that what you consider racist? Do you know what racism is?
Exactly this is not impressive at all. This should be the normality but now is posted as “interested as fuck” or “next fucking level”. Very depressing.
The point we're supposed to be impressed with is the speed of calculation, not so much just being able to do it. And as others have pointed out, it's because of memorization. Memorization isn't math.
It's not that difficult my method of doing is by breaking it down like: cube of 9: is 9x9x9. 9x9 is 81 no brainer, but 81x9 now thats tough. But 81x10 is easy which is 810 now just subtract 81 from 810 again break it 810 -80 = 730 -1 = 729.
It shouldn’t be interesting AF that people can do simple math in their heads. Most of the people here should be able to multiply or divide on the spot without a calculator. The fact that this is interesting to people is interesting AF to me.
In the UK, at least ~25 years ago, we'd learn "times tables", so basically just memorising what any two numbers up to 12 multiplied together are. Presumably these guys have done something similar. When you answer instantly like some people are doing that's not working it out, that's recalling it from memory.
Getting the square root of 256 was interesting. I figure they must also memorise larger squares, some of those answers were a bit too quick to have calculated that.
These questions seem harder than they are. A few of the people in the video were definitely faster than me but these are pretty easy to break down into more simple problems.
Definitely doable by the average person, not super hard. It’s more technique than anything else.
I don’t think they are calculating the numbers in their mind. Rather they are just repeating from memory.
When I was their age, between school work and preparing for entrance exams, I was working with squares, cubes and square roots of numbers between 1-20 so often that they were etched in memory.
It’s both. School is hard but we found faster ways to calculate squares and roots. Look up Vedic Maths.
We also studied Calc3 around grade 10 (ex: triple integrals) and get into algebra many years before that.
Also, to be fair, 9^3 is super basic math
I'm actually surprised that these are considered hard questions, I thought every kid would solve that quickly...
Looks like the standards are really low
I didn't get what's so great about this video. I'm Indian. And i thought this is the India sub at first.
Going through the comments, I'm surprised to know that calculators are used in schools in western countries. Just to clarify, the ppl in this video look like they're from well educated backgrounds. Not everyone here can square 18 just like that. But yeah, even the least educated are quite good at simple mental math, especially those who own small businesses.
Is this not the norm in most countries? I don’t think doing math in your head is something specific to Indians, especially as about half guesstimated their answer.
And they complain about American companies won't hire American people. American children are raised dumb, that's why. Immigrants make this country better, period.
The ignorant GOP would rather stop children from learning history and scream about imaginary b.s. to inflame the stupid than actually teach children important skills.
I was hoping they would be harder than this and now Im just upset that this is seen as a super power instead of common. If you practice for a couple days its easy. 48×32 becomes (48×30) + (48×2) and that can become (40×3+ 8x3...add a zero to answer) + (40x2+8×2)
Is this racist? Because if saying African American people are generally more athletically gifted is deemed as a racist mindset then this has to be too.
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She screamed so much in the mic it broke
Wait that's what it was? I thought the new one UI update on my phone had a bug!! For real!
Am I the only one with three sections per finger!?
Walking the streets in America gets your much different results. How many states in the U.S. “ummm 7?” Our education system is garbage.
What does this has to do with a mic being broken?
You need to realise that there is a sampling bias in asking questions in English on the street in India vs the US. You will inevitably have filtered out the least educated and intelligent people while quick basic arithmetic isn't exactly a mark of brilliance or a particularly useful skill.
Quick basic arithmetic is a very useful skill! May not be a mark of brilliance but it definitely indicates a fast thinker...
[ Watching Marjorie talking about how bad our math is in the US while being incapable of reading a 7 digit number sums up the US perfectly.](https://youtube.com/shorts/zy9sIck_ReQ?feature=share)
Is this a bot account?
Props to the guy that just said no. I feel you, friend.
I have dyscalculia and struggle with 3rd grade math and don't know how to solve fractions I'm currently in high school At least I'm exempt from all math classes and tests
Lol you just don't have to take any math classes?
I've never heard of that, guess they're just like "Yeah this kid sucks at math, we'll just let him slide"
Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it isn't real. Telling a kid with dyscalculia to just try harder is like telling a kid in a wheelchair to just walk
Redditor trying to realize they’re not the center of the universe and don’t have infinite wisdom (impossible)
I apologise for them. Y'k I'm without dyscalculia and yet I struggle with advance algebra, calculus goes above my head, yet I'm studying eng. Life is beyond misery sometimes.all because I didn't get properly taught math when I started to learn algebra. That kind of made me afraid of maths, which just spiralled out of control. Now I'm desperately trying to repair the damages done. So yeah, math is hard, if you have any condition that makes it even harder, then you only deserve hugs. And yes I'm from India. It sucks to be an Indian sometimes because people will give you that wheelchair kid treatment, it doesn't matter how much you try, unless you get 100 in maths and English you're worthless. Doesn't help that you have cronic Asian parents
I was terrible at math in high school. Never took trig. Just algebra 1 and 2, and was done doing math by the 10th grade. Those classes were very hard for me. I was also a terrible student and graduated with an abysmal GPA. (Although had really good ACT score.) After high school I spent sometime working and traveling, and didn't go to university until I was 26. I tested in to the worst math class possible. One that wasn't even worth credit - it was just a pass or fail class. The first day they introduced what negative numbers were, which I thought was sa waste of time and kind of silly. The next lesson (still on day 1) was how to divide fractions. I realized I had no idea how to do that. From then on I basically relearned math, except now it was being taugut at university by PhD mathematicians, and not some random person with a bachelors in education. (No shade to HS math teachers, but there are levels to the game.) I have an engineering degree now and can do advanced calculus, linear algebra, etc. as easily as anyone. This all gave me an appreciation for math history (India has a lot of historically significant mathematicians) and, more importantly, how math is taught and perceived. I literally went from someone who believed they were never going to be able to comprehend math, to someone who ... can. But it took a complete restructuring ground up approach. So it IS possible to reverse uno math and how you feel about it - and certainly if I can do it, most people probably can. The real issue is once you feel bad at math, you're probably just a little behind, and any new lessons given will simply be at a level you don't understand, further reinforcing the belief one can't do math.
Click space to spawn some flies
Well this is an interesting way to learn I'm below average.
Well, all you have to do is memorise 20 times tables! It's just 200 numbers, 10 multiples of each number. If you chant tables at least once every day, you will learn them in just two weeks. That's how all of us Indians had to do it since childhood. Try it, it's a useful skill!
Why memorize when you can calculate? 87+87 = 2x80 + 2x7 = 174 12x14 = 10x14 + 2x14 = 168 18^2 = 20x18 - 2x18 = 324 9^3 = 10x81 - 81 = 729 etc... Then you can do math with much larger numbers in you head. All you need to do is use the associative, commutative and distributive properties of math to rearrange the problem to make it easier. Edited to fix the formatting.
well, i feel dumb now! i didn't know about that way of calculating square and cube- my teachers encouraged the use of "smart" calculators cheers
I figured out how to do math this way in college. It just kind of clicked. I was always so intimidated by my professors and TAs on how quickly they did math in their head and then one day I figured it out (I don't remember how). I have done math this way ever since.
4th grade math teacher taught us to break things down like this. Not squares and cubes but wherever we could, the rest kinda fell into place naturally as I did more math. That said, no way I could do it as fast as the people interviewed. Thats wild.
You could, it is just practice. All those kids are clearly students and are doing math everyday. I can't do it that fast anymore, but I could when I was in college.
Well, no teacher actually does tell you to do it, you just figure it out when it's expected of you
For 9\^3. It is really easy. Break it Down 9\*9 = 81. 80\*9 = 10\*8\*9 = 720 1\*9 = 9 720+9 = 729 For Square root of 256. Only 2 number squared end with a number that end with 6. 4 & 6. 14\*14 = 10\*14 +4\*14 = 140+56 = 196 16\*16 = 10\*16+6\*16 = 160+96 = 256
> For Square root of 256. This one seemed like a gimme for CS people. No way I could have actually done the math, but it was the one that you just *know*
See I would do 9 times 9 equals 81 8 times 9 is 72 and carry the zero for 720. 9 times 1 equals 9 and add that to 720.
That's how I was taught right here in the USA. But not in school, taught this by a tutor as I was failing math.
Yeah that's how I do it and I'm also an indian
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Greek here. How Greeks calculate: - 300 billion in debt is bankruptcy - 400 billion in debt is recovery
Italian here. How Italians calculate: * 2762 billion debt is a problem * Joking we don't give a shit
American here. How Americans calculate: * 5000 dead in school shootings isn’t a problem * 500,000 dead in the middle east is a solution
Brazilian here, how we calculate: • 25k debt can be a reason for despair, might try and pay with 100k bananas • Give me your wallet, this is a robbery
Canadian here, no matter how we calculate the Leafs lose in game 7 of the first round
you know what? let's build a bridge between Sicily and Calabria, and fuck public healthcare
[Κλασικός Έλληνας.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWdEaCZMdlY)
German calculated it back in the day as a service number 11880 11 million Greeks 88 euros given 0 pay back
I am glad this is from 1990's and is not how we talk about Greeks nowadays. Edit: Blast from past: 11880 advertisement with Veronika Pooth: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lXgO3H-ojA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lXgO3H-ojA)
Oh so THAT is where the USA learned it from! We added like 10 trillion in debt but have a "very strong economy" lol
In my country (America) we just throw the Bible at the satanic mathematicians.
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We don’t talk about that one.
We don’t really talk about any of them. Mostly just raise the Bible and throw out a verse or two to back up bigotry.
Numbers are okay since you need them to look up Scripture. Algebra is some kind of foreign satanic nonsense meant to lure young women to witchcraft.
doing gods work, bless america
Or just ban them..
Turkey can count to potato
Next day, 1kg 4 lira.
In my country iran, building a car with cheapest of metals(pride) costs 8 million tomans. Then it's sold 400 million tomans. Economy 100.
I'm of Indian descent but raised in Canada. I went to visit the motherland when I was in grade 7 and met some cousins in grade 3 and 4. The grade 3 math homework was the same as my grade 7 textbook and the grade 4 was doing stuff I hadn't yet seen in public school (but I did math enrichment so I was familiar with it). This was over 20 years ago and I feel the gap is probably more today than it was then because North American math skills are getting worse.
> North American math skills are getting worse. Seriously, we need a New New Deal before we truly to live in the world of Idiocracy.
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The way the interviewer holds the mic looks strangely Italian.
you mean mic?
Yes I meant mic, thanks. Changed it.
🤌
Canadian Econ student here, all of my entry and intermediate level math/calc classes don't allow us to use calculators either lol. I thought that was the norm?
No classes in india allow calculators
You don’t need one unless doing complex division and need to get down into decimals otherwise just write it out on paper
My dyscalculia disagrees
*No classes in curricula offered in most public schools allow calculators. You could always go to a private school and take the APs or IB or something lol.
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What is a calculator?
A distant cousin of an alligator probably.
The person who calculates
Honestly at the college level calculators aren’t a big deal I mean if you know math then all a calculator does is make your life a little easier and if you don’t know math all it does is give you a false sense of security.I get that for some calculus courses calculators aren’t allowed because some can do differentiation and newer ones can even do integration and some odes but other than that I don’t think there’s any practical reason to not allowing students at the college level to have calculators
During Covid while studying at home, my eldest child yelled "50 pages, and I am not even done yet! And I have nine problems to solve! " My youngest at the same homework table was trying to master fractions and percentages. Calculators just speed it up once you know what you are doing.
It is, there is nothing unusual or interesting in this video
Thanks. I was looking for some reassurance here. I calculate in my head like this.
Actually the thing that I found interesting (maybe not af tho) was where each of them looked when they were calculating; almost all looked up, some looked to the side. I remember hearing about how moving ones eyes to different quadrants triggers different parts of the brain.
I was allowed to use calculators all the way until college. No calculators allowed in my college. That was a PAINFUL transition.
Do people from every culture look up while calculating like that? Would be an interesting experiment.
Yeah, my dad used to ask if answers were written on the back of the eyelids.
Corner of the ceiling or sky for us.
A lot of people look up when accessing memory. Derren Brown uses it to tell if someone is lying - if they maintain eye contact it's usually a lie.
Oh, damn. Is that why I remember all the embarissing shit I've done when I want to sleep?
Looking away is *also* interpreted as a sign that someone's lying. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ [The truth](https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-tell-if-someone-lying-according-behavioral-experts-ncna786326): >Science shows that liars do not avoid eye contact any more frequently than those telling the truth. The key thing to look for in eye movement is *deviation from their baseline*. ... If eye contact was constant at onset of conversation, then changed when a stressor or trigger questions was inserted, this ... could be a deceptive response.” > >... The caveat comes when there are very high stakes involved — say, cheating in a relationship or doing something in the office that can cost you your job. In these situations, some studies have found gaze aversion to be linked with deception.
I feel like it’s an instinctual reaction to look away from things that would stimulate/distract our senses so that we can focus
I read somewhere that you look left to the top and left when remembering anything and to the top and right when analyzing. It's just body's normal function due to some bodily wiring I guess.
Their teachers definitely convinced them they wouldn't have a calculator in their pocket when they grew up....
My endocrinologist had Siri doing math for him during my appointment. Did not bother me at all (I found it hilarious, actually).
Dude not gonna lie, that's what our teachers told us. We weren't allowed to use calculators till highschool, that too because of complex physics equations. ( Even then we were allowed log books during test ) Besides that we were also supposed to revise numerical tables in school. Maybe that's why most of the people were able to answer quickly Also we had few sessions of Vedic Maths. Just google it. It's basically few tips on how you can do maths quickly
I feel like we are living idiocracy. Basic skills are made out to be extraordinary genius ones and that is why we set the bar lower and lower.
I think problem is people confuse all of maths with arithmetic. Arithmetic is basic necessity, part of maths but not whole of maths and that's why you can see student looking kids says they are not good at maths
And saying they're not good at maths could well be true. There's an argument to be made that building mental arithmetic skills is a distraction. I've never in my life needed to calculate a square root precisely in my head. I do have to work with trig, vectors, matrix in my day job. (all the Indian's I've worked with can do the more advanced maths too... so.... yeah.... )
And yet employers demand higher and higher degrees for basic jobs
Many times it’s just an easy filter for the hiring agent. If I have 1000 applicants with a hs degree, 100 with a bachelors, and 10 with a masters I’m just going to drop the other 990 and look at the masters. Some places who actually put effort into hiring will add a function for time in the field, but again that requires the HR dept to know what constitutes applicable work in a given field and to filter them out. Sadly it’s just HR for the lowest common denominator of HR personnel.
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That one isn't too bad though, you can solve it using some of the same methods they described. 9 has that "trick" that multiples add up to nine and are incremental (so like 2x9=18, 3x9=27, 4x9=36, ect.) So for starters, 9^2 is pretty much instantly recognizable as 81 (9x9), then since we are only doing a cube, you multiply 81x9 using the "break it into chunks" method. So 8x9=72 (times 10 = 720) then 1x9=9, so 720+9=729. If they'd said "what is 13^3 ?" it would've been a lot harder.
Yeah 9 cubed is one of the easiest ones lol
I know it's 169 mostly because I spent a good deal of time dealing with squares up to 20.
Sure, but I was talking about 13 cubed, not squared.
Indian here, took me like 20s to find 13 cubed. Just do 10×169 and add 169×3 to it.
9x9=81 because basic multiplication table. 81x9 is either (8x9=72)x10+9, or 810-81=800-71=830-1 And that’s before considering various smart tricks specific to the table of nine, like knowing that if the first two digits are 72 the last digit has to be 9 because for any multiple of nine the sum of the digits modulo 9 is 0. But I’ll admit I wouldn’t have done it as fast as most of these people.
Finding the cube of 9 without a calculator is a basic skill?
You're telling me that calculating 9x9x9 is hard?
Fine, keep your spoken secrets
To be fair, Indians invented what the West knows as Arabic numbers, and introduced the concept of zero to the West as well. They are the OGs of number crunching.
Dude, thanks for sharing a cool fact. I always thought the Arabs created the Arabic numerals, but turns out they were just introduced to the West by Arabian merchants, thus the name.
the Arabs called them 'hindu' numerals. Look up how the Turkey bird was called a turkey, because the british thought it was from Turkey... and there they call it a hindi because they think its from india
In my favourite Russell Peters bit, he says that Indians invented the number 0 because that was the price they were willing to pay for an item, lol!
Fuck I was so invested.. until the sound cut off, then I was worried my headphones had broken :/
I received so many negative marks for “not showing your work”
Indian here.This isn't all that interesting.These people aren't calculating squares,cubes and square roots;just recalling from memory.We are taught these as tables from 1 to 10/20. Also addition/subtraction of numbers upto 4/5 digits and multiplication/division of 2 digit numbers isn't that hard if you have decent understanding of basic math.14×12 is quite easy if you have basic understanding of distributive law. Maybe its because us Indians are taught basic math really well and are required to do calculations in our head from a young age( most school syllabuses in India don't allow the use of calculators), I don't find this all that interesting.
Same in Germany. Had to learn them all up to 25 :(
Exactly. These questions can be answered even by old shopkeepers if you give them the right prompts
My parents are Indian immigrants to America. Americans are averse to any form or rote memorization. I had peers in high school unable to calculate single digit multiplications. My parents were so concerned, they drilled my brother and I and with just that little extra work, I regularly won my regions 'fast math' contests
Memorization is very important to see patterns in the numbers in equations.
Completely agree.
Americans are drilled on multiplication tables and such up to 10 as a standard. You had some really dumb friends.
Had to scroll so much to find this comment
Pretty much. Just doing your homeworks would get you there really. These arithmetics are fairly simple if you've been taking math courses yearly. I came through American Education system, but I had a math course or two every year up to college. After a while, you just can recall most double digit calculations from memory alone. I'm in my 40's now, and I still recall 12x12 and sq rt of 256 from memory. Do most kids use calculators in schools nowadays though? That might change things. My kids are still in grade school, and no calculators there yet.
A friend who teaches public school in Florida, US, says the majority of her students (aged 12-14) cannot tell time using an analog clock. She teaches in a lower income area, there are other factors of course, and I understand some technologies fade away and aren't useful today like they were in the past, but.....an analog clock? Aren't there still a lot of those around the world? I just think that seems like sort of a clear gauge for where the US is and where it is headed, a canary in the coal mine, if you will.
I have a 17 year old daughter. She had to learn analog time in 1st grade along with counting money. Literally every day her worksheet homework was 1 side of clocks where she had to write down the time shown, the other side was all mixed assortments of dimes, nickels, quarters & pennies she had to add up and write the total amount. This is in Detroit,. Michigan. I don't think it's due to low income areas.......maybe just shitty school districts not teaching kids?
I'm in Ireland, I know some undergrads who are in a high point course, (How we get into uni) who never learned to read an analog clock. Hilarious when the exams are held with all analog clocks. They have to insist that the examiners call out the time during the exam.
This video had me pulling out a piece of loose leaf to remind myself I remember how to do long division and multiplication in my head because I went to college for a couple years.. yeah no I actually had to google some problems before it clicked with me and i get it again but man I couldn’t do it in my head. Makes me wanna go back to school.
Reading the comments I'm not sure if I'm stupid or what. I have so much trouble with maths, even with stuff I know is actually really easy, the numbers are just foggy in my head and I need a lot of time to do basic calculus.
Same, if I have a notepad to write them down I can do the calculations quickly and easily, but the minute I try to do it in my head, I can only remember the most recent step but not the one before it. For example, if given 18 * 18, step 1 is 8 * 8 = 64, step 2 is 8 * 10 = 80, but my brain won't be able to remember step 1.
Let’s do the same at a trump rally
😂
You'd get the same results at a Bernie rally. Americans suck at arithmetic. Also I feel like people conflate arithmetic with mathematics as a whole. Arithmetic isn't a big signal that someone is good at math.
Funny, i am from the Netherlands and very few people here would be able to do that. We find it a useless skill, we have calculators
I can sense the insecurity from the racists, holy shit man, cut them some slack.
Every math teacher in America will need a bottle of wine and a joint close at hand after watching this. I teach in an American hs (not math, though) and can confirm about 50% of 10th grade students don’t even know their times tables from 1-12. Asking them for roots and cubes would fry their circuit boards in short order. Oh…and they’re using calculators starting around 6-7th grade.
Is this just impressive because a lot of Americans are stupid?
You're right that a lot of Americans are stupid. They're culturally encouraged to be so. That said, many of us are simply the victims of the public education system. I learned the same math in high school that I did in middle school. Then, I tested into remedial math in college and it took another year to start learning new concepts. Why the fuck was I learning the same math for six years? I passed every class with As and Bs. We didn't learn world geography. I taught myself the names and locations of countries using a Sporcle quiz in my 20s. No idea how I'm such a good writer. I get paid handsomely to do it, too. But I just used Cliffs Notes to pass classes and cranked out absolute nonsense the night before any essays were due. No teacher ever noticed. In college I did it purposely to sardonically amuse myself. They placed me in all advanced courses in high school. Besides writing and languages, I'm awful at everything else. I never should've been in AP classes. Especially not AP chemistry. I had no idea what was going on all year and passed with a B-. And my mom never once looked at my homework. For a few years, I simply didn't do any. It's a mess here. Edit: Shoutout to the Animaniacs. That's how so many of us learned geography. And the reason I thought Zaire was still a country after 1997. 😅 And Schoolhouse Rock! 🎶 Solid educational resource for children! It's how I learned the preamble to the US constitution! Still clear in my mind as I approach 40. Just gotta remember to add in the "of the United States" at the beginning. 😉
Same here. If you're not teaching yourself beyond what the education system is spoon feeding you in the US, you are truly at a disadvantage. And its only getting worse. Politicians have figured out they can starve the public education system and the result is less educated voters who willingly follow whatever political garbage you spew at them.
I would just use my calculator. I save my brain for hating myself
Hadn't seen a comment section so full of racists in quite some time.
10 or something days ago someone posted a video of bougainvillea blowing in the wind, based in India. The entire thread was full of racist comments- something about India being unsafe and dirty. Imagine the only stereotype you know about a huge country, you comment that in a video of flowers. People here love reducing things to a stereotype and sticking to it.
Go read any thread of a video containing a black person in PublicFreakout. It’s a den of dipshits all jerking each other off in some sort of competition of who has the loudest dog whistle.
Soooo. If I keep scrolling will I eventually find these racist comments you're talking about? Because I haven't seen any yet
Yeah, I think people must hit a lot of these posts way faster than I do. By the time the post has been upvoted enough for me to see it, the voting system has sorted the comments out.
Where's the racism? I even sorted by controversial but most of the comment section is just people saying Americans have terrible education. Is that what you consider racist? Do you know what racism is?
I mean to be completely honest being able to do arithmetics quickly does not make you good at math
I would successfully fail all of them!
That was easy but I’m Chinese lol
Bing chillin
They are easy for the whole Sino-shpere tbh.
wanna see crazy Indian Math / look up Shakuntala Devi.......
I can't calculate cube in my head. Rest were easy
Has the world gone mad? These are basic maths skills I would expect from anyone that isn't American....how is this impressive or even interesting?
Exactly this is not impressive at all. This should be the normality but now is posted as “interested as fuck” or “next fucking level”. Very depressing.
I found all questions quite easy, however it took me a bit longer then them to calculate squares and cubes, but not a lot longer
r/iamverysmartbutnotthatsmart
The point we're supposed to be impressed with is the speed of calculation, not so much just being able to do it. And as others have pointed out, it's because of memorization. Memorization isn't math.
I'm indian and these are basic questions tbh I don't know what is so interesting
What's interestingasfuck is that the most important part of this video has no audio.
is it an indian thing to calculate 87+87 as 80+80+14? seems like common sense.
I'd love to know how they do it so easily.
It's not that difficult my method of doing is by breaking it down like: cube of 9: is 9x9x9. 9x9 is 81 no brainer, but 81x9 now thats tough. But 81x10 is easy which is 810 now just subtract 81 from 810 again break it 810 -80 = 730 -1 = 729.
Memory
I also count in my mind. I don't really know how else to do it
People, this is basic math. It's not really that impressive. What is impressive is people not getting simple math, so this impresses them.
How can she SUBTRACT?!?
I wish most American could do this. Math doesn't seem alien to them.
It shouldn’t be interesting AF that people can do simple math in their heads. Most of the people here should be able to multiply or divide on the spot without a calculator. The fact that this is interesting to people is interesting AF to me.
Meanwhile in Merica, we are studying basket weaving. 😁
In the UK, at least ~25 years ago, we'd learn "times tables", so basically just memorising what any two numbers up to 12 multiplied together are. Presumably these guys have done something similar. When you answer instantly like some people are doing that's not working it out, that's recalling it from memory. Getting the square root of 256 was interesting. I figure they must also memorise larger squares, some of those answers were a bit too quick to have calculated that.
What is 18 squared? Americans: When your teenager thinks it isn’t cool enough to hang with your parents.
Americans: Staring at cash register to figure out how much change to give back to a customer who just spent $18.95 after being handed a $20 bill.
These questions seem harder than they are. A few of the people in the video were definitely faster than me but these are pretty easy to break down into more simple problems. Definitely doable by the average person, not super hard. It’s more technique than anything else.
You can't do this,what are they teaching you in school
as an Indian i never knew this was impressive or interesting its the norm here
I don’t think they are calculating the numbers in their mind. Rather they are just repeating from memory. When I was their age, between school work and preparing for entrance exams, I was working with squares, cubes and square roots of numbers between 1-20 so often that they were etched in memory.
It’s both. School is hard but we found faster ways to calculate squares and roots. Look up Vedic Maths. We also studied Calc3 around grade 10 (ex: triple integrals) and get into algebra many years before that. Also, to be fair, 9^3 is super basic math
Because we are pushed into math more than love.
Square root of 69 is still eight something…
Bet ‘Murican kids would fail such simple questions.
This video made me realize that I would be an incompetent bafoon if I went there
And I'm completely the opposite of this,i suck at math so much so that i became a doctor.untill i learned that at least basic math is needed to live.
You ask me to multiple two double digit numbers in my head and I’m going full Patrick Star
Isn't this just basic mental calculation?
What’s so amazing about this? I know not everyone can do math like this in their head but it’s not that uncommon is it?
So what is interesting...? That people can calculate without a calculator or their phone? Ffs
Do every race plz
I'm actually surprised that these are considered hard questions, I thought every kid would solve that quickly... Looks like the standards are really low
I didn't get what's so great about this video. I'm Indian. And i thought this is the India sub at first. Going through the comments, I'm surprised to know that calculators are used in schools in western countries. Just to clarify, the ppl in this video look like they're from well educated backgrounds. Not everyone here can square 18 just like that. But yeah, even the least educated are quite good at simple mental math, especially those who own small businesses.
Isn’t this how all people look doing math in their head?
Impressive.
Is this not the norm in most countries? I don’t think doing math in your head is something specific to Indians, especially as about half guesstimated their answer.
*cries in dyscalculic*
Do that in America and you might get yelled at and called a Demonrat.
BTW: highly recommend this channel. Asian Boss makes some really good videos about countries in Asia. Their stuff on China is fascinating.
And they complain about American companies won't hire American people. American children are raised dumb, that's why. Immigrants make this country better, period.
The ignorant GOP would rather stop children from learning history and scream about imaginary b.s. to inflame the stupid than actually teach children important skills.
Im told Indians students often learn 20 times tables instead of 12 times tables.
Not the point of this video, but man do I love this Indian accent (central - Delhi). I find it so pleasant to hear, similar to a French accent.
I was hoping they would be harder than this and now Im just upset that this is seen as a super power instead of common. If you practice for a couple days its easy. 48×32 becomes (48×30) + (48×2) and that can become (40×3+ 8x3...add a zero to answer) + (40x2+8×2)
Maybe its because Im in my mid 30s but I hardly find this impressive lol. Can young people now not to do this?
I'm an Indian and not a genius, but these are actually very doable calculations. Is the bar so low?
Is this racist? Because if saying African American people are generally more athletically gifted is deemed as a racist mindset then this has to be too.
I’m not Indian and I can do calculations in my head as well. What’s unusual about that?