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To: GraceZ who wrote (16727)	2/5/2004 2:59:36 PM
From: fatty	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

>Answer me this, if you were so much better educated why couldn't you answer my simple probability question? Did you mean this post of yours? >>Assuming top US science and math programs take the world's best, and that a normal distribution of students, who are good at math and science, exist across all populations, foreign born students are grossly under represented in US graduate programs judging from the numbers you posted. Now if you could explain why I would say that it would go a long way to convincing me that Asians are better at math and science! There are couple problems with your assumptions. First, the US does not have all the best programs in the world. Second, the admission requirement is different for American vs foreigners. Third, not everyone outside of US can afford to or want to study in the US. As for whether Asians are better at math and science, I'd agree with your assumption that "a normal distribution of students, who are good at math and science, exist across all populations". That being said, since the China and India have a combined population of over 2.5 billion, their best 12% of the population amounts to 300 million, which is the same size as the US population. So if we hold a math & science family feud between the US and Chindia, we would probably lose the game because our bottom 50% which all have SAT math lower than 500 will be competing with their top 6-12% which all have score bewteen 650 and 700.

To: GraceZ who wrote (16727)	2/6/2004 4:57:03 AM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 306849

Grace, I can't say I remember much from my public elementary and high school experience (I graduated from high school in 1986). There were several teachers who seemed earnest about their work, but who nonetheless were the captives of political forces much larger than them. I found some old textbooks of mine from my grade school days a few years ago, and was surprised at the time at what utter bilge and derivative crap was in them. I can't imagine that things have gotten better. In fact, with the influence of whole language theory, multiculturalism, and academic feminism, I can only think it's gotten much worse. What I do remember about my younger days is how glad I was when school was over, so that I could go home and read good books (mostly classics with a little Heinlein thrown in), do science experiments, devour my parents' books on history and politics. I look back in wonder, thinking, why were things presented in such a stultifying manner? Was it intentional? jessamyn.com Fractal theory was based on work done by Cantor and Hausdorff in the late-19th/early-20th century. Of course, the term "fractal" and the graphical expression of self-similar sets were not uncovered until we had computers that were powerful enough. IBM employee Benoit Mandelbrot wrote _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_ sometime in the late 1970s. Probability theory has been re-thought several times. The modern (measure theoretical) version of probability theory was developed between 1900 and 1930, with von Mises and Kolmogorov being the main influences. Black-Scholes was unleashed on the world in the early-70s, but the binomial method for estimating option value had been around since the 1920s.