Asian students found excellent in mathmatics

Students in Asia were found more excellent in mathmatics than their counterparts in Europe and North America. 12 Asaian nations including South and North Korea, Japan and China ranked within top 20th in the 53rd International Mathmatical Olympiad (IMO), held on July 4-16 in Mar Cel Plata of Argentina in which a total of 548 students from 100 countries competed.

South Korea won the competition by capturing six gold medals and 209 points to be followed by China which garnered 195 points. Seventh, eighth and ninth places went to Singapore, Iran and Vietnam which earned 154, 151 and 148 points respectively. North Korea stood at 12th with 128 points while Japan finished 17th with 121 points.

The other Asian nations involving Hong Kong (24th), Saudi Arabia (25th), Israel (27th), Kazakhstan (34th), Indonesia (35th) and Mongolia (43th) stood within the 50th.

What makes Asian students do well mathmatics?

One mathmatics expert explained that it comes from the difference of phonetic system of Asian and European languages. It is very easy for Asian languages including Korean to pronounce numbers while those in Europe are difficult to express. The simply difference is said to have caused wide gap in mathmatic capabilities, the expert said.

Management Guru Malcolm Gladwell attributed the excellence of Asian students in mathmatics to rice farming culture in his book “Outliers.”

He further analyzed that “Asian countries have long been engaging in rice-farming which requires persevering work of irrigation. The perseverance nurtured through the rice farming might have helped people in the region being equipped with better mathmatic abilities.” Asians have the tenacity of sticking to a problem for about 20 minutes while Westers give up in 30 seconds, he went on to say.

news@theasian.asia