Makes me proud to be Australian (and Chinese)
Saw this on a Maths-orientated facebook group (called “I want to be your derivative so I can lie tangent to your curves”, or something like that). It’s a question for a university entrance exam, and the difficulty of it prompted the BBC to lament the quality of Maths education in Britain: article here, especially when compared with the standard of questions asked at a similar level in Britain.
Well, it ain’t that hard, is it? High school 3D trig, not very hard for anyone who’s gone through 3 unit Maths. It’s no surprise that everyone in China can do this easily, of course, but reading the BBC article and the facebook comments seems to suggest that this wouldn’t be the case in Britain or the US. It makes me proud of Australia’s education system, despite what everyone says about “responding to a text”.
Unlike (it seems) the Americans or the Brits, we somehow manage to turn out students who, at the end of year 12, are able to derive sec(x) and draw pentagons on an Argand diagram, and at the same time know the meaning of “paradigm” and can spell weltanschauung two tries out of three. But unlike the Chinese, these same students are not brainwashed into doublethink. Oh, and plus, these Chinese students would know nothing about complex numbers or integral calculus.
(On a patriotic note) go Australia! New South Wales! *waves flag*
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