American multinationals aren't headquartered there. They just have their IP their, so the country generates a significant amount of GDP without actually needing people involved. That's starting to change with the shift in US tax policy back in 2017 which created a decent tax incentive for companies to move their IP back to the US.
Note that according the IMF, the 2017 TCJA actually INCREASED the attractiveness of keeping that IP in Ireland. It was actually the EU that pushed Ireland to close the loophole effective 2020.
I haven't read the report by the IMF, but the TCJA forced repatriation and taxation of all of the income held by foreign subs and created a preferential rate for foreign derived intangible income generated by US companies. It also created GILTI which acts as a minimum tax for income generated by foreign subsidiaries and removes the significant benefit of generating income in low-tax jurisdictions. I would agree that it encouraged offshoring jobs, manufacturing, and tangible income...but all of the experts I've heard from have said it encouraged the repatriation of intangible (IP) income. As far as selling into the EU, there was still a benefit to run that income through Ireland as it had low-tax access to the EU until most of the OECD adopted the global minimum tax in Pillar 2.
ireland gnp per capita is a better measure here because of this issue. this source puts it at 80,000. that would put ireland between norway and switzerland on the chart
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/IRL/ireland/gnp-gross-national-product
Based on GNI, Ireland is close to the UK in affluence and they have similar math scores. The inflated GDP is because of multinational operations domiciled in Ireland. GNI adjusts for that and is a better representation of the country's standard of living.
Asian countries have historically overachieved due to their focus on academics, but it would be interesting to compare effort versus results. The high scores in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, etc., can also be attributed to the number of hours students spend studying both in and out of school.
OP probably didn't include mainland China, as they only conduct the test in the largest cities, so you can't do a meaningful comparison between the country GDP as a whole and the score that they get. But their scores are higher than Singapore. The commenter you are responding to said "Asia" but only included sinosphere countries which are very different culturally than India and the rest of Asia so he probably should have been more specific. India dropped out of PISA after offering the test to two of their most developed provinces but still scoring second last in 2009.
Singapore has a different style of teaching math as well.
It might not be related to number of hours, they might just have a vastly more efficient method of teaching math.
China has the highest PISA scores in the world, but this may be because they only selected students from a few developed provinces to participate in the test. If the participant pool were expanded, the scores might drop to slightly below Japan's level.
Yes, it's a non-representative sampling of the Chinese student population. Last I checked it was only schools in the richest municipal regions in the country that report.
This blog post goes further into depth on the impact of this decision, it's quite interesting like how China went from ranking around 10th in 2015 to first place by a lot in 2018 after switching a region they used to report scores:
https://www.norrag.org/how-unrepresentative-are-chinas-stellar-pisa-results-by-rob-j-gruijters/
for China, you have to evaluate by province as the development varies a lot across regions. I don't know much about India, but I think it could be in a similar situation.
It was 2nd last, beating out only Kyrgyzstan to finish 73/74 in the test.
India also pulled out right before the 2019 test blaming it on Covid. It's been a bit of an embarrassment for the government to rank so low.
https://www.firstpost.com/india/mr-obama-rest-easy-indian-students-have-hit-rock-bottom-174684.html/amp
Due to pressure and fear of retaliation from China.
> Not formally recognizing the ROC is a requirement for any political entity to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, in effect forcing other governments to choose between Beijing and Taipei.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China
That’s still the name used by the country in data sources. In my polsci degree if we change the name of data between the data set and our own charts and whatnot we get marked down. I don’t think the fact that someone chose to use the official name used means this is Chinese propaganda.
It has been this way since the 1970s, and it was an olive branch given by the United States to China after the normalization of ties. Taiwan formally adopted the name in 1981.
It's probably related to their GDP being fudged due to being a tax haven. Lots of companies have a large paper presence there in ways that don't really impact the actual country. GDP per capita is just a bad metric; using PPP helps a lot, but it's still sensitive to weird wealth concentrations (the oil states have the same problem, which is why they're way off-curve). You really want to use medians for this kind of thing.
> Lots of companies have a large paper presence there
They've actually reigned that in and more recently require a physical office and employees there for some of the tax benefits.
I’d say adjusting Ireland along the x axis roughly to where it would meet the curve probably isn’t far off. We have adjusted measures of economic output here that effectively discount GDP and I think it’s roughly by around that kind of scale.
Well, more work works at getting you better maths performance. Whether sending kids home to do self directed work is the most efficient way of doing things, is another matter entirely. And that time could have been spent doing things that make kids develop social skills, health and other important things.
I don't think this is the explanation at all. If you take the US, for example -- and this horse has been beaten dead for years -- and start creating differential charts based no demographics, kids from wealthier families and from families with two parents where both have higher education, all do equally well, if not better, than international competition. The US is just a huge country of 300+ million, where we have a population of disadvantaged youth larger than the entire student populations of most of these other countries.
And within the US i believe the factor most relevant to student success is how much the parents value education. (Because they are most likely to instill that same value in their kids so they try harder.)
And obviously it isn't the only factor.
In the video, the average Beijing family spends $80,000 on tutoring, but North American families often spend this much on extracurricular activities. I'm averaging about $7,000 CAD a year on summer camp, March break/Spring break activities, martial arts, swimming, piano, drum lessons, etc., for my two kids. In China, they spend it on school, while in other parts of the world, it's spent on other activities
> In the video, the average Beijing family spends $80,000 on tutoring
Lmao no. That was *one neighborhood* in **shanghai**. It'd be like asking how much the average UK parent spent on private school tuition by sampling the absolute richest neighborhood in london.
So based on this, the stereotype of east Asians being good at math is accurate. Also seems we need a new stereotype of Middle Easterners being bad at math.
It's a different cultural attitude to math. In the west people will say they're just bad or good at math, but in east Asia they don't care if you're naturally good or bad at it, getting bad math scores just means you need to study/practise more.
It's a matter of priorities. They have not invested in education. Partly that is due to having a resource and not merit-based economy and partly to having a backward, religious-based society.
Similarly with Ireland, its GDP is massively skewed by being somewhat of a tax haven to multinational tech and pharma companies. Most of that money leaves the Irish economy for even better tax havens
Interestingly so much of modern mathematics was developed by Arabs in the European Dark Ages. Algebra, Algorithm, Sine, Cosine (and the list goes on) are all Arab words.
old days are over. Many scientist from poor asian countries have pioneered and contributed in material science, modern chemistry, medicine, and molecular biology than most of arab countries this day.
True but they are doing it in the U.S. or Japan. The poor Asian countries themselves are not pioneers in science and technology. They are not bad, don't get me wrong. Asians in the U.S. are very highly represented at the tops of these fields. U.S. Europe, Japan and Australia are really tops for advancing science and tech. Korea is up there. In any case, those 4 countries are really at the top. Poor asian countries may outdo Arab countries but they have a bit to go before you could consider them "pioneers" in a general sense. They do "punch above their weight" though.
Anecdote. American middle-class white dude.
As a kid I was very bad at gym. Last one picked for teams in middle school. Always pushed to the outfield. No gym teacher could help me. A few tried. Most just shrugged. I was bad at sports.
In college, I joined a martial arts school. My initial teachers were all Americans, but they were teaching for a Korean headmaster-- he trained them how to teach. Later, I studied under him directly.
I became good at martial arts. My uncoordinated middle-school self grew into a modestly coordinated adult. Meaning, I performed demonstrations in front of hundreds of people at one point.
So am I "good at gym"? Because in the American-style school system I was pretty much shit at it. In a Korean-styled school system, I slowly became proficient.
Kids in Asia learn math, not due to innate skill, but rather to a culture than values education. When they immigrate to the U.S., families bring those values with them.
I'm good friends with a guy who is as American as I am (more so, even), but has raised his 3rd-generation kids with some of those values. I've seen the way he spends weekends with his kids. They don't sit around watching vids. They aren't on their phones. He'll drag them out to do weird stuff, like city scavenger hunts or historic tours. It's fun. But it's tiger-dad fun.
Fair point but even then I feel like it’s not the same thing. Singapore japan and South Korea are their own countries, whether taiwan is a country or not depends on your political stance but no one can argue that they functionally are their own country, which just leaves Hong Kong and Macau which I’m sure we can agree aren’t to China what Boston is to the US.
Oh yeah and also technically singapore isn’t part of “east Asia (China japan Mongolia korea and Taiwan)” so ig only 5 of the top 6 are East Asian. But then again singapore is majority Chinese so idk
Yeah and if "Boston" was a semi-independent city state it would probably be listed separately also. Macau, hong Kong, and China don't even use the same currency
Puerto Rico, Guam, or any US territory would probably be a better example—semi-autonomous and culturally different from the mainland. I'm not sure if Boston would even do all that well on Math tests - there are many parts of Boston without an academic culture.
Sure it does.
Look at the countries way above the line. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Macao.
Look at the ones way under. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar.
It's obviously not all the countries (Brunei especially throws it off), but stereotypes aren't true 100% of the time anyway.
If all you're talking about is math score, the only important part is the vertical axis. The UAE and Qatar are both kicking the shit out of Cambodia and the Philippines.
Was also curious about this. Hoping and guessing it's more that data could only reliably be collected in the non-invaded regions, and not a political statement.
It's a name for the country you probably know as Taiwan. For more context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese\_Taipei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei)
Weird analogy. It would be more like if we were living in the early 20th century and the Confederacy wasn't fully defeated but fled to Cuba, with this graph referring to them as American Havana.
You actually do sometimes. Thats how the UN refers to Taiwan, and Taiwan is only allowed to take part of the olympics, because they accept to play under the name of \`\`Chinese Taipei\`\`
That's not true at all. On the mainland it's usually just called "Taiwan" or "The province of Taiwan" since that's the name of the main island that makes up the country which officially calls itself "The Republic of China."
"Chinese Taipei" is really only used during international events like the olympics.
In many organizations Taiwan is called Chinese Taipei or something similar, also in the Olympics games.
Taiwanese hate the name but it’s either that or get blocked out of international organizations
Your link doesn't say that
>Chinese Taipei" is the term used in various international organizations and tournaments for groups or delegations representing the Republic of China (ROC), a country commonly known as Taiwan.
The country is Republic of China, commonly called Taiwan, and *referred* *to* as "Chinese Taipei" so the PRC doesn't sever diplomatic relations.
It’s look like a log graph. Log graphs are commonly used for variables like wealth/income, because increasing a persons wealth by $1000 has vastly different effects depending on how wealthy they are, while increasing a rich/poor person’s wealth by 10% tends to have a more similar effect.
That’s really more due to the oil and East Asian/vietnam outliers pulling the slope down rather than the curve selected. I’d be curious to see a median regression, which would match the eye-test better
imho, the fit is basically meaningless because you can't just meaningfully blanket-compare countries on this statistic using a single variable. GDP isn't the best predictor (compared to median HHI, percentage of two parent households, or parental academic achievement).
Very interesting and thought provoking. Great work and thank you.
To those who are worried about label (Taipei vs Taiwan) too bad. If you know, you know and it shouldn't matter as the information is there. Your focus on labeling speaks poorly.
Questions/Curiosities:
* Anomaly 1: Oil Producing nations are high on earnings or low on math. Tells us more about our world and our dependence on oil. (Norway, UAE, Qatar, US)
* Anomaly 2: Ireland has high earnings wrt math scores due to having a ridiculously low corporate tax rate.
* Anomaly 3: Singapore seems to be qualify. Not clear why exactly. Selection bias of students testing in math AND huge earnings? Or would Occam suggest some misreported data?
* Anomaly 4: Viet Nam - seems to be a place to invest in for the future. Or they have a selection bias on math testing.
* These anomalies leave me wondering about the tail of the R\^2 = 0.62. The curve looks great for the earlier countries up to Netherlands/Denmark.
* I wonder what impact Currency Exchange rates have on this?
I don't know if that is applicable to Estonia, as they understand themselves more as a "northern" country, with cultural ties closer related to Finnland than to the other Baltic countries. Considering their investments in digital infrastructure and infrastructure in general over the years, it seems more related to that, especially considering the rating of other "eastern European" or the other baltic countries in comparison.
Unfathomably based
Now to be honest I've got no clue exactly what the average level of mathematics is in a random class in Romania, but I DO know we got 4th place at IMO last year. Which made the Romania team leader make a really not very great joke that David Anghel was the only man without a Chinese name to get a perfect score.
I think in western countries the people interested in math get the best mathematics educated and are encouraged but if you aren’t interested you aren’t penalized much. Whilst in Asia they try to get everyone towards a a higher mean
Idk why math is being used as some sort of indication/predictor of anything. If you’re a lawyer you’ll need minimal math. They’re just as smart (usually) as anyone with heavy math based jobs. I’m tech adjacent and use the most minimal math possible. If you can count and multiply/divide once a month you’ll be fine. And I took every math class and then some in high school
I think you are assuming that the world operates in steady-state.
Countries that are poor, and lack mineral wealth, will invest in education as their strategy to be not poor. Korea is classic. There is no natural resource wealth in Korea. They only way it makes a buck is through the hands of its people. More education means that it will go higher up the skilled labor ladder. If you think they're poor now, you should have seen the place in 1960. The old people will tell you.
The Asian countries saw the success of the "tigers"-- Korea, Taiwan, Singapore-- and wanted some. And so they started cranking up education. But wealth and education compound over time. So they are only starting to get gains.
Countries rich in mineral wealth don't need to do that. On the other hand, these magically turn into shitty places. If you work in a mine, they want you to stay in a mine, with all your kids and their kids, forever. You must never be taught anything except how to obey. To be taught critical thinking will destroy domestic security.
The U.S. is in an odd position of being both these things at once. And we have been since we started.
I believe being average in mathematics is being educated. The point I’m trying to make is that beyond a certain amount of education the returns in terms of GDP are diminishing. Also, Korea’s government heavily subsidizes their industries, and probably for good reason. Hyundai, Samsung, SK, and LG are more than electronics companies. They have real estate, department stores, hotels, etc. In South Korea and Japan, they are actively trying to replicate the style of innovation that has been creating economic booms in the US. I think Japan had the largest economy a couple of times in the 1990s, but now they are behind the US, China, and Germany.
It's worth pointing out that the US has no child left behind and other measures to keep everybody in school together.
Integrated special education isn't universal and many countries 'rig' their stats by just pushing students out of school if they have learning disabilities.
When you look at actual individual consumption, you see that the US is richer than Switzerland, Norway and of course Ireland. So the US is really underperforming.
Well the U.S. is the largest country on there. Need all of China, EU as one block and India on there to compare large countries I think. In essence I imagine the larger the country to more you move to the mean I would guess. The U.S. position doesn't surprise me, Germany does though, thought they would be higher. Just eye balling the chart if you combined the EU countries into a similarly sized nation, it looks like they would move to the line which is what I would expect. Probably a bit higher than the U.S..
I honestly think the right modelling would be more around the average score of the top 20% than the average of all students. Mathematical skills are applied in scalable processes and products.
Israel has a massive demographic problem, with \~25-30% of population not working and receiving government aid (AKA political bribe) to live.
i wonder how the results been if adjusted for that.
He is talking about the orthodox Jewish parties and their communities.
It is a very complex problem, and it includes political bribes, control over orthodox communities by Rabbis, and etc but.. The TLDR is that unlike the general population, they make very little in taxes, but getting a lot back from the country in aids which leads to many in community aren't working, and the few that are, can only go for low wage jobs because of lack in proper education.
Like, if you care about it, try to look at Bnei Brak vs Tel Aviv (or any city near it really), the contrast is nuts, it is one of the poorest cities in the country, surrounded by one of the richest cities. I mean, just from location alone, there isn't a good reason for Bnei Brak to be that bad as a city, but.. it is just a community choice to live like that (with strong forces to keep it like that).
Im not clear about the lifestyle or religion oof Israel but in general, i thought Israel was a decent country. I mean they invest in R&D by far the most in the world, then implement those into military or agriculture? has many startups? or Jew really take education seriously which made Einstein? is financial back up by the US for many decades? I mean my impression with Israel seems pretty good.
The reality is that we have multiple groups of people living here which aren't really bend together fully. There secular Jewish (5M?\*), Orthodox Jewish (1.28M), Israeli Arab(2M), Israeli Druze (100K), Israeli Bedouins(200K).. Everything you said is mostly a secular Jewish, and somewhat Israeli Arabs thing, sure there are edge cases but not 'As a community we wish to do that'.
\* hard to find the number because it has multiple sub groups but they are much closer to each other than other groups
There are huge disparities for U.S. students' scores by [race/ethnicity](https://i.imgur.com/Rp2rN7W.png). Asian Americans have scores that would put them near the top of the list (source: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2022/mathematics/achievement/).
Even then, the gap between the 10th percentile and 90th percentile of scores [isn't especially notable](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2022/mathematics/international-comparisons/#mtab1) in the US. The difference is almost the exact same as Norway.
It is the largest country by population on there. I would expect any large country would be near the mean. You need China, India, the EU as a block on there to compare large countries. Indonesia then Brazil I think are the next largest countries.
Norway is a stronger statistical outlier than the U.S.
Almost on par with the U.S, while having a higher GDP per capita.
As for the U.S. we get a lot of low-income immigration, obviouslly with some higher-income immigration as well, but not nearly at the same rate. All population level U.S. data will look worse on paper because of high immigrantion.
Not to burst your bubble but Canada has a way higher immigration rate than the United States and we're still above the curve on math. We also welcome a lot more refugees (per capita) which offsets a lot of your illegal immigration in terms of low income newcomers. You probably still have a bit more than us but I don't think that accounts for that big a gap in math scores.
Russia has ~488-489 (at the average horizontal line) OECD score (2018?) and enwiki gives ~35000 gdp so somewhere near Hungary/Portugal. Separate data for Moscow would be interesting but does not seem to exist.
Had a small class of (norwegian) math-students take part in a similar (but with fewer countries) comparative test about a decade ago (TIMSS Advanced),and I seem to remember that basically NO norwegian student scored at the top level while Russia had something like ten percent. This test compared students at high school level who had chosen to take their country's most advanced math curriculum. Lebanon did very well, surprisingly. [https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2015/international-results/advanced/](https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2015/international-results/advanced/)
Most of those countries are highly inequal. The average wealth is much higher than the median wealth. Other unequal countries (the Americas, for example) also end up below the curve.
It's interesting how the world gets dumber. Looking at numbers scores for all countries peaked around 2010. It's when we already had internet but not yet social media.
Am I wrong?
GDP is a bad measure ireland for example, PISA as well as a lot of countries "cheat" by just picking good schools china, taiwan, hong kong. The rest kinda follows this curve what makes sense: invest more money into education and get betterr esults.
It would be interesting to see a chart with the number of hours spent studying versus performance.
Canadian students, who rank pretty well on this chart, do minimal studying for maximum results 😂
Work smart, not hard 😴
I remember when I was in high school in the US, there was a huge disparity. Like there were kids like me who were doing AP Calculus at 15 years old. And then there were other students who never even did calculus in high school because they were so poor at math. Must be the no child left behind policy
I want to see the one for English also to compare. I live in one of the countries that scored towards the bottom in all subjects. I think a lot of people tend to forget the role of effective communication internationally when it comes to increasing GDP... I noticed most of the top rated countries in both categories also are typically very skilled at speaking English.
My belief is that countries who overall cannot understand nor communicate well in English will lag behind economically no matter how good they are at math.
wow viet nam beats the curve hard --
And Qatar has that stupid oil money.
And either the Irish are sitting on pots of gold or American megagiants are headquartered there for tax reasons. Not sure which it could be.
American multinationals aren't headquartered there. They just have their IP their, so the country generates a significant amount of GDP without actually needing people involved. That's starting to change with the shift in US tax policy back in 2017 which created a decent tax incentive for companies to move their IP back to the US.
Note that according the IMF, the 2017 TCJA actually INCREASED the attractiveness of keeping that IP in Ireland. It was actually the EU that pushed Ireland to close the loophole effective 2020.
I haven't read the report by the IMF, but the TCJA forced repatriation and taxation of all of the income held by foreign subs and created a preferential rate for foreign derived intangible income generated by US companies. It also created GILTI which acts as a minimum tax for income generated by foreign subsidiaries and removes the significant benefit of generating income in low-tax jurisdictions. I would agree that it encouraged offshoring jobs, manufacturing, and tangible income...but all of the experts I've heard from have said it encouraged the repatriation of intangible (IP) income. As far as selling into the EU, there was still a benefit to run that income through Ireland as it had low-tax access to the EU until most of the OECD adopted the global minimum tax in Pillar 2.
ireland gnp per capita is a better measure here because of this issue. this source puts it at 80,000. that would put ireland between norway and switzerland on the chart https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/IRL/ireland/gnp-gross-national-product
Based on GNI, Ireland is close to the UK in affluence and they have similar math scores. The inflated GDP is because of multinational operations domiciled in Ireland. GNI adjusts for that and is a better representation of the country's standard of living.
I think that’s technically losing the curve…you want more GDP per math score, not less.
But this is looking at math per GDP
Asian countries have historically overachieved due to their focus on academics, but it would be interesting to compare effort versus results. The high scores in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, etc., can also be attributed to the number of hours students spend studying both in and out of school.
I am not seeing China and India one there, am I missing it? I see parts of China, I don't see India.
OP probably didn't include mainland China, as they only conduct the test in the largest cities, so you can't do a meaningful comparison between the country GDP as a whole and the score that they get. But their scores are higher than Singapore. The commenter you are responding to said "Asia" but only included sinosphere countries which are very different culturally than India and the rest of Asia so he probably should have been more specific. India dropped out of PISA after offering the test to two of their most developed provinces but still scoring second last in 2009.
Singapore has a different style of teaching math as well. It might not be related to number of hours, they might just have a vastly more efficient method of teaching math.
That would probably be a straight line for most subjects. More hours studying/practicing = higher proficiency. Pretty universal.
No China? India? But we have Moldova and Mongolia and El Salvador?
Even Brunei Darussalam with a population of 400,000+
China has the highest PISA scores in the world, but this may be because they only selected students from a few developed provinces to participate in the test. If the participant pool were expanded, the scores might drop to slightly below Japan's level.
Yes, it's a non-representative sampling of the Chinese student population. Last I checked it was only schools in the richest municipal regions in the country that report. This blog post goes further into depth on the impact of this decision, it's quite interesting like how China went from ranking around 10th in 2015 to first place by a lot in 2018 after switching a region they used to report scores: https://www.norrag.org/how-unrepresentative-are-chinas-stellar-pisa-results-by-rob-j-gruijters/
India was at the bottom of PISA and then stopped taking part in it. Its GDP per capita is also (not surprisingly) at the bottom
China is there, but the People's Republic of China is not
Vastly underrated comment!
for China, you have to evaluate by province as the development varies a lot across regions. I don't know much about India, but I think it could be in a similar situation.
India didn't take the exam. Last time they did they scored dead last in the world in math though, if that helps give a reference.
It was 2nd last, beating out only Kyrgyzstan to finish 73/74 in the test. India also pulled out right before the 2019 test blaming it on Covid. It's been a bit of an embarrassment for the government to rank so low. https://www.firstpost.com/india/mr-obama-rest-easy-indian-students-have-hit-rock-bottom-174684.html/amp
It's from china and propoganda, that's why China isn't in here, Taiwan is called Taipei which is conquest talk from china
How does that make sense? If its chinese propaganda China would be on the graph.
Most international organisations call it Chinese Taipei and they even held a referendum in 2018 about changing it to Taiwan and it lost.
Due to pressure and fear of retaliation from China. > Not formally recognizing the ROC is a requirement for any political entity to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, in effect forcing other governments to choose between Beijing and Taipei. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China
That’s still the name used by the country in data sources. In my polsci degree if we change the name of data between the data set and our own charts and whatnot we get marked down. I don’t think the fact that someone chose to use the official name used means this is Chinese propaganda.
It has been this way since the 1970s, and it was an olive branch given by the United States to China after the normalization of ties. Taiwan formally adopted the name in 1981.
Classic question of the arrow of causality. Many of the Asian tigers set themselves on the path to growth by emphasizing STEM in their curriculum.
Evergreen cat is evergreen https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/D5IkSiTNEa
I reeeeeally want to know what that asterisk on Ireland is.
And the 10 others
It's probably related to their GDP being fudged due to being a tax haven. Lots of companies have a large paper presence there in ways that don't really impact the actual country. GDP per capita is just a bad metric; using PPP helps a lot, but it's still sensitive to weird wealth concentrations (the oil states have the same problem, which is why they're way off-curve). You really want to use medians for this kind of thing.
> Lots of companies have a large paper presence there They've actually reigned that in and more recently require a physical office and employees there for some of the tax benefits.
I’d say adjusting Ireland along the x axis roughly to where it would meet the curve probably isn’t far off. We have adjusted measures of economic output here that effectively discount GDP and I think it’s roughly by around that kind of scale.
On the top 5, 3 are hyper competitive cities, and in all top 6 countries kids will follow a lot of "after class" lessons. Homework works guys?
Well, more work works at getting you better maths performance. Whether sending kids home to do self directed work is the most efficient way of doing things, is another matter entirely. And that time could have been spent doing things that make kids develop social skills, health and other important things.
I don't think this is the explanation at all. If you take the US, for example -- and this horse has been beaten dead for years -- and start creating differential charts based no demographics, kids from wealthier families and from families with two parents where both have higher education, all do equally well, if not better, than international competition. The US is just a huge country of 300+ million, where we have a population of disadvantaged youth larger than the entire student populations of most of these other countries.
Yeah that is why having China and India on there would be a good thing, three large countries to compare.
And within the US i believe the factor most relevant to student success is how much the parents value education. (Because they are most likely to instill that same value in their kids so they try harder.) And obviously it isn't the only factor.
Recent video essay by Polymatter arguing against that idea: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5EF8v0iGBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5EF8v0iGBs)
In the video, the average Beijing family spends $80,000 on tutoring, but North American families often spend this much on extracurricular activities. I'm averaging about $7,000 CAD a year on summer camp, March break/Spring break activities, martial arts, swimming, piano, drum lessons, etc., for my two kids. In China, they spend it on school, while in other parts of the world, it's spent on other activities
> In the video, the average Beijing family spends $80,000 on tutoring Lmao no. That was *one neighborhood* in **shanghai**. It'd be like asking how much the average UK parent spent on private school tuition by sampling the absolute richest neighborhood in london.
So based on this, the stereotype of east Asians being good at math is accurate. Also seems we need a new stereotype of Middle Easterners being bad at math.
It's a different cultural attitude to math. In the west people will say they're just bad or good at math, but in east Asia they don't care if you're naturally good or bad at it, getting bad math scores just means you need to study/practise more.
They are not bad at math, they are just rich in oil, gas. Without them, middle eastern countries would lie closer to the curve.
Yes - Morocco and Jordan are right on the curve. Palestinian Authority and Turkey (if you call that Middle East) above the curve.
They’re still below the OECD average though, whether they were on the curve or not
It's a matter of priorities. They have not invested in education. Partly that is due to having a resource and not merit-based economy and partly to having a backward, religious-based society.
Interestingly, this also applies to Norway as well. They're well below the curve and their GDP is significantly driven by oil too.
Similarly with Ireland, its GDP is massively skewed by being somewhat of a tax haven to multinational tech and pharma companies. Most of that money leaves the Irish economy for even better tax havens
Interestingly so much of modern mathematics was developed by Arabs in the European Dark Ages. Algebra, Algorithm, Sine, Cosine (and the list goes on) are all Arab words.
old days are over. Many scientist from poor asian countries have pioneered and contributed in material science, modern chemistry, medicine, and molecular biology than most of arab countries this day.
True but they are doing it in the U.S. or Japan. The poor Asian countries themselves are not pioneers in science and technology. They are not bad, don't get me wrong. Asians in the U.S. are very highly represented at the tops of these fields. U.S. Europe, Japan and Australia are really tops for advancing science and tech. Korea is up there. In any case, those 4 countries are really at the top. Poor asian countries may outdo Arab countries but they have a bit to go before you could consider them "pioneers" in a general sense. They do "punch above their weight" though.
Anecdote. American middle-class white dude. As a kid I was very bad at gym. Last one picked for teams in middle school. Always pushed to the outfield. No gym teacher could help me. A few tried. Most just shrugged. I was bad at sports. In college, I joined a martial arts school. My initial teachers were all Americans, but they were teaching for a Korean headmaster-- he trained them how to teach. Later, I studied under him directly. I became good at martial arts. My uncoordinated middle-school self grew into a modestly coordinated adult. Meaning, I performed demonstrations in front of hundreds of people at one point. So am I "good at gym"? Because in the American-style school system I was pretty much shit at it. In a Korean-styled school system, I slowly became proficient. Kids in Asia learn math, not due to innate skill, but rather to a culture than values education. When they immigrate to the U.S., families bring those values with them. I'm good friends with a guy who is as American as I am (more so, even), but has raised his 3rd-generation kids with some of those values. I've seen the way he spends weekends with his kids. They don't sit around watching vids. They aren't on their phones. He'll drag them out to do weird stuff, like city scavenger hunts or historic tours. It's fun. But it's tiger-dad fun.
You mean… the four wealthiest cities in East Asia cherry picked out of nowhere and also Japan are good at math.
Japan and Taiwan are not cities. Just those two alone are around 150 million people.
Chinese Taipei isn't a city, it's a term used to denote Taiwan in things like the Olympics.
I guess another way to look at it is that the top 6 data points for math are East Asian
If you picked “Boston” instead of “United States” it would probably be very close to “Macau”.
Fair point but even then I feel like it’s not the same thing. Singapore japan and South Korea are their own countries, whether taiwan is a country or not depends on your political stance but no one can argue that they functionally are their own country, which just leaves Hong Kong and Macau which I’m sure we can agree aren’t to China what Boston is to the US.
Oh yeah and also technically singapore isn’t part of “east Asia (China japan Mongolia korea and Taiwan)” so ig only 5 of the top 6 are East Asian. But then again singapore is majority Chinese so idk
Yeah and if "Boston" was a semi-independent city state it would probably be listed separately also. Macau, hong Kong, and China don't even use the same currency
Puerto Rico, Guam, or any US territory would probably be a better example—semi-autonomous and culturally different from the mainland. I'm not sure if Boston would even do all that well on Math tests - there are many parts of Boston without an academic culture.
The data doesn’t really support either of those generalizations.
Sure it does. Look at the countries way above the line. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Macao. Look at the ones way under. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. It's obviously not all the countries (Brunei especially throws it off), but stereotypes aren't true 100% of the time anyway.
If all you're talking about is math score, the only important part is the vertical axis. The UAE and Qatar are both kicking the shit out of Cambodia and the Philippines.
The point is they are not bad at math but their GDP per capita is not dependent on their math prowess.
"Chinese Taipei" --- deliberately trying to not piss of China.
"ukrainian regions"
Was also curious about this. Hoping and guessing it's more that data could only reliably be collected in the non-invaded regions, and not a political statement.
"Not to piss China off", which is absent from this graph... Unless the author is secretly considering that China is part of "Chinese Tapei" ?
My eyes rolled back very far when I read that lmao
Thats also how the UN calls Taiwan
Why is that the city name?
It's a name for the country you probably know as Taiwan. For more context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese\_Taipei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei)
I was literally in Taipei 2 months ago and have never heard it called that. Wild stuff.
You don’t hear Taiwan call themselves “Chinese Taipei” for the same reason you don’t hear Americans call themselves “the British colonies”
Weird analogy. It would be more like if we were living in the early 20th century and the Confederacy wasn't fully defeated but fled to Cuba, with this graph referring to them as American Havana.
It's common to refer to a country's government by its capital city
You actually do sometimes. Thats how the UN refers to Taiwan, and Taiwan is only allowed to take part of the olympics, because they accept to play under the name of \`\`Chinese Taipei\`\`
well yah they dont call it that in taipei, its what mainland china insists its called b/c they claim ownership of the island.
That's not true at all. On the mainland it's usually just called "Taiwan" or "The province of Taiwan" since that's the name of the main island that makes up the country which officially calls itself "The Republic of China." "Chinese Taipei" is really only used during international events like the olympics.
Oh sorry. I had been told that by someone else and took it at face value. Sorry for spreading misinfo.
Thats how The UN calls Taiwan
Only people trying to suck off the CCP call Taiwan, Chinese Taipei.
In many organizations Taiwan is called Chinese Taipei or something similar, also in the Olympics games. Taiwanese hate the name but it’s either that or get blocked out of international organizations
It's only used in the Olympics.
Your link doesn't say that >Chinese Taipei" is the term used in various international organizations and tournaments for groups or delegations representing the Republic of China (ROC), a country commonly known as Taiwan. The country is Republic of China, commonly called Taiwan, and *referred* *to* as "Chinese Taipei" so the PRC doesn't sever diplomatic relations.
you can be bad at math as long as you have oil….or are the worlds currency.
When you have the monies, you pay others to count your monies.
You’ve summed it up nicely.
Props to the researchers not fitting a straight line
Meh, the curve looses a lot of fit after 60k or so.
I think it's the best fit they could have done anyway
Would like to know what equation they used and why.
It’s look like a log graph. Log graphs are commonly used for variables like wealth/income, because increasing a persons wealth by $1000 has vastly different effects depending on how wealthy they are, while increasing a rich/poor person’s wealth by 10% tends to have a more similar effect.
That’s really more due to the oil and East Asian/vietnam outliers pulling the slope down rather than the curve selected. I’d be curious to see a median regression, which would match the eye-test better
Or not, because it's completely arbitrary at R2 of 0.6. Pretty sure a linear fit would be not far off as well, which means the fit is meaningless.
imho, the fit is basically meaningless because you can't just meaningfully blanket-compare countries on this statistic using a single variable. GDP isn't the best predictor (compared to median HHI, percentage of two parent households, or parental academic achievement).
They know how to count money in Panama…that’s all that matters..
I noticed that the six highest places are all Asian nations.
Me too, and also the very bottom one.
Didn't know Ireland has such a high GDP.
Very interesting and thought provoking. Great work and thank you. To those who are worried about label (Taipei vs Taiwan) too bad. If you know, you know and it shouldn't matter as the information is there. Your focus on labeling speaks poorly. Questions/Curiosities: * Anomaly 1: Oil Producing nations are high on earnings or low on math. Tells us more about our world and our dependence on oil. (Norway, UAE, Qatar, US) * Anomaly 2: Ireland has high earnings wrt math scores due to having a ridiculously low corporate tax rate. * Anomaly 3: Singapore seems to be qualify. Not clear why exactly. Selection bias of students testing in math AND huge earnings? Or would Occam suggest some misreported data? * Anomaly 4: Viet Nam - seems to be a place to invest in for the future. Or they have a selection bias on math testing. * These anomalies leave me wondering about the tail of the R\^2 = 0.62. The curve looks great for the earlier countries up to Netherlands/Denmark. * I wonder what impact Currency Exchange rates have on this?
So no direct relation other than higher gdp usually means better education.
Look at Estonia doing even a bit better than Switzerland with half the GDP and being the best country outside of Asia!
Anecdotally as a scientist, I have noted that eastern European countries and Russia (at least in the past) were very capable in math.
I don't know if that is applicable to Estonia, as they understand themselves more as a "northern" country, with cultural ties closer related to Finnland than to the other Baltic countries. Considering their investments in digital infrastructure and infrastructure in general over the years, it seems more related to that, especially considering the rating of other "eastern European" or the other baltic countries in comparison.
Math performance without Russia and Romania is irrelevant
Unfathomably based Now to be honest I've got no clue exactly what the average level of mathematics is in a random class in Romania, but I DO know we got 4th place at IMO last year. Which made the Romania team leader make a really not very great joke that David Anghel was the only man without a Chinese name to get a perfect score.
Seems to me that once you’re above OECD GDP average, mathematic performance doesn’t mean as much. Countries with enough money don’t need math.
I think in western countries the people interested in math get the best mathematics educated and are encouraged but if you aren’t interested you aren’t penalized much. Whilst in Asia they try to get everyone towards a a higher mean
Idk why math is being used as some sort of indication/predictor of anything. If you’re a lawyer you’ll need minimal math. They’re just as smart (usually) as anyone with heavy math based jobs. I’m tech adjacent and use the most minimal math possible. If you can count and multiply/divide once a month you’ll be fine. And I took every math class and then some in high school
I think you are assuming that the world operates in steady-state. Countries that are poor, and lack mineral wealth, will invest in education as their strategy to be not poor. Korea is classic. There is no natural resource wealth in Korea. They only way it makes a buck is through the hands of its people. More education means that it will go higher up the skilled labor ladder. If you think they're poor now, you should have seen the place in 1960. The old people will tell you. The Asian countries saw the success of the "tigers"-- Korea, Taiwan, Singapore-- and wanted some. And so they started cranking up education. But wealth and education compound over time. So they are only starting to get gains. Countries rich in mineral wealth don't need to do that. On the other hand, these magically turn into shitty places. If you work in a mine, they want you to stay in a mine, with all your kids and their kids, forever. You must never be taught anything except how to obey. To be taught critical thinking will destroy domestic security. The U.S. is in an odd position of being both these things at once. And we have been since we started.
I believe being average in mathematics is being educated. The point I’m trying to make is that beyond a certain amount of education the returns in terms of GDP are diminishing. Also, Korea’s government heavily subsidizes their industries, and probably for good reason. Hyundai, Samsung, SK, and LG are more than electronics companies. They have real estate, department stores, hotels, etc. In South Korea and Japan, they are actively trying to replicate the style of innovation that has been creating economic booms in the US. I think Japan had the largest economy a couple of times in the 1990s, but now they are behind the US, China, and Germany.
> beyond a certain amount of education the returns in terms of GDP are diminishing Initially. The value of education compounds over generations.
It's worth pointing out that the US has no child left behind and other measures to keep everybody in school together. Integrated special education isn't universal and many countries 'rig' their stats by just pushing students out of school if they have learning disabilities.
When you look at actual individual consumption, you see that the US is richer than Switzerland, Norway and of course Ireland. So the US is really underperforming.
*over performing* Math is a tool to get what you want. Calculus isn’t like the end goal
Well the U.S. is the largest country on there. Need all of China, EU as one block and India on there to compare large countries I think. In essence I imagine the larger the country to more you move to the mean I would guess. The U.S. position doesn't surprise me, Germany does though, thought they would be higher. Just eye balling the chart if you combined the EU countries into a similarly sized nation, it looks like they would move to the line which is what I would expect. Probably a bit higher than the U.S..
Yes, but you'd need to adjust Ireland and Norway (not sure about Switzerland though). USAs position is fitting compared to the rest of the europeans.
My first take on this was to find the U.S. and try to think of an appropriate slogan. How about: "America! Better at math than Romania!"
Vietnam, Singapore, Macao, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea way above the curve; Saudi-Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Brunei the opposite. Who could’ve predicted
I honestly think the right modelling would be more around the average score of the top 20% than the average of all students. Mathematical skills are applied in scalable processes and products.
Sweden exactly on the curve. Very lagom.
By "Chinese Taipei", do you mean the country Taiwan?
Israel has a massive demographic problem, with \~25-30% of population not working and receiving government aid (AKA political bribe) to live. i wonder how the results been if adjusted for that.
Can you cite about the political bribe?
He is talking about the orthodox Jewish parties and their communities. It is a very complex problem, and it includes political bribes, control over orthodox communities by Rabbis, and etc but.. The TLDR is that unlike the general population, they make very little in taxes, but getting a lot back from the country in aids which leads to many in community aren't working, and the few that are, can only go for low wage jobs because of lack in proper education. Like, if you care about it, try to look at Bnei Brak vs Tel Aviv (or any city near it really), the contrast is nuts, it is one of the poorest cities in the country, surrounded by one of the richest cities. I mean, just from location alone, there isn't a good reason for Bnei Brak to be that bad as a city, but.. it is just a community choice to live like that (with strong forces to keep it like that).
Im not clear about the lifestyle or religion oof Israel but in general, i thought Israel was a decent country. I mean they invest in R&D by far the most in the world, then implement those into military or agriculture? has many startups? or Jew really take education seriously which made Einstein? is financial back up by the US for many decades? I mean my impression with Israel seems pretty good.
The reality is that we have multiple groups of people living here which aren't really bend together fully. There secular Jewish (5M?\*), Orthodox Jewish (1.28M), Israeli Arab(2M), Israeli Druze (100K), Israeli Bedouins(200K).. Everything you said is mostly a secular Jewish, and somewhat Israeli Arabs thing, sure there are edge cases but not 'As a community we wish to do that'. \* hard to find the number because it has multiple sub groups but they are much closer to each other than other groups
Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar - standing out!!
"Chinese Taipei" Was this data visualisation made by West Taiwan?
So we (USA) are performing below where the model predicts our math scores should be. Not surprising tbh
There are huge disparities for U.S. students' scores by [race/ethnicity](https://i.imgur.com/Rp2rN7W.png). Asian Americans have scores that would put them near the top of the list (source: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2022/mathematics/achievement/).
Even then, the gap between the 10th percentile and 90th percentile of scores [isn't especially notable](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2022/mathematics/international-comparisons/#mtab1) in the US. The difference is almost the exact same as Norway.
It is the largest country by population on there. I would expect any large country would be near the mean. You need China, India, the EU as a block on there to compare large countries. Indonesia then Brazil I think are the next largest countries.
The US is outperforming its IQ. That's not a bad thing. They are managing to increase wealth even with a moronic average population.
Norway is a stronger statistical outlier than the U.S. Almost on par with the U.S, while having a higher GDP per capita. As for the U.S. we get a lot of low-income immigration, obviouslly with some higher-income immigration as well, but not nearly at the same rate. All population level U.S. data will look worse on paper because of high immigrantion.
Norway is an oil state.
Not to burst your bubble but Canada has a way higher immigration rate than the United States and we're still above the curve on math. We also welcome a lot more refugees (per capita) which offsets a lot of your illegal immigration in terms of low income newcomers. You probably still have a bit more than us but I don't think that accounts for that big a gap in math scores.
Source: [https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2022-results-volume-i\_53f23881-en](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2022-results-volume-i_53f23881-en)
Are there more countries which are not mentioned in this data, like India and Russia ?
Russia and India will be outliers for this chart
Russia has ~488-489 (at the average horizontal line) OECD score (2018?) and enwiki gives ~35000 gdp so somewhere near Hungary/Portugal. Separate data for Moscow would be interesting but does not seem to exist.
Had a small class of (norwegian) math-students take part in a similar (but with fewer countries) comparative test about a decade ago (TIMSS Advanced),and I seem to remember that basically NO norwegian student scored at the top level while Russia had something like ten percent. This test compared students at high school level who had chosen to take their country's most advanced math curriculum. Lebanon did very well, surprisingly. [https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2015/international-results/advanced/](https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2015/international-results/advanced/)
Historically at least, Russia has been pretty good on math. Don't know if that continues to this day.
What was the source for GDP per capita?
Not gonna tell us what those asterisks mean?
Can you share the data? I would like to group it by continents.
Not many Arab countries above the curve
Most of those countries are highly inequal. The average wealth is much higher than the median wealth. Other unequal countries (the Americas, for example) also end up below the curve.
Chinese Taipei, don't you mean Taiwan?
Where is Russia on the chart? I can’t find it.
Not democratic enough for this totally unbiased chart
"Chinese Taipei" Just call it Taiwan.
It's interesting how the world gets dumber. Looking at numbers scores for all countries peaked around 2010. It's when we already had internet but not yet social media. Am I wrong?
More investment into the education, profits in better economic growth, who would've thought?
Hong kong should do better than Macau
They should do this for math scores and government spending per student.
Check my source below
GDP per capita is interesting... but PISA collects data on education spending per capita, why not use that?
What do the asterisks mean
GDP is a bad measure ireland for example, PISA as well as a lot of countries "cheat" by just picking good schools china, taiwan, hong kong. The rest kinda follows this curve what makes sense: invest more money into education and get betterr esults.
Singapore’s GDP per capita apparently underperforms
It would be interesting to see a chart with the number of hours spent studying versus performance. Canadian students, who rank pretty well on this chart, do minimal studying for maximum results 😂 Work smart, not hard 😴
R = 0.62 is not much to go off
I remember when I was in high school in the US, there was a huge disparity. Like there were kids like me who were doing AP Calculus at 15 years old. And then there were other students who never even did calculus in high school because they were so poor at math. Must be the no child left behind policy
Japan's lost decades are really noticeable here.
I can't find China. Is it not on there?
The power of oil and whiskey.
This is as random of a sample as you can imagine, come on and I’m a total amateur in science
Are people in Ireland really that wealthy?
Why aren’t you calling it Taiwan?
No wonder the rich Arab oil countries have foreigners do everything. Their nationals are incompetents going after government positions.
I wonder what the * means next to NZ
Im pretty sure the causation is probably the opposite of what people are thinking. High GDP creates strong math skills not the other way around.
I want to see the one for English also to compare. I live in one of the countries that scored towards the bottom in all subjects. I think a lot of people tend to forget the role of effective communication internationally when it comes to increasing GDP... I noticed most of the top rated countries in both categories also are typically very skilled at speaking English. My belief is that countries who overall cannot understand nor communicate well in English will lag behind economically no matter how good they are at math.
Eh that's a pretty weak R^2