What's wrong with the numbers we teach U.S. children today?
Dear Parents, Teachers, and People who care:
"The U.S. is at the bottom of math education and nobody seems to know how to fix it."
-Jimmy Fallon
Host of The Tonight Show on NBC
Science proves how to fix U.S. math education, but it's not in schools yet.
"The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan and Korea. They have a logical
counting system. Eleven is ten one. Twelve is ten two. Twenty-four is two ten four, and so on."
-Malcolm Gladwell
From the #1 New York Times Bestselling book, Outliers
From the Wall Street Journal
The trouble starts at 11. English has a unique word for the number, while Chinese, Japanese and Korean have
words like "ten one".
-Wall Street Journal
read article
Top 40 World Math Education - Skills Testing K-12
Source: Business Insider
The Countries With Most STEM Graduates
4.7M STEM grads / 17M birth rate = 27% STEM grads
2.6M STEM grads / 26M birth rate = 10% STEM grads
.56M STEM grads / 4M birth rate = 14% STEM grads
.2M STEM grads / 2M birth rate = 10% STEM grads
.2M STEM grads / 1M birth rate = 20% STEM grads
Source: World Economic Forum
Percentage of STEM Grads Per Capita
Source: World Economic Forum
Key
Top 20% - Science-based numbers like "Ten One"
China - 27%
Japan - 20%
Bottom 80% - Unique words like "Eleven"
USA - 14%
India - 10%
Indonesia - 10%
Percentage of U.S. High School Grads Who Are Ready For College Math
% of U.S. High School Graduates Meeting ACT College Readiness Benchmark in Maths
Percentage of U.S. Population With College Degree
Percent of U.S. Population over age 25 who have earned a Bachelor's Degree or above
Source: U.S. Census
How Much More $$$ Do College Grads Make?
The difference in median annual earnings of college vs high school grads - when each generation were ages 25-32
Source: Pew Research Center
Based on: Why Asian Preschool Children Mathematically Outperform
Replay Animation
Ten One Math Makes Math Easy
11
eleven
- value
- logical
- easy to learn
12
twelve
- value
- logical
- easy to learn
13
thirteen
- value
- logical
- easy to learn
24
twenty four
- value
- logical
- easy to learn