Math competitions for Mathematically Gifted kid (7 year old)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the stereotype is true as evidenced by the national results on mathcounts and USAMO all the way down to the school levels. Nobody is necessarily saying it’s a negative stereotype. Asians are dominating in math contests. To deny that Asian kids are dominating math contests would be ridiculous. To say it’s just because Asians are smarter would be wrong. Saying that a large percentage of Asian parents push their kids in math is true. Visit your nearest kumon and see for yourself.

I think math competition and circles can be great. But I do think a lot of people are turned off by the steep competition. I think a lot of people think pushing a kid so hard to study for a math contest isn’t something they want to do. I think it’s wrong to think it’s wrong though. I don’t think there is anything wrong with insane math practice. Just like there isn’t anything wrong with insane soccer practice. As long as the kid is willing in either case. Once you’ve forced a kid to practice above level math you are crossing a line. But no one ever admits this.

We’re talking about the stereotyping of tiger parenting. How’s that evidenced by the Asian dominance in Mathcounts and USAMO?
That underlying assumption alone is a stereotype and potentially racist.

Is tiger parenting not an Asian invention? I believe Amy Chua herself said it was.

Asian American make up 6% of the population. Asian American 8th graders make up over half of the top performers in math counts.

Is it not because of tiger parenting?

Is putting your dc in kumon an example of tiger parenting? Is kumon not made up of predominately Asian Americans students?

I do not think recognizing a trend is racist. Let’s blow the cover off this. Putting your kid in kumon works. Making your elementary child study X hours of math a week ahead of their peers sets him up to excel in middle school math. It has little to do with a love of math or a talent for math.

Stop your racist crap! As with most racists, you’re full of crap and have no sense of logic.
I’m not even going to dispute your garbage one by one as I’m not gonna waste my time on some despicable person like you .
Does it mean the entire Asian community did the same thing just because Amy Chua has tiger parented ?
Try to get your kids to the top of the nation for anything, sports or math, through tiger parenting and let us know if that works.
With the level of intelligence you’ve shown, it doesn’t matter if you study 24 hours a day.
BTW, no Asian kids deep in the math contests do Kumon at all. Kumon is for practicing very fundamental skills or for those dumb people like you to keep up with their basic school work. Your notion that Asian kids who excel at math competition need to rely on tutoring is simply laughable.
Again, this thing is wayyy out of your league, you won’t understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You cannot Kumon your way into being a top competitor in Mathcounts. All of the kids at the top nationally have a talent for math. Most of them probably love math as well.

I kind of think you can. If by kumon we mean math tutoring from kindergarten on. Kumon in the early years and then advanced coursework outside class and then tutoring on the actual contest math questions. Yes that exists.

My DS has an IQ in the gifted range. If there are 3 million in his grade year so do 60,000 others his age. My kid even has a Quantitative Reasoning score in the 99.9th percentile. So do thousands of other kids in his year group. That is not what makes a difference. So I do think it’s the practice that makes a difference.

I think kids in the above average range but literally hundreds of hours studying contest math would outperform any kid who hasn’t been tutored.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who thinks that the white 2018 Mathcounts national champ won purely from talent, but the Asian 2019 Mathcounts national champ won through tiger parenting is a racist. All of the kids at the top in Mathcounts got there through both immense talent and a ton of hard work.

There aren't many white kids in the Mathcounts top 50 because getting there isn't enough of a priority for the white kids with the requisite talent. There's nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with Asian kids placing a higher priority on math contests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the stereotype is true as evidenced by the national results on mathcounts and USAMO all the way down to the school levels. Nobody is necessarily saying it’s a negative stereotype. Asians are dominating in math contests. To deny that Asian kids are dominating math contests would be ridiculous. To say it’s just because Asians are smarter would be wrong. Saying that a large percentage of Asian parents push their kids in math is true. Visit your nearest kumon and see for yourself.

I think math competition and circles can be great. But I do think a lot of people are turned off by the steep competition. I think a lot of people think pushing a kid so hard to study for a math contest isn’t something they want to do. I think it’s wrong to think it’s wrong though. I don’t think there is anything wrong with insane math practice. Just like there isn’t anything wrong with insane soccer practice. As long as the kid is willing in either case. Once you’ve forced a kid to practice above level math you are crossing a line. But no one ever admits this.

We’re talking about the stereotyping of tiger parenting. How’s that evidenced by the Asian dominance in Mathcounts and USAMO?
That underlying assumption alone is a stereotype and potentially racist.

Is tiger parenting not an Asian invention? I believe Amy Chua herself said it was.

Asian American make up 6% of the population. Asian American 8th graders make up over half of the top performers in math counts.

Is it not because of tiger parenting?

Is putting your dc in kumon an example of tiger parenting? Is kumon not made up of predominately Asian Americans students?

I do not think recognizing a trend is racist. Let’s blow the cover off this. Putting your kid in kumon works. Making your elementary child study X hours of math a week ahead of their peers sets him up to excel in middle school math. It has little to do with a love of math or a talent for math.

Stop your racist crap! As with most racists, you’re full of crap and have no sense of logic.
I’m not even going to dispute your garbage one by one as I’m not gonna waste my time on some despicable person like you .
Does it mean the entire Asian community did the same thing just because Amy Chua has tiger parented ?
Try to get your kids to the top of the nation for anything, sports or math, through tiger parenting and let us know if that works.
With the level of intelligence you’ve shown, it doesn’t matter if you study 24 hours a day.
BTW, no Asian kids deep in the math contests do Kumon at all. Kumon is for practicing very fundamental skills or for those dumb people like you to keep up with their basic school work. Your notion that Asian kids who excel at math competition need to rely on tutoring is simply laughable.
Again, this thing is wayyy out of your league, you won’t understand.

Please explain where I’ve ever said the entire Asian community participated in tiger parenting? Seriously. You cannot. Calm down and stop jumping to your own conclusions about what I’m saying. I know damn well what kumon is. We are using it as shorthand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone who thinks that the white 2018 Mathcounts national champ won purely from talent, but the Asian 2019 Mathcounts national champ won through tiger parenting is a racist. All of the kids at the top in Mathcounts got there through both immense talent and a ton of hard work.

There aren't many white kids in the Mathcounts top 50 because getting there isn't enough of a priority for the white kids with the requisite talent. There's nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with Asian kids placing a higher priority on math contests.

I Don’t think anybody’s said that. In fact, everyone has said the national winners have incredible talent and work incredibly hard. I have no doubt that kid has put quite a few hours into contest math. He is definitely on the spectrum and is homeschooled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You cannot Kumon your way into being a top competitor in Mathcounts. All of the kids at the top nationally have a talent for math. Most of them probably love math as well.

I kind of think you can. If by kumon we mean math tutoring from kindergarten on. Kumon in the early years and then advanced coursework outside class and then tutoring on the actual contest math questions. Yes that exists.

My DS has an IQ in the gifted range. If there are 3 million in his grade year so do 60,000 others his age. My kid even has a Quantitative Reasoning score in the 99.9th percentile. So do thousands of other kids in his year group. That is not what makes a difference. So I do think it’s the practice that makes a difference.

I think kids in the above average range but literally hundreds of hours studying contest math would outperform any kid who hasn’t been tutored.

Are you familiar at all with math contests, and has your child ever competed? Kids who are above average but not gifted will not do well at contests, no matter how much they've prepared. At the elementary level, kids who are naturally brilliant mop the floors with the kids who are bright and well-practiced. Those brilliant kids are the ones who then choose to invest the time in middle and high school. I participated on state level teams and in some national competitions in high school. There wasn't a single kid on the state ARML team who wasn't both absolutely brilliant in math and highly interested in learning math.

It's very similar to elite sports or music. You can invest in all of the practice and coaching in the world. It will make you proficient, but there is a limit to how far that can take you without the natural aptitude. You can't coach an above average gymnast onto the olympic team. An above average violinist can practice hours every day and will never play at Carnegie Hall. Likewise, an above average mathematician will not be able to crack the Mathcounts top 50, no matter how much the kid practices and is coached.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You cannot Kumon your way into being a top competitor in Mathcounts. All of the kids at the top nationally have a talent for math. Most of them probably love math as well.

I kind of think you can. If by kumon we mean math tutoring from kindergarten on. Kumon in the early years and then advanced coursework outside class and then tutoring on the actual contest math questions. Yes that exists.

My DS has an IQ in the gifted range. If there are 3 million in his grade year so do 60,000 others his age. My kid even has a Quantitative Reasoning score in the 99.9th percentile. So do thousands of other kids in his year group. That is not what makes a difference. So I do think it’s the practice that makes a difference.

I think kids in the above average range but literally hundreds of hours studying contest math would outperform any kid who hasn’t been tutored.

Are you familiar at all with math contests, and has your child ever competed? Kids who are above average but not gifted will not do well at contests, no matter how much they've prepared. At the elementary level, kids who are naturally brilliant mop the floors with the kids who are bright and well-practiced. Those brilliant kids are the ones who then choose to invest the time in middle and high school. I participated on state level teams and in some national competitions in high school. There wasn't a single kid on the state ARML team who wasn't both absolutely brilliant in math and highly interested in learning math.

It's very similar to elite sports or music. You can invest in all of the practice and coaching in the world. It will make you proficient, but there is a limit to how far that can take you without the natural aptitude. You can't coach an above average gymnast onto the olympic team. An above average violinist can practice hours every day and will never play at Carnegie Hall. Likewise, an above average mathematician will not be able to crack the Mathcounts top 50, no matter how much the kid practices and is coached.

This isn’t my experience at all. For example in mathcounts there are schools in the country that have become power houses. Which is evidence that the right coaches and training make a huge difference. The math kangaroo contest and AMC have like the same types of questions on it every year. If you practice the certain types of tricks over and over you will do pretty well with an above average IQ. Go over to the AOPS forum and you can see for yourself how the kids talk about the types of problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My DS has an IQ in the gifted range. If there are 3 million in his grade year so do 60,000 others his age. My kid even has a Quantitative Reasoning score in the 99.9th percentile. So do thousands of other kids in his year group. That is not what makes a difference. So I do think it’s the practice that makes a difference. .

If there are 3 million kids in your DS' grade year, then 3000 of them are in the 99.9th percentile. But 300 of those are in the 99.99th percentile, which is actually significantly above the 99.9th percentile. On top of that, Mathcounts includes 6th-8th graders, meaning there's a larger pool of 99.99th percentile kids. Only 56 kids make it on the national Mathcounts leaderboard last year. I doubt any of the kids in the top 50 aren't at least in the 99th percentile. Many of them are probably in the 99.9th percentile or higher in math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This isn’t my experience at all. For example in mathcounts there are schools in the country that have become power houses. Which is evidence that the right coaches and training make a huge difference. The math kangaroo contest and AMC have like the same types of questions on it every year. If you practice the certain types of tricks over and over you will do pretty well with an above average IQ. Go over to the AOPS forum and you can see for yourself how the kids talk about the types of problems.

There's a huge cliff between doing pretty well and reaching elite levels, though. It's relatively easy for an above average student to do well enough on AMC to qualify for AIME. It's nearly impossible for an above average student to practice enough to make USAMO. The AOPS forums are filled with kids who worked their tails off and end up disappointed that they didn't earn high enough scores to move on. Any contest that takes only the top 250 or top 50 or some other very limited number will be filled with the kids who have both the talent and the coaching.

It's tough to truly analyze the powerhouse schools, since there's selection bias in the students who choose to attend that school. People with kids who are talented at math seek out schools that have the best reputations and the best competition teams. I'm sure the coaching at TJ is wonderful, but the main reason they're a powerhouse is that they're drawing all of the top mathematicians from the entire NOVA area.

[Anonymous]

Can I ask where the girls are?

[Anonymous]

While it's true that the "gifted" perform better in any scenario, whether it's a math competition or a music performance, the basic tenet of this thread is about the "high achieving" kid and not necessarily the brilliant kid. if your kid is brilliant in math, for sure the 7yo could be doing advanced calculus (and then most likely is on the spectrum at some level). And then I'm sure the OP would have mentioned so. She's talking about a kid who loves math, and is a high achieving individual in math. Practice makes perfect, but only to a certain extent. You can practice 10,000 hours of hitting golf balls, but you may not be the next Tiger Woods. So, why is it that most "high achieving" kids in math tend to be Asians. Why is it that most winners of the National Spelling Bee are South Asians? It goes back to what a few posters have noted (maybe it's the same poster who keeps trying to make the point)--it's about family prioritization. It's where the parents place the focus on the kids, and where the kids natural desire lies. I'm sure Asians could rock the National Spelling Bee too, if the parents placed that level of emphasis on it. As, I'm sure the non-Asians would place quite well in math, if the parents placed that level of emphasis on it. The main point that Amy Chua made, though all of it got lost with the debate about "tiger parenting," is that the parent drives the train when it comes to achievement through the primary school years; and if you do it successfully, you'll set your child up for success regardless of path they choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can I ask where the girls are?

Girls didn’t prep enough according to some fools on this forum....obviously they have observed it first hand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You cannot Kumon your way into being a top competitor in Mathcounts. All of the kids at the top nationally have a talent for math. Most of them probably love math as well.

I kind of think you can. If by kumon we mean math tutoring from kindergarten on. Kumon in the early years and then advanced coursework outside class and then tutoring on the actual contest math questions. Yes that exists.

My DS has an IQ in the gifted range. If there are 3 million in his grade year so do 60,000 others his age. My kid even has a Quantitative Reasoning score in the 99.9th percentile. So do thousands of other kids in his year group. That is not what makes a difference. So I do think it’s the practice that makes a difference.

I think kids in the above average range but literally hundreds of hours studying contest math would outperform any kid who hasn’t been tutored.

What do you wby “IQ in gifted range”? 120, 130? That is normally called “bright” and can afford him to do pretty well in school work. But those who excel at math competitions typically have much higher IQ than “gifted”. 150 is not uncommon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the stereotype is true as evidenced by the national results on mathcounts and USAMO all the way down to the school levels. Nobody is necessarily saying it’s a negative stereotype. Asians are dominating in math contests. To deny that Asian kids are dominating math contests would be ridiculous. To say it’s just because Asians are smarter would be wrong. Saying that a large percentage of Asian parents push their kids in math is true. Visit your nearest kumon and see for yourself.

I think math competition and circles can be great. But I do think a lot of people are turned off by the steep competition. I think a lot of people think pushing a kid so hard to study for a math contest isn’t something they want to do. I think it’s wrong to think it’s wrong though. I don’t think there is anything wrong with insane math practice. Just like there isn’t anything wrong with insane soccer practice. As long as the kid is willing in either case. Once you’ve forced a kid to practice above level math you are crossing a line. But no one ever admits this.

We’re talking about the stereotyping of tiger parenting. How’s that evidenced by the Asian dominance in Mathcounts and USAMO?
That underlying assumption alone is a stereotype and potentially racist.

Is tiger parenting not an Asian invention? I believe Amy Chua herself said it was.

Asian American make up 6% of the population. Asian American 8th graders make up over half of the top performers in math counts.

Is it not because of tiger parenting?

Is putting your dc in kumon an example of tiger parenting? Is kumon not made up of predominately Asian Americans students?

I do not think recognizing a trend is racist. Let’s blow the cover off this. Putting your kid in kumon works. Making your elementary child study X hours of math a week ahead of their peers sets him up to excel in middle school math. It has little to do with a love of math or a talent for math.

Stop your racist crap! As with most racists, you’re full of crap and have no sense of logic.
I’m not even going to dispute your garbage one by one as I’m not gonna waste my time on some despicable person like you .
Does it mean the entire Asian community did the same thing just because Amy Chua has tiger parented ?
Try to get your kids to the top of the nation for anything, sports or math, through tiger parenting and let us know if that works.
With the level of intelligence you’ve shown, it doesn’t matter if you study 24 hours a day.
BTW, no Asian kids deep in the math contests do Kumon at all. Kumon is for practicing very fundamental skills or for those dumb people like you to keep up with their basic school work. Your notion that Asian kids who excel at math competition need to rely on tutoring is simply laughable.
Again, this thing is wayyy out of your league, you won’t understand.

Please explain where I’ve ever said the entire Asian community participated in tiger parenting? Seriously. You cannot. Calm down and stop jumping to your own conclusions about what I’m saying. I know damn well what kumon is. We are using it as shorthand.

People are not stupid and can tell what you said. I’m just curious whether you are malicious or just dumb. It cannot be anything else.