Outliers Chapter 8 Quiz

On average, how long would a typical American high school students attempt to figure out a math problem?

2 minutes

How long does Renee try to figure out the math problem?

22 minutes

What is the estimated number of hours worked by a wet-rice farmer in Asia per year?

3000

How big is a typical rice paddy?

As big as a hotel room

What are the results of the difference between English and Chinese number-naming system?

Asian children learn to count much faster than American children, making them fall at least a year behind.

Describe the process of tending to a rice paddy

Has to be irrigated, channels dug from nearest water source, hard clay floor with thick layer of mud on top, fertilized, painstakingly nurtured

According to Erling Boe, without giving students a single math problem, we could predict precisely the order in which every country would finish in the math Olympics simply by looking at what?

How hard they are willing to work when given a difficult task

Interpret the following statement: "No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich"

If you wake up early and start every day with 100% effort you can work longer and harder. Therefore provide for your family/succeed.

What may account for the disenchantment that many western students start to experience towards math around the third and fourth grade?

Math stops making sense, its basic rules become complicated

What does Schoenfeld consider to be the secret to learning mathematics?

Persistence and attitude

In Alan Schoenfeld's study, how did Renee respond when presented with an impossible mathematical task?

She struggled to figure it out

What made work of a rice farmer meaningful?

The harder they worked a rice field, the more it yielded, it was complex

Why are Chinese speakers able to memorize a list of numbers more easily than English speakers?

Their numbers don't take as long to say. (We store numbers in our brain in a memory loop for two seconds)

Why are children in Asian countries less likely to feel disenchanted towards math?

Their structure of math is easier to understand

Besides having high math scores what do Singapore, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Japan have in common?

They are all cultures shaped by the tradition of wet-rice agriculture and meaningful work.

What happens if we compare the questionnaire rankings with the math rankings on the TIMSS? What is the connection between the two?

They are exactly the same. Those who are willing to concentrate and answer every question are the same who do the best job of solving math problems

How is Chinese agriculture skill oriented?

They are willing to put in more work/effort and can't rely on machines

Why was rice so important in the lives of Chinese people?

They ate it for every meal every day and sold it at the market to buy other necessities

What does Gladwell mean by "western agriculture is mechanically oriented"?

We rely on machines to be more efficient

Explain the difference between English number-naming system and the Chinese number-naming system

We say fourteen and sixteen but twelve instead of twoteen. We put the decade first, they don't