[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
I teach mathematics. For the purpose of creativity, I would rank the students as follows:
(1) Caucasians. My students have a ‘creative spark’ that no others have.
(2) Asians, mostly Chinese. Great ‘clockworks’, good engineers, low creativity
(3) Blacks. No focus, no creativity, thinks that proofs are ‘dumb’. I had one student in all these years that had any ability at all.
Based upon my limited observations, Asians are more efficient, Caucasians are more creative, and Blacks should only be employed above a certain level if they prove that they are an exception and not the rule.
I know this sounds terribly racist but it is not intended that way. I am merely stating facts of my experience.
Sidenote: Ashkanazim are pure gold btw. 
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What mathematics do you teach?[/quote]
AP Calculus and Honors Precalculus. I have been for more than 30 years. My conclusions are totally subjective and are based on my observations of my students.
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The problem is that your experiences and observations do not warrant the conclusions that you have drawn. First, you teach at an American high school, so I would imagine most of your students in those two classes are white, so of course it will seem to you that white students are better at math. Now, go to any major university in America and sit in on a theoretical math or theoretical physics course (most theoretical physics topics require theoretical/analytical math techniques. The majority of students will belong to one of three racial groups: Indian, Asian, and Arabic. If you do not want to do that, pick a major journal of math or theoretical physics and look at the names of the main authors and they will also tend to belong to those same racial groups.
Also, you teach very basic math classes that consist entirely of giving students formulas and having them plug in values to those formulas and sometimes rearranging those formulas to solve for different variables. There is not much information to be gathered from students at that level about their mathematical creativity at all. Those talents do not really start to show themselves until students have learned the basic problem solving skills from elementary calculus and are taking theoretical mathematics courses like basic analysis, real analysis, complex analysis, which are junior/senior level undergrad courses, or graduate level theoretical courses in math intensive subjects like physics that use theoretical mathematics. An argument can be made for including discrete mathematics (sometimes called logic) classes in that list, which are typically freshman/junior classes that are usually requirements for computer science and philosophy majors, but I do not. Compared to basic analysis that course is child’s play. If you taught some of those classes, then you would be able to draw conclusions about the mathematical creativity of math students, but not from pre-calculus and calc 1[/quote]
You are mostly incorrect. In Precalc, I teach them the structure of proof. In Calc, we do the proofs, such as of the Product Rule for derivatives, and so on. The black kids and asian kids can’t do it on their own. The white kids can.
If 80% of the kids are white and I get 3 proofs, all in class while I watch, and none of the other kids get a proof, its still 3 to 0. Like I said – Asian kids are great mimics, while the black kids struggle with even that.
Since these are upper middle class kids, they are superior in general to others not so economically advantaged. That should say something about the general population, though I’d be speculating.
