China Dominates In NSA-Backed Coding Contest

The Narrative Fallacy writes "With about 4,200 people participating in a US National Security Agency-supported international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components, 20 of the 70 finalists were from China, 10 from Russia, and 2 from the US. China's showing in the finals was helped by its large number of entrants, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers was a finalist. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128. Participants in the TopCoder Open was open to anyone, from student to professional; the contest proceeded through rounds of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas. Rob Hughes, president and COO of TopCoder, says the strong finish by programmers from China, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere is indicative of the importance those countries put on mathematics and science education. 'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'"

Comments

Damn

[Xs1t0ry]

"We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there...."

Apparently I was born on the wrong continent.

Re:Damn

[pluther]

What's worse, the quote isn't even true.

We don't do the same thing with athletics here as they do with math and science over there. In fact, they do the same thing with athletics as they do with math and science.

That is, they consider athletics to be important and encourage every child to participate in at least one sport.

We, on the other hand, idolize a very small number of top achievers and encourage every child to watch them on TV.

Re:Damn

[JeanBaptiste]

Yes, the Chinese Professional Math League (YDVF) is quite a sight to watch. Arenas filled with cheering fans watching a bunch of guys doing math and science. I still don't like the free agency rule implemented last year, but it has provided more parity between teams. The 'player' salaries are quite a bit higher actually than some of the top athletes in sports like football in other places around the globe. They truly treat mathematics like we treat athletics.

Re:Damn

[emkyooess]

You must not be too familiar with schools. Time and time again the schools around where I grew up, real educational funds were slashed in favor of building a new gymnasium, funding an entirely new sport, sending the teams to beach trips, and all other sorts of athletics pandering. Meanwhile, it took decades of tooth-and-nail fighting to get a renovation (not even new) auditorium and stage for music and drama, the arts were always scrounging for supplies, science events were always short-changed and trips cut, and math texts were so ragged they were useless.

Re:Damn

[Knave75]

"We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there....

The problem is that we are overpaying our teachers.

(but, seriously, we give math and science teachers a starvation wage and provide them with little respect. Meanwhile, we pay football coaches 6 figure salaries and revere them as Gods. Are we really that surprised that we fail at math?)

Re:Damn

[Maxo-Texas]

This was true at my college in the late 1980's to early 1990's.

We built a new spiffy apartment complex for students-- and then filled it with atheletes.

They cut library publication subscriptions-- and gave more money to the athletic program.

They were desperate to break into the national scene and failed.

Re:Damn

[ojustgiveitup]

Maybe we should stop running schools like businesses and start running them like schools.

Re:Damn

[ojustgiveitup]

I would rather we start funding them like schools. I would also suggest that we suffer from a quantity vs. quality problem that the quotas in places like California, while good-intentioned, are worsening. Higher education needs to be cheap and available, but highly selective. While I'm being idealistic, I might as well also mention that we need to stop requiring college degrees for basically any middle class job. We've saturated the job market with highly educated people, while simultaneously diminishing the quality of that education. So now, as a society, we're paying inordinate sums for lowest common denominator education, that a large proportion of people don't need and won't ever use.

You can say it all you want

[0racle]

'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'

Thats nice, and I believe it's disgusting how athletics are held here, but the public has made it abundantly clear that's they way they want it. I, for one, would like to welcome our new Chinese overlords.

Re:You can say it all you want

[Ogi_UnixNut]

IMO (having spent about half my life the "West" and the other half in "Eastern Europe") the primary difference seems to be one of respect for knowledge.

In the West while I was at school it was "cool" to be stupid. Kids who smoked, did drugs, didn't do any work, rejected knowledge/lessons, skipped school etc... were by far the most popular, with many followers. The hard working kids that did well on the other hand, were mocked as "teachers pets", "dorks" etc... and were generally social outcasts.

On the other hand when I was in Eastern Europe, if you were knowledgeable in a subject (especially something seen as hard, like Maths/physics etc...) you ended up being popular, while those that smoked/did drugs/skipped school etc... as above were seen as troublemakers to be avoided. People there seemed to appreciate your knowledge. I guess it's because it's seen as a reliably useful skill (i.e. employable), as opposed to just looking pretty, which only works for the top 1% that manage to become celebrities, the rest usually ending up as whores/gold diggers or thugs/bouncers.

That's not to say athletics was discouraged, on the contrary you were expected to take part in at least one physical activity, but it wasn't a case of athletics being the be-all-end-all of life

Or is it due to time and money?

[kbob88]

Maybe programmers in China, Russia, and Eastern Europe have more time on their hands, less money, and would derive more benefit from participating in the contest (prestige and recognition for instance). I'm sure there are a great many US coders who would do very well in this contest, but are too busy.

Re:Or is it due to time and money?

[Seakip18]

Better yet, was the opening of said contest even announced on US top tech sites?

Second, did US employers, who hire our best programmers, tell them to give it a go with time off?

We do the same thing with athletics here that they

[overshoot]

Which reminds me -- how is the USA doing in the World Cup?

Re:We do the same thing with athletics here that t

[jgtg32a]

What's that?

US Educational System

[mordors9]

Who knew that teaching kids that 1+1 can equal 3 as long as they feel good about themselves would turn out bad for us...

Re:US Educational System

[The Master Control P]

If you're serious: You're right, we should never tell children when they're wrong. That would never create preening, self-entitled idiots that never learned any actual hard facts and have no idea how to cope with a real world that doesn't care how "traumatic" being told "you're wrong" is.

If you're joking: God, don't scare me like that!

Gentlemen, it's time

[Red Flayer]

It's time for nerds to rise up yet again. Throughout modern history in the US, celebration of the nerd has resulted in unprecedented economic prosperity and global economic domination.

From the idolization of Einstein, Feynman, and other physicists, arose the economic superpower that dominated much of the world in the 1950s and 60s.

In the 80s, we were captivated by the message of Revenge of the Nerds, and on the shoulders of this movie we came to dominate the new era of Information.

Ladies, gentlemen: Now is the time. Now is the time to rise up from our comfy chairs, to rise up from our futons, to rise up from the depths of our basements! We must rise up as one united voice of nerd-dom, and speak to the mouthbreathers who have ground us beneath their bootheels since time immemorial. We must tell them:

ENOUGH! Take your stupid sports and shove them. Take your stupid pop music TV shows and shove them. Take your idolization of stupidity and sacrifice it on the altar of curiosity, the altar of edification, and the altar of neckbeards and cheetos!

WE MUST DEFEAT THE...

What's that mom? Yeah... OK... I'll be up for dinner as soon as I finish this level. Did you get some Mountain Dew?

Sorry, gotta go AFK.

And it's not really true...

[sznupi]

IMHO it's not that we (yeah, I'm from so called "Eastern Europe") focus on mathematics and hard science, it's just that, from what I see, athletes/etc. are put on a smaller pedestal

(perhaps partly because of economic considerations...celebrities here simply aren't worth that much as a product; means also that for larger percentage of "would-be celebrities" the only future is as a bouncer or whore, etc.)

But they are still put on a pedestal...

Another possible reason

[ZorbaTHut]

It could just be that the US coders are no longer interested.

I used to compete in Topcoder. I made it to #2, I was in the top ten for over a year solid. Then I got a job at Google thanks to my Topcoder ranking. I joined a team that had a bunch of other ex-Topcoders in it and, as with them, determined pretty quickly that Topcoder just wasn't worth my time anymore.

Now, I don't know how many Chinese programmers got jobs through Topcoder, but I do know that the vast majority of the best Topcoder competitors in the US were hired by a surprisingly small set of companies. And, well, as cool as Topcoder is, if you sit down and look at dollars-per-hour . . . it's pretty crummy compared to a real job. Especially since they lowered all the prizes.

So, US coders do Topcoder, do well, get job, quit Topcoder because we get paid well. Chinese coders do Topcoder, do well, don't get job, don't quit Topcoder. Or they do Topcoder, do well, get job, don't quit Topcoder because they're not yet being paid well enough.

Doesn't surprise me in the least.