Re:Ridiculous Math Problems
by hintymad on Sunday July 05, 2020 @03:12PM
(#23741100)
I doubt it. Those problems are close to impossible to solve for ordinary students, therefore many talented but not necessarily genius students lost the opportunity to get good education. I'm a firm believer that students need to be pushed to stay in their discomfort zone, but Jewish Problems can easily push most students into panic zone.
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That's one of the principles of deliberate practice: go just beyond the comfort zone, in the area where you feel a challenge, but an approachable one.
The point of the Jewish Problems is that:
1. They're an entrance exam. They were explicitly designed to discriminiate against otherwise worthy candidates.
2. The key feature of the problems is that they are not difficult because they are an average example of a difficult branch of math. Instead they are easy problems, but they are only easy if you can figure out the correct substitution. Otherwise, they are extremely difficult. In other words, getting good at the problems won't make you a better mathematician, it'll just make you better at passing that particular test.