Farming
Describe a rice paddy
A flooded field of arable land used to grow crops
What was Renee's professors name?
Alan Schoenfield
How long did it take for Renee to complete her test?
22 minutes
Name one of the side tasks that Southern Chinese farmers did?
Made bamboo hats and sold them
Repaired dikes in rice paddies
Made tofu and caught snakes
TIMMS is an acronym for a test, what does it stand for?
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
How long has rice been an essential crop in China?
8000 BC
What was the overall objective in Renee's test
To make the software program create a vertical line
On the TIMSS test, what is the percentile that Asian countries score in?
98th Percentile
Why do Chinese children learn to count and do basic arithmetic earlier than Western children?
Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one quarter of a second.
What makes the TIMSS test so tedious?
It is about 120 questions long
The typical rice paddy is about as big as a...
Hotel Room
Renee noticed something to help her solve the question... what was it?
The higher she makes the Y coordinate, the steeper the line gets
Why does hunter and gatherers consider agriculture to be a waste of time?
"Why should we plant when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"
Why could China or Japan never develop a feudal system?
Because it could not work in a rice economy, growing rice is too intricate for a feudal type of system.
What are one of topics on the questionnaire that the test requires the student to fill out?
What their parents level of education is
What their views about math are
What their friends are like
What is the fertilizer "night soil" that Rice Farmers would use, actually consist of?
Human Manure
What was the solution to the problem
A vertical line is any number divided by 0, and that's an undefined number.
What is one of the reasons that Rice Farmers did not evolve to using machines such as tractors or hay balers?
The terrain is more complex and the farmers didn't have the money.
What is the name of one of the last practitioners of hunter gatherers?
!Kung bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, in Botswana
What is the overall goal of the TIMSS test?
To compare the educational achievement of one country to another
How far apart do rice seedlings need to be planted?
6 inches apart
What did Renee do to stand out to her professor?
When answering the question she notices a key point to solving the test, which most students fail to see at all.
What is Renee's professors key to success?
"it's not so much ability as attitude. Success is a function of persistence and the willingness to work"
Chinese proverbs are striking on their belief that...
What country mentioned in the text is not on the list for TIMSS study?
China