Thanks for sharing, that's fascinating. I've only started using ollama within the last month, and I'm really, really regretting I didn't load up my MBP with more ram. When I bought it, 36gb seemed like more than I would probably need..
What models are you using for coding?
What CPU? How well does the CPU + 128gb ram run the models we're talking about?
That said, much of what is wrong with corporations is due to idiots with MBAs.
The problem with the K-12 system is that it's just _bad_. There is no drive for excellence, so students that don't have engaged parents are just coasting. In some places (Seattle) you could graduate with a passing score without even attending the classes and randomly filling out the tests. Then there are busybodies that try to cancel math and magnet schools because they're racist (see: California).
There's a lot of variability here. The Seattle and California models are baffling to me. Totally agree that the US system is largely focused on irrelevant (or immutable) things. I have a kid in highschool now. His peer group is very, very impressive. Multiple perfect scores on the ACT every year. ~55% of the highschool is English-language learners and 60%+ is free lunch eligible (meaning poverty level or close). There's an engineering magnet program that does really, really cool stuff. The school was on lockdown 3 times last year for gang fights.
It's a tough environment, comparatively.
This is really apparent when you look at college admission tests. In the US you have SAT tests that are trivially easy to pass with perfect scores (more than 2% of people get them!), and ACT with a bit more reasonable 0.22% of perfect scores. In China you have Gaokao where _nobody_ ever got the perfect score, in Korea you have CSAT with something like 5 people a year getting perfect scores, etc.
I have a different take! What's the point of a test that nobody ever gets a perfect score? I guarantee you that I can design a test that nobody ever aces, but it also wouldn't be worth anything. I think there needs to be a middle ground between overtesting, teaching to the test, and tests being the be all and end all of education, and the loosey goosey approach one often encounters in the US (most commonly among leftists) that thinks all testing is bad and racist and invalid and hurts kids.
Another thing to look at is the competitions. You can likely remember your high school's football team name, but you probably have never heard about your school's math olympiad teams. Schools in the US spend a lot of money on stadiums and gyms, but hardly any on academic competitions. It's the opposite in China and Russia. Nobody cares about the athletic performance, but schools actively compete academically with each other.
You are probably assuming the wrong things given the demographics of Slashdot and those few of us who have hung on for decades at this point! I was not on the math team, but I had friends who were. I participated in both Latin and Computer Science competitions (and marching band). Our football team sucked (I know this from marching band). But yeah, I'm sure a huge amount of money was spent on the gym and fields and athletics, far beyond what was spent on supporting the best academic achievers.
You will get NO argument from me that America's obsession with sports, from the cradle to the grave, is hugely detrimental to our society and culture.
I hope that the current mess with NIL, paying college athletes (I will NOT call them "student athletes" -- what a joke) forces some or many schools to back off on their sports expenditures and focuses, but I'm not holding my breath.
It's mostly an artifact of the way the Science proficiency is tested, the questions are mostly the logic-type deduction questions and require little if any specific knowledge. If you look at physics in particular, the US is far behind China.
Hey, I asked you your metric, I wasn't planning on nitpicking it!
China is not a member of the OECD, but they did unofficial scoring for the Beijing-Shanghai area, and they came out in the top 3 countries.
Sure, just like micro-regions, individual demographic groups in the US, etc., score higher.
IMHO, US public education is amongst the very best in the world at the high end and pretty bad at the low end. The real confounding factor is that demographics are hard to escape.
I agree PISA is a reasonable standard.
So, in the context of STEM that you raised, the US scored 14 points above average, #16 in Science placement. That seems strong to me.
Math is slightly below average (-4 points), number 34. Weak.
Reading, US placed #9, seems strong again.
You mentioned immigrants being the majority of STEM students. I don't know if that is true, but, using the metric you picked of PISA scores, some of the countries that send the most immigrants to the US in STEM
The chart at the bottom of the Wikipedia page that includes 2015 US State results and racial breakdowns for the Mathematics portion for the US over multiple years is fascinating, and I think, should make an impact on your thinking.
(For instance, in the 2018 math results, Asian students in the US scored 539, whites scored 503, and the US average was 478. That puts US Asian students between Hong Kong and Taiwan in position #5 and white students in between Seden and Finland at #20. Black students in the US scored 419, the level of Thailand and Uruguay, around the upper 50s in rank. Kind of changes things a bit?)
What are you smoking? The US K-12 is the reason immigrants are now the majority of STEM students in the US universities. It's a disgrace.
What metric would you use to compare K-12 public education systems around the world?
The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it. -- Franklin P. Jones
