Mathematics lends itself well to competition: it’s a subject where problems have inherently “correct” solutions. The International Mathematical Olympiad exists after all, and the US is at a respectable third place for the top 100 list of countries by overall medal count: China is first and Russia second. However, mathematicians are not in contention for the Nobel Prize–they have prizes of their own. Yet, physics and economics, fields founded on mathematical principles, are.
But never mind the Nobel prize, let’s get back to competition. The US is arguably the most competitive country in the world–think sports and Capitalism. The US dominates at the real Olympics. But it’s interesting that math is different. A common explanation is that the Chinese language is more amenable to competitive mathematics in that it can perform operations at a faster pace given the single-syllable pronunciations of numbers. As a bilingual individual, I can confirm that I would much rather do math in Chinese. It could also be that Chinese teams are just a bit smarter. After all, they are choosing from a much larger population: 1.4 billion. We know that high intelligence is rare biologically and so more people, more geniuses.
There is a worrisome trend that math scores have been declining across the board at US schools. Without math, American society would be overly dependent on language, and–if you follow this blog–you know how I feel about language (see Why prioritizing linguistic intelligence is inherently flawed and Language, the poor man’s music). Perhaps the solution to all this is a bit of healthy competition at the schools.
The Ivory Tower 
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