Proficiency in mathematics

India players barred from playing multiple U-19 World Cups
24 Jun, 2016
ESPNcricinfo staff
The BCCI has decided that players who have represented India in one Under-19 World Cup cannot take part in another edition of the tournament, even if they meet the age criteria to do so. The board approved this suggestion of its junior committee in the BCCI working committee meeting on Friday.

The working committee has also decided that players who enter the system at the Under-19 stage can play a maximum of two seasons of Under-19 cricket.

Though the BCCI did not specify the reasons behind the move, it can be seen as an attempt to crack down on overage players, which has been a thorny issue over a number of years in Indian cricket.

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India news August 15, 2015 Onus on states to curb age-fudging problem - AMOL KARHADKAR

The issue of age-fudging in Indian cricket is a persistent problem despite the BCCI trying various measures to prevent it. Players - in connivance with their coaches, parents and associations - getting their age reduced to play longer in age-group cricket is a malaise in Indian, as well as Asian, cricket.

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Shashank Kishore
Even seen a 17-year-old bowl fast or hit monstrous sixes and wondered if he was "at least 20-21"? If you felt the same watching Rasikh Salam, the Jammu & Kashmir fast bowler who played for Mumbai Indians in IPL 2019, your worst fears are true.

Documents have proved Rasikh is two years older than he claims to be. This became public after a BCCI investigation pointed to a mismatch between two "original birth certificates" obtained from different sources. There were also discrepancies between these and his school-leaving certificate.

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ESPNcricinfo staff
One of cricket's greatest mysteries has finally been solved...sort of.

Shahid Afridi, as many fans have long suspected, is not as young as official records have had it all these years. Afridi himself has made the revelation in his autobiography Game Changer released in India and Pakistan this week. In a chapter in which he describes his call-up to the senior Pakistan team in October 1996, Afridi writes that he was born in 1975. Though he doesn't give a month or day, that makes him, potentially, five years older than what he is: official records, including ESPNcricinfo's player profile pages record his date of birth as March 1, 1980.

Afridi debuted in an ODI tri-series tournament in Nairobi, and, most famously, hit a 37-ball hundred the first time he batted in international cricket. That record stood for over 17 years and was even more outrageous for the fact that it had been achieved by a 16-year-old. Except, now we know, he wasn't.

Yet Afridi only deepens the confusion in his book with the following line: "Also, for the record, I was just nineteen, and not sixteen like they claim. I was born in 1975. So, yes, the authorities stated my age incorrectly." If he was born in 1975, that would make him 20 or 21 at the time of the innings and not 19 as he writes.



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It's 40-plus years since I was a pupil in schools in Slough, but at the time everyone knew that this was the reason why some lads who were from the Indian subcontinent, or whose families came from there, were able to grasp mathematical concepts before the rest of us.

You just lost count of the times the exasperated headmaster would be forced to conduct yet another interrogation of some moustachioed third former: "Just what age are you? You've changed it again!"

That is interesting. I was at school in north west London in the 70s and 80s and I do recall some Asian boys developing facial hair very early.

It has never occurred to me that they might have been older than their peers.

Just to be clear. I'm definitely not claiming this is the reason behind every Asian exam success. Not by a long chalk.

But I feel it needs to be acknowledged that the attitude of some parents from an Asian background to education is a demand for exam success and for qualifications at whatever cost.

I can understand the attitude. The idea is that if their children have a maths A level certificate, or whatever, it makes them less vulnerable to discrimination when applying for a job.

Yes, the parents' demand for exam success is part of what I was alluding to in qu 1 of my OP but I just assumed that this was a case of pushing their children hard.

I think it would be quite difficult lie about a child's age unless the birth was registered overseas.

On the wider subject, I sometimes wonder whether there is such a thing as a "natural" grasp of the subject.

I remember the first time we were confronted with simultaneous equations at school. I found myself coming up with the answers for x and y within seconds of the equations being chalked up on the blackboard, but not through any kind of Rain Man-style intuition. I was simply enjoying the challenge of the puzzle, and making the effort to go through the possible combinations in my head to find the common factor, then do the simple subtraction to find the answer. Normal, painstaking work, in other words, but done very quickly, because I liked the smug feeling that came from cracking it before everyone else.

I've heard that the reason Chinese kids for example are good at Maths lies with how numbers are represented in their language,how this is explained and seen as relevant to non mandarin speakers I don't know might take a google search to find out.

I was going greyhound racing with Dad aged 5 onwards and subsequently I could work out bets in my head from a very young age. I actually got 100% in my 'O'level mock exam and got A grade in the real one and at 'A'level and it was all down to my background of dealing with numbers at various dog tracks!

anything is possible with hard work : )

The Chinese have a phrase for it ‘ chiku’  or eating bitter ....if there is a goal worth achieving then day to day life must be unpleasant for a spell

But then again this doesn’t explain slippys or screenings ability which seened to come naturally

* sfbtw

Slippy - did you go to uni?

Mine were similar to Slippy's most kids are like sponges at anything when you tie in an interest in our cases betting on races odds and so on,had a mate who was nothing special at any subject but loved cars,trucks etc. was fixing cars from Primary school age and worked for Stagecoach fixing buses from 16.

I can still recall one of my earliest  memories at school starting to learn maths ,and having to find a way to imagine the numbers in my head
the number 5 became not a letter but 5 dots that I would see in my mind and 7 etc

It was this that got me started  , it was difficult before that,
I still recall where I was sitting in the classroom ( only 4 or 5 ) and first trying this as a way to change the letter 5 to a number 5

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9422-mother-tongue-may-determine-maths-skills/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-1410304008

That little trick I figured out for myself to get started and to be able to imagine numbers at that age is more vivid than when I was learning to read
I can still see myself sitting there that day at 4 years of age and  realising ah , this will work :)

What is a cosine? I haven't got a clue. (Something to do with trigonometry?)

Quadratic equations?

Calculus? Something about working out the rate of change or slope of a curve?

No I didn't go to uni i-a-w-n. I didn't want to as I didn't really see the point and I went straight to work for my Dad who was a property developer in London and I was the buyer and did payroll for him for 10 years before I got married and moved away.

I studied all of those aspects of maths, btw. I just can't remember anything about them.

Slippy - I just wondered because an A grade in A-Level maths together with a good degree in something like maths or economics is often a route into a highly-paid job in banking or finance but I guess you did ok in any case.

By asian I presume the OP means chinese/far eastern.

Actually, I meant people of Indian heritage.

...although the same could be said, in my experience, about kids of Chinese origin but there were very few at my school. Even fewer from other far eastern and middle-eastern countries.

There was one black kid at my school but he left after a year.  No Asians or anyone else.

A consequence of which is that there was no racial bullying at my school.

Went to grammar school 1956 - 1962,never saw a pupil of 'foreign origin'.A tad different now!

One  black lad -cool dude one hAlf fast grammar school 75/82
Half ast nickname Rusty

people with an aptitude for numbers may well be attracted to gambling not just other way round.

maybe young slippy had an apptitude that found an outlet


i too could work out my dads, and grand dads bets from a very early age, and helped
work out perms for their pools bets....

The football pools were a terrific education, especially having a foreign father who never really understood them. It meant I had total responsibility from the age of six for doing the pools, as well as sorting out his bets on the racing. The arrival of the new booklet of plans and perms from the pools companies at the start of the season were as big a highlight of the holidays as the Beano Summer Special for me.

I can still remember the thrill I got when I realized the reason there were 165 lines in an 8 from 11: 11x10x9x8x7x6x5x4 divided by 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 equals 165. And you could reduce that to 11x10x9 divided by 3x2x1 ! Brilliant. I must have been about seven at the time.

I think the biggest moment was when it dawned on me what that line of small print meant which they used to publish at the bottom of the dividends in the Thursday papers:

Expenses and commission 59.6%, or whatever.

That really was a light-bulb moment.

my pools collector really pushed spot the ball


cos he was pocketing the lot

loved 10 homes

at the growlers

trap 1
field
field

20 bets had some decent t/cast's

Yeah. I wonder how many pools collectors went to their graves with almost a sense of relief: "Now it was all over, and I got away with it." The original picking-up-pennies-in-front-of-a-steamroller.

They didn't always get away with it, mind you:

Student jailed for cheating pools syndicate
Friday 15 September 1995 00:02

Click to follow
The Independent
A man who cheated five members of a football pools syndicate out of a pounds 2.3m fortune has been jailed for 30 months.

Cameron Baxter, 27, pocketed the pounds 5 stake money he had collected from five Scottish Power workers instead of handing it over to Littlewoods. The syndicate had the only winning line that week and would have won a jackpot of more than pounds 2.3m.

When Baxter, from Stirling, appeared for sentence yesterday at the High Court in Glasgow, Lord Ross, the Lord Justice Clerk, told him: "This is in many ways a tragic case not only for you and your family but for those affected by your crime. However, it does appear to me that it was a mean offence which involved a breach of trust."

Lord Ross said the amount of money which Baxter took had not been large, but the consequences for the victims were in some ways "catastrophic". He had "deprived them of winning a considerable sum of money".


However, Lord Ross accepted that there were mitigating factors. The court had heard that Baxter, a mature student at Stirling University, depended during the summer holidays last year on the pounds 35 a week he made as a pools collector.

He had got into financial difficulties after his car was stolen and had a couple of accidents with his family's car.

Baxter admitted forming a fraudulent scheme to obtain football pools stake money and to appropriate it to his own use when he appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh three weeks ago; that, while acting as a pools collector between 24 July and 10 September last year, he pretended to various people in Stirling that he would forward pools coupons and stake money on their behalf, and that he induced them to hand over completed coupons and stake money totalling pounds 216, embezzling the cash and failing to deliver the stakes and coupons to Littlewoods.

The five-man syndicate which missed out on the jackpot yesterday launched a court action to sue Littlewoods for the pounds 2.3m they would have won. Gordon Turner, John Ferguson, Donald McVean, Richard Syme and Owen Kelly, from Stirling, have raised pounds 30,000 to fund a private action, which was launched at the Court of Session in Edinburgh after Baxter was sentenced.

Cameron Fyfe, lawyer for the syndicate, said his clients believed Baxter was an agent of the pools company therefore it was liable for his actions.

However, Littlewoods has maintained previously that it did not employ collectors, but that they were agents of the clients.

It's probably still widespread today with workplace lottery syndicates.

I wonder if they have a plan to deal with a small to medium-sized win?

As with everything in life there will be a natural aptitude then work on top of it to improve it.

Final result = Base value + (Natural Ability * Effort).

Someone average at maths or piano who puts the hours in will be better than someone with more talent who plays fornite and smokes weed.

I think there is a genetic thing. Moreso from direct lineage rather than continent or country. I think some parents are naturally better at maths, science, languages, sport etc.

Can't be a coincidence that so many sportsmen's kids go on to play sports at a very good level, even if they don't become top pros.


Me and the wife were both naturally good at languages at school though I'm not sure of the importance of them nowadays. Both kids are at the top of their (still junior school) classes for French and Spanish, no doubt helped by half of the household conversations being held in the pretty similar Italian.

Maths and science is where it's at so they're always getting microscopes or chemistry sets in their presents. Trying to win the wife round to the idea of teaching them how to play poker. Really think it'll just jumpstart their maths learning by a few years but you get the old "an 8 year old shouldn't be playing poker for money" crap from the daft bat.

How about Darts then :P

maths lesson =keep doing the same thing and you will keep getting the same result.

maths lesson number2= 7 uneven numbers will never total 30.

maths lesson number three.3.9 on the off is the price of the most winning favourites on betfair since day1.

As @Just Checking says, hard work is an important part of the equation, allied to natural talent. One key factor alluded to by many forumites is an interesting application. It is that interest that motivates the child to put in the hours of practice, because it is play rather than work.

Talent without application is a fragile combination. I myself got an A at A-level chemistry without having taken a single note in the sixth form, and having handed back the text books on the first day. It meant I arrived at university not appreciating the need actually to study the subject, let alone having the slightest idea how one might set about it.

There is perhaps another factor relevant to the children of immigrants. Their families might well have had latent talents in music or mathematics but with no outlet, and forced to work 18 hours a day in a sweatshop or on a tea plantation, you'd never know, but once their children are set free in this country, the sky is the limit. For native families, this is less likely now but may have been the case up to the war years, when the class you were born into pretty much settled your future. Probably in the 50s and 60s there was a similar flowering of talent from the old white working class.

Indeed there was , it was most noticeably seen in the incredible explosion of musical talent in Britain , and of course the US in rock music
suddenly ordinary everyday young people discovered they could write beautiful songs , how startling it must have been to Jagger  and Richards and many others to discover this

a lot of people on this thread misunderstanding what maths actually is  . 

Maths isn't being able to work mentally with numbers  ,percentages etc   ...that's mental arithmetic ,  and a lot of maths teachers aren't that great at M/A ,probably deliberately as they see it as beneath them    ...in the same way that a Dentist would pass off some jobs to his hygenist/assist etc and likewise, a maths teacher will use a calculator every time .

Those (including myself ,who are extremely good with MA /percentages /mental calculations with ratios etc were very average at school Maths in the later years  ...i got a very poor grade O level and only got in the O level sets becacause of number based  tests at 11 ...i must've been  bottom of that  class for sure  ...however , in the mental tests or SATS equivalent , i came near top every time . 

My boy is into academic maths and takes the mick out of me as i don't fully understand calculus ,but he doesn't  do mental arithemental  ...he  humourously refers to it as  'stage 1 maths'

Key stage 1 *

I think schools should make a point of making sure every person  can do 'simple' maths to a high standard ,it's simply practice  ,practice ,practice  ....it comes in so useful

being able to remember times tables has been useful in life, i'm sure i'd get by without it
but certainly saves a bit of time, now and again.

fractions as well...were great fun, and is handy for working out acca returns, decimal calculations
tend to need the calculator...

Decimalization was funny. I was nine at the time, and for about a fortnight my mother had to wait until school was finished, on account of me being needed to explain what everything cost.

"Thirteen and a half pee?! What's that, for gawd's sake?"

"About two and sevenpence halfpenny."

"How much?! That used to be half a crown in real money!"

Which only goes to show what I've always said: a system based on divisions into two, three and four, and on dozens, is more practical, logical and easier to understand.

I blame the bloody French.

You can definitely have a natural flair for numbers. I know I did growing up. The thing is, as it's normal to you, at the time you think everyone else sees it (or should see it) the same. But having a brain dominated by the need for logic can serve as an affliction too, especially in later life!

90% down to pushy parents... 100% natural ability would be a given... (to explain the Asian kid) imo...

Also if youre not naturally proficient at Maths, you have no business here... imo.

Two different things, work ethic initially comes from the culture. Not just from parents but from peers as well. Not all kids walk into the first proper maths classroom with equal ability, that's a given. There may be a genetic influence, but not race per se, imo.

Apparently Jews have this genetic influence... Look at Rachel Riley..

here is a good one for you all,if a guy backs six 1/2 shots with you at level stakes(same amount each time) he has to get 5 winners to show a profit.now thats gambling proficiency if you are the layer.
CHARGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You HAVE to have the learning capability to begin with as my mother says 'you can't put something there that isn't'.
There is a good US documentary on Eugenics that I watched a while ago which explains the hows and whys on a persons' genetic abilty to learn in the first place and the other factors for learning fall into line behind this one.

Jul 28, 2019 -- 7:16PM, Emitdeb wrote:

Apparently Jews have this genetic influence... Look at Rachel Riley..

it's all that counting money

ooohhh... You had to take it that step too far....

Digression: I read a book about growing up in the East End in the 1920s and 30s.  There was a Jewish population there and they couldn't do any form of work on Saturdays. Nothing at all.  Local boys used to go to their homes on a Saturday and set up their fire for them.  They'd be paid, but the money was already laid out on the table as the Jews couldn't even touch money on the Sabbath.

My first property was a flat in an almost total jewish ultra orthodox block of flats.  Indeed they had to translate for me at leaseholders meetings. The woman upstairs often came down for us to open a letter etc on Saturdays.  Although I think it was that she was smitten by my boyfriend at the time.  I always used to feel sorry for her as she was only young but already had children and had to wear a wig outside her home. It was probably an arranged marriage.

One strange thing though was that the kray twins had a flat at some time in the block.  There is a famous picture of them standing outside.  I have often wondered what the hasidic jews made of him!

As regards to maths proficiency, I had an A grade in my maths O level and I have an A level in Pure Maths and an A level in Applied Maths so not only boys are good at maths

It seems that  lot of us are good at maths and gamble as well.  Maybe people don't gamble because they don't understand odds and figures?

weren't the Krays jewish?

It seems that  lot of us are good at maths and gamble as well.  Maybe people don't gamble because they don't understand odds and figures?

Good point think there's something in it understanding chance relative to potential financial gain in any given circumstance.

The Krays had Jewish heritage.

Annie - there were plenty of girls in my O and A level maths classes but I'm talking about the stand-out whiz kids.

Interesting that people are talking about getting A Grades at O Level. When I did mine they were graded 1 to 6. So shows the age of some of us.

I firmly found my level at Maths at Uni year 2. I was always confident up until then but really struggled to keep up (I was doing Applied Science but the classes were mixed with Maths undergraduates). Solving differential equations was ok but formulating them was a black art to me. I ditched any further Maths modules after year 2. Anybody with a degree in Maths I respect.

Most of what I have read about them say they were of jewish heritage, but I do not remember reading anything saying they were practising jews.

No, I don't think they followed the religion but Ronnie Kray talked about being very proud of his Jewish heritage in a newspaper interview.


Anybody with a degree in Maths I respect.

Same here.

They caused the crash with their stupid theories , they were gambling with the wrong dice

I think ability in Maths could be attributed to genes (from parents/grandparents) and environment (background/profession) eg the Chinese and Persian students were extremely good some even gifted as their parents/ancestors despite lacking in education were business people or trader/merchants.

At college I can still remember the occasions where a couple of Chinese pupils from Hong Kong who helped a senior A-Level teacher to solve complicated questions in Further Maths. And, at Uni a Persian (Iranian now) student was excellent at both Pure and Further Maths; the Asians ie South Asians are good with numbers, but not always Maths eg they could do Times Tables easily and remember numbers, but solving tricky Maths questions could still be a challenge; they are also good with spelling which is more of a memory thing, I believe.

If one understands numbers and given knowledge of formulae one can solve any equation, but not merely remembering and memorising numbers.

The banks and the insurance companies and investment companies in Wall Street and London started to hire guys with phds in maths , in engineering computer science running programs for risk management

But what happens in real life has little connection with what happens in an exam , that’s the problem and that’s why they fked up

Their minds are closed

There is a difference between being able to think and being able to compute
That’s why we had the banking crash

The Boeing max crash ? all the technical software , they could compute
But they couldn’t think ...disaster

In my late 40s I decided to study maths . I had forgotten anything learnt in school on the subject . After 20 years of teaching myself I stopped , for , like Charlie above , I knew I wasn't going to get any further . No amount of hard work will get you to an advanced level if you lack the necessary intelligence . I am sure I could have passed exams at A level and above but I really didn't feel the subject at that level .

As for the crash that was easy to see coming , all you needed was a little common sense but even after I explained it to people they refused to believe that the banks were insecure .

What did you study dunlaying? I did this course (among other OU courses) in my late 30's .http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/details/m248?orig=q36&setAcc=true Quiz to check potential students can cope with the course .http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/Courses/media/Courses/Qualification/Infographics/M248_self-assessed-quiz.pdf

I found that when I returned to some study as an adult it wasn't hard to learn the material, but it was hard to remember it.

The brain is divided into two half's.
left side of brain control's right side of body and vice versa.
numbers are controlled in an area called front -parietal -cortex.
this piece of brain runs from the top of the head to just above the ear.
small numbers are processed in the right side while big numbers are processed in the left.
now depending how you view numbers as big or small ,you will be using different sides of the brain.
so if you have a large betits the left side you use,
if you have a small betits the right side you use.
so there is a lot to be said for thinking big,thats if the left side of the brain is best at selecting winners.

2+2 =5

only a few of us get this

Jul 29, 2019 -- 7:44PM, dunlaying wrote:

In my late 40s I decided to study maths . I had forgotten anything learnt in school on the subject . After 20 years of teaching myself I stopped , for , like Charlie above , I knew I wasn't going to get any further . No amount of hard work will get you to an advanced level if you lack the necessary intelligence . I am sure I could have passed exams at A level and above but I really didn't feel the subject at that level .

dunlaying and Cider
Interesting that you took up maths after as break, I was 31 when I started my degree. I don't think it's a lack of intelligence that is the problem but a lack of continuity with a subject. Maths is a discipline that very much builds on your prior knowledge and experience. By having a break I feel you lose the depth of experience necessary to be good at it.

It used be said that mathematicians peaked in their 20's - and many did outstanding work at this age - but maybe it's no longer true:

But it’s becoming less and less true that mathematicians do their best work when they’re young. The problem is that it now takes longer and longer for mathematicians to learn enough about their field to reach the important problems.
https://legendofpi.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/do-mathematicians-peak-in-their-late-20s/


But I don't think there are many good mathematicians who started the subject at more advanced ages.