Jewish Problems

Russian-style competition math has something of a sad history, see for example https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 (This is not an argument that whatever “Russian-style” math program espoused here is “bad,” it’s additional historical context that HNer’s may be interested in.)

America used to do that, but Jewish students started taking (and doing well on) the test, and later Black and Asian students had the audacity to be brilliant too. This led to America's "holistic" college admissions process. For what it's worth, the USA isn't unique in adapting admissions to reject an unwanted minority. The most interesting mechanism has to be Moscow State University's Jewish Problems: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

In a similar vein, linked are math questions Russian universities would give to Jewish students to filter them out in entrance exams. https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

> like we are stuck in a cargo-cult mentality where we are just doing things because that’s what the big companies do, and if it works for them it must be what we need to do. Absolutely. They do leet code -- we must as well. Google is laying people off -- so must we. Steve Jobs was an asshole, I also must be an asshole, that's how you grow a great company. > The question, which I’ve heard is a Facebook favorite, was “convert a decimal number to base negative 2”. Assuming I don't care as much about the the interview and am just practicing, I would have asked "so how often do you folks, convert numbers to base negative two?" > but fuck that question and just waiting for you to eventually arrive at the little trick to make it work. That sounds like a "coffin"-type problem as per https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556. You have to know the trick, or you might spin your wheels for 40 minutes.

One of my grandmothers, born about 100 years ago in Romania (she’s not with us anymore), told me many times she was denied from pursuing math education because of then Nazi policies of “numerus nulus” i.e. the exclusion of jews from public universities. There’s a fascinating wikipedia page on the topic of racial academic exclusions - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus And related to math exams, this paper of problems that looked easy but were quite difficult (and which were given to jews in the USSR) is also quite interesting — https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

I don't support the idea the guy was spouting, but there is an interesting article about "Jewish problems", which were questions asked to undesirable (including Jewish) candidates at universities in the Soviet Union (in this case Moscow State University after 6 days' war) - PDF warning: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556v2.pdf

I’m referring to the easy looking, tricky to solve problems. I’ve heard them referred to by that term because they have been used at Moscow University to discriminate against Jewish students but I don’t know if they have other names. There is some discussions and examples of such problems at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf and http://3038.org/press/shen.pdf.

Your theory has been seen before in other contexts - https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 The Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, the most prestigious mathematics school in Russia, was [around 1975] actively trying to keep Jewish students (and other “undesirables”) from enrolling in the department. One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral exam. I was told that these problems were carefully designed to have elementary solutions (so that the Department could avoid scandals) that were nearly impossible to find. Any student who failed to answer could easily be rejected, so this system was an effective method of controlling admissions.

Similarly, https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 - the "Jewish Problems" that were extra-hard maths questions used to find an excuse to prevent certain students from getting into university.

They used to present applying Jews with special problems: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 This practice was supposed to end with sovient union — but my school, which always had a fair share of jews that applied to math department in MSU, taught those in 00s, and athough discriminiation wasn't as blatant then, I'm not sure that it completely went away.

You can find here https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 infamous "Jewish Problems" that were given to select applicants during entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. They were designed to prevent Jews from getting a passing grade.

For more ridiculous math problems I want to submit: The Jewish Problems[0]. These were used when Jewish people were trying to get into grad school in Russia in the '70's. Basically designed so Jewish people wouldn't get in. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

Tanya Khovanova has a paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 with a list of some more of these problems with easy solutions that are hard to find. She calls them "Jewish Problems" because they were used by USSR universities to discriminate against Jewish applicants. The applicants would fail to solve them but the university would justifiably be able to claim they were easy.

There's lots of sneaky ways they tried to limit Jewish access to higher eduction in Russia. Jewish Problems, for example: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

This reminds me of Jewish Problems[0], designed to "prevent Jews and other undesirables from getting a passing grade" at the entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

I'm not sure if you are making an intentional reference to this or not, but it does make an interesting counter-point to the assertion that mathematics is a meritocracy: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 "This is a special collection of problems that were given to select applicants during oral entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. These problems were designed to prevent Jews and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals. This collection therefore has mathematical as well as historical value." (Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793 and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759642)

Regarding immigration: I don't know if there was much selection bias as we were in the immigration queue for 10 years before being selected. The Anti-Defamation League told Bill Clinton that the situation in Russia was getting worse (1996), and he increased the annual quota of Russian Jews allowed to enter the US. Regarding the second point: we have no more relatives in Russia, so the narrative is not meant to help anyone immigrate to the US. As far as the story goes that Russians were equally discriminated against, and it was a case of bribery, you can take a look at my comment below of more family examples. Or you take a look at this list of Math problems that were specifically given to Jews during their admission exams into Moscow State University: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 . Thanks to @Prognosticus for sending me the link!