> the story from France of the second-grader who, asked what 2x3 equals, replied "3x2", knowing only that multiplication was commutative.
This is a classic joke making fun of the issues with French education based on the Bourbaki [1] school of mathematics, see [2] for more discussion. Different issues than the USA, but also bad in my opinion.
This is a classic joke making fun of the issues with French education based on the Bourbaki [1] school of mathematics, see [2] for more discussion. Different issues than the USA, but also bad in my opinion.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230315185224/https://www.uni-m...