Tuesday, April 29, 2008

China vs Philippines

I have observed in whatever little china I have seen as compared to the extensive exposure to Philippines, Chinese are pretty good with Math. At least in comparison to the Filipinos. The reason I do not compare this skill to India (the only other country I have been exposed to extensively) is cuz I don't see anything stereotypical on this in India.

Filipinos seem to be either really bad with Math or just plain dumbly process oriented. OK to cut my verbosity short with a straight forward example...

If you go to a shop/mall in Philippines and buy something that is lets say for PHP 50 and you give a PHP 100 bill to the cashier, the person on the cash counter will do a 100 - 50 on a calculator and return you PHP 50. Every single cash transaction anywhere in Philippines will produce such an observation with a 6 sigma like precision. This is almost the opposite in countries like Hong Kong and Macau (I have not been anywhere else in China!). Even if the transactions are kind of complicated (eg you give a HKD 100 bill for a purchase of HKD 36.5) as compared to the above one, you'll get your change back without a calculator coming into the picture.

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