I heard a great talk by Malcom Gladwell this morning on the reason that Asians so out-perform Americans in math. Gladwell ties it to generations of rice farming and the WORK of farming in China.
When it comes to modern day and math performance the approach in the communities if radically different. Asian views a tough math problem as totally doable with work. Americans view that same problem and think 'ah, I am not good at math'. The battle between discipline of work versus myth of talent. I was taken enough I picked up two Gladwell books from the library. Here is piece on Capitalization athletics in America, our Capitalization rate turns out to be 16%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcMKLwVlpJk