
These problems were designed to prevent Jewish people from passing (2011) - apsec112
https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
======
aluminussoma
An alternate title would be: Jewish students were given more difficult math
problems than their Russian non-Jewish counterparts

Otherwise, the title implicitly implies that Jewish and non-Jewish students
received the same questions. That would be interesting!

~~~
cdoxsey
An example of such a test, taken from the Old Testament, is a shibboleth. From
the book of Judges:

Jephthah captured the shallow crossings of the Jordan River, and whenever a
fugitive from Ephraim tried to go back across, the men of Gilead would
challenge him. “Are you a member of the tribe of Ephraim?” they would ask. If
the man said, “No, I’m not,” they would tell him to say “Shibboleth.” If he
was from Ephraim, he would say “Sibboleth,” because people from Ephraim cannot
pronounce the word correctly. Then they would take him and kill him at the
shallow crossings of the Jordan. In all, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed at
that time.

~~~
knodi123
"In all, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed at that time."

Reminds me of the old joke which I can't remember enough details of to
preserve the humor, where a dumb FBI agent is given the task of hunting
communists, and his boss gives him a test which he humorously misunderstands,
and at the end of the week he proudly reports "I've already killed several
thousand communists sir. And you sent me here just in time, the communists
were really entrenched, I haven't found a single loyal american." Sorry I
botched it.

But anyway, this is a fascinating archaeological record of a classic bias,
where you assume your test was 100% accurate because the opposite would be
horrifying...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Like why the death penalty in the USA has never been applied to someone who
didn't deserve it: because the alternative would be horrifying.

------
aluminussoma
This situation slightly reminds me of the interview process at some tech
companies. Over the past year, I have interviewed on-site at 10 different
companies. Two of those companies had one interview where the questions were
extremely difficult and uncommon. When I told my friends those questions, many
also thought the questions were bad interview questions.

It is important in any selection mechanism, like interviews, that we have a
fair and consistent method of selecting applicants. Yet the questions need to
be varied enough so that candidates cannot cheat by hearing the questions
ahead of time.

~~~
gaius
_This situation slightly reminds me of the interview process at some tech
companies._

This is _exactly_ the same as the whiteboarding algorithms questions. They all
have a simple answer which is obvious if you have been recently cramming for
your CS finals. But you are unlikely to remember them in sufficient detail if
you are over a certain age, because no real actual working programmer needs to
know that stuff by heart, it's either been abstracted into libraries or you
just reach for a book when you need one. A perfectly plausible way to do
ageism, right under the noses of any regulators.

~~~
aluminussoma
I actually would not agree. There is a common set of knowledge that one is
expected to know, even if it isn't actively used daily. During the interview
process, it was clear that many of the companies asked similar questions. It
was possible to prepare for.

However, the two companies I referenced asked questions that were close to
impossible to prepare for. These were also not whiteboarding questions (both
did have separate whiteboarding sessions which were fair)

~~~
sillysaurus3
What were the impossible questions? (You're not really expected to keep them
secret, so it's fine to list them.)

To your point, it's strange that there's a common set of knowledge we're
expected to know which we don't use, ever. Not just "in 99% of cases," but
literally ever: If it ever comes up in the field, you can look up what you
need to know in a few minutes.

Few would think that's a sensible way to hire someone, so I've spent a long
time wondering why this is the case. I think it's because the hiring process
implicitly selects for whoever makes it through. Meaning, if someone is giving
you a test, they're biased into thinking it's a good test: After all, they
passed it. That's why they're in a position to give it to you.

So it almost doesn't matter whether it's a good test or a bad test. Just that
it's a test that the interviewer happens to like. There's enough talent
floating around that people are willing to do whatever strange rituals you
demand they do, regardless of whether it's efficient for them to know that
knowledge. Since it's ambiguous whether the knowledge actually helps anyone,
you get the present situation.

------
smm2000
Pretty much exactly the same thing happens with Asian students in US
universities today - admission standards vary widely by ethnicity/race. Jews
were 2% of population but 10-20%+ of university students. Reverse
discrimination was a thing then and is a thing now.

~~~
zingmars
>reverse discrimination

No such thing. Discrimination is discrimination, no matter which way it's
applied. I wish people stopped saying "reverse (discrimination|racism)"
whatever as if these words meant discrimination against specific groups, but
not others.

~~~
akira2501
I think it's meant to imply the reasoning behind it. "Standard discrimination"
is done out of fear or hatred, and "reverse discrimination" is done out of
ignorance and a misguided desire to "help."

------
akras14
My dad was a mechanical engineer in USSR who got his education in late 70s.
The discrimination was worse in some areas. Moscow - forget about it. My dad
got his degree in Minsk, and had many jews from other "states" move there just
so they can get into college.

That is why there are somany known Soviet mathematicians with Jewish names.
They still had paths to persue higher education, just not in Moscow and other
desirable areas.

------
ll931110
For those who are interested, Edward Frenkel's book "Love and Math" chronicles
his personal experience of taking such a test, and being denied entrance to
Moscow State University despite superb performance in the exam. (He later got
Math PhD in Harvard at age 23 and became a professor at UC Berkeley)

~~~
stablemap
Some of his story is in this article from the _Notices_.

[http://www.ams.org/notices/199910/fea-
saul.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/199910/fea-saul.pdf)

------
eighthnate
Reminds me of the white australia policy. You were given tests in european
languages that the immigration officer chose. It was primarily meant to keep
out the chinese and japanese, but also used to keep out southern/eastern
europeans and of course jews.

A famous example was of Egon Kisch who was fluent in many european languages
and kept passing the dictation tests in many european language. So they
finally gave him a test in scottish gaelic and he failed. He was able to sue
the government and win the right to stay in australia eventually.

"Jewish political activist Egon Kisch from Czechoslovakia, who was exiled from
Germany for opposing Nazism, arrived in Australia in 1934. The Government of
Joseph Lyons went to extraordinary lengths to exclude Kisch, including using
the dictation test. Kisch was fluent in a number of European languages, and
after completing passages in several languages, he finally failed when he was
tested in Scottish Gaelic."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Restriction_Act_19...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Restriction_Act_1901)

------
kelukelugames
I grew up in the 90s and wondered why every single Russian person I knew was
Jewish. The wikipedia link is interesting. [1]

One non-Jewish person claimed there was no anti-Semitism. Everyone wanted to
escape the Soviet Union and people just resented Russian jews because it was
easier for them to leave. So I thought maybe anti-Semitism is so engrained
that they didn't even notice it. Kind of like how some white Americans don't
believe racism exists.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia)

~~~
player2121
It depends on what part of the Soviet Union he was from. If he was from the
place with low Jewish population then what he said is actually true.

I am originally from central Russia and I've learned about anti-Semitism in
Soviet Union only after moving to US. Yap, never heard or witnessed anything
like that while living there.

Another interesting thing is that several of my Jewish friends told me that
their parents asked them to lie about anti-Semitism when they were interviewed
at the US embassy in Moscow in the late 90s.

------
seibelj
Also worth looking at are literacy tests for voting rights given to African
Americans in the Jim Crow-era southern United States.

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_right...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html)

~~~
jfaucett
The reasons for and way in which they administered that are appaling. Still it
made me think doing this the other way around would be interesting: would
making would be politicians pass some form of unbiased well-designed test on
the constitution, political system, financial principles, ethics, etc. have a
positive effect on their performance? My guess is probably not but I do wonder
what you could do if you let anything go.

~~~
sampo
> would making would be politicians pass some form of unbiased well-designed
> test on the constitution, political system, financial principles, ethics,
> etc. have a positive effect on their performance?

Who would be the authority that either makes these test questions, or monitors
that they are unbiased?

------
forapurpose
It wasn't just the USSR, though AFAIK it was much worse there (and still is in
Russia and parts of E. Europe). In the U.S., I know a Jewish family that in
the 1950s changed their last name to something not associated with Jewish
people so that a child could get into college; there were quotas.

------
zitterbewegung
Makes you wonder what kind of similar things that are designed to prevent
access that we have from other groups in the past, present and future.

~~~
lithos
Probably all the typical bad programming interview questions. The ones that
target people who can set aside a month of no work, no family, and no 'other
responsibilities' to study tangentially related riddles and similar.

Culture fit probably. Though it'll just be replaced with something similar.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
I think you have to just assume that there is a lot of stupid in any system,
so it can't be _all_ of those questions.

The people out there who drive drunk or without insurance aren't doing it with
the intent of killing people or not having to pay for their damages: they're
doing it because they "didn't think about it".

Hanlon's razor tells us that a similar phenomenon is at play in many "bad
interview questions".

~~~
tptacek
Or, the emergent result of our hiring processes (alienating and near-untenable
interviews coupled with fast tracks for sponsored candidates) is that cultural
outsiders (women, people of color, older workers) are effectively locked out
of higher-status resume-building jobs, and when companies try to fix those
processes even a little, engineers are confronted with culturally unfamiliar
potential coworkers and experience the human default of hypervigilance in
unfamiliar social situations, which creates a false perception that reformed,
rationalized hiring processes are "lowering the bar" when in fact the opposite
would probably be happening, with a long term net result that nothing changes,
and our industry remains structurally biased against people who can't pass for
proto-Zuckerbergs.

~~~
eradicatethots
I call affirmative action policies lowering the bar. If you are intentionally
seeking people based on criteria like race or gender, then you are less likely
to find the best candidates, unless you believe those are relevant criteria.

~~~
sethev
What does intention have to do with it? Are you saying that if you
unintentionally seek people based on criteria like race or gender you're more
likely to find the best candidates? Affirmative action, as you call it, is an
intentional effort to overcome the sort of unintentional bias that tptacek
described.

By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is that
a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of people in
high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences based on race
and gender. Not sure if you intended that.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is
> that a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of
> people in high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences
> based on race and gender.

I think this is partly true. But then, a similar interpretation of "pro-
affirmative action" is that one believes that whatever bad thing happens to a
minority is never their fault.

I think both are only partly true.

The problem with affirmative action is that it (I don't know if it's always
the case, but it seems to be often so) specifically considers minority status.
It is obvious, I think, that this is not the kind of criteria a computer, say,
would consider if it were to look only for the most qualified applicants.

On the other hand, you or someone else in the thread made a good point: this
pro-minority bias can be seen as an effort to counter the systematic bias
against "outgroups".

The problem is that I don't think we know the effect size of each of those:
how strong is this systematic bias? In a protected status agnostic society,
would all professional fields perfectly mirror population rates?

I don't think so. We know there are metal disorders/illnesses that impact
cognitive functions (Down's syndrome) and obviously genetics is partly
responsible (do Down syndromers have similar rates of Down syndrome babies?).
Similarly, I don't think the success of Asians and Jews is due to some form of
societal bias in their favor.

In the end, the question is whether the anti-bias bias is correcting towards 0
or in the other direction (i.e.: protected status is very important, just the
other way).

I don't know what the answer to this one is.

------
linkmotif
Just sent this to my mom who’s told me how this happened to her.

> Wow wow wow. I knew I was not the only one, but it still hurts. I looked at
> some problems: the most horrific part was that the guy next to me was asked
> what is the tangent. He got 4(/5). I got 3.

------
thriftwy
What's the funniest here? Jews that were rejected from MSU went straight
across the street to Institute of Oil. And were promptly admitted. Guess it
helped them in post-Soviet times.

------
pvg
Previous discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=jewish%20problems&sort=byPopul...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=jewish%20problems&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
hahahaha23
Today, Asians are required to achieve higher grades to be accepted to
colleges. How is this different?

~~~
mikek
Asians are accepted to colleges. The point of these problems is to prevent any
undesirable groups from passing the exam ever.

------
k__
I was hoping for questions they couldn't answer right because of their
beliefs.

~~~
kirillkh
Most of the kids applying were atheists or agnostics. They were Jews by
ethnicity, not by religion.

~~~
k__
I thought every ethnicity had jews

~~~
kirillkh
This is a source of major confusion. Ultimately, it boils down to how one
identifies him- or herself or, alternatively, how one is identified by others.
Jews in USSR were officially considered an ethnicity like any other, based on
blood. The Judaism as a religion was suppressed under the Communist rule. But
even before that, there was a lot of assimilation and secularization going on.
Ultimately, in the 1970's there were very little Judaism practitioners left.

The word "Jew" ("Yevrey") in Russian usually refers to the ethnicity. They use
a different word ("Iudjey") when they want to describe someone as a Judaism
practitioner.

------
imogold
Unfortunately, these "ideas" for the problems are low quality. Problem 2: "use
derivatives". How the heck that helps if F does not have to be continuous, let
alone differentiable.

~~~
stablemap
It suggests that F is differentiable, and as soon as you form the difference
quotient you know everything. With the hint I think it’s a really cool
problem.

~~~
imogold
Certainly, but if the examiners would be accused of asking a too difficult
question, as the article alleged, this would be defended by showing a more
elementary approach. Or both of them, wouldn't hurt to have more ways of
solving it. Unless the Soviet science was banned from using reductio ad
absurdum proofs in some math version of Lysenkoism.

Out of curiosity, I've searched it and this article was posted to HN at least
four times. Opinions aside, turns out it was merely a footnote in the exam
pipeline
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761846)

------
dorfsmay
From the pdf we know these were still in use in 1975.

Anybody knows until when this went on?

~~~
betaby
Similar problems were given to everyone on the oral entrance exams in late
90s. They has nothing to do with ones ethnicity though and were given in case
if there was disagreement if contestant deserves "5" or should be given "4".
If problem(s) were solved "5" was given. (5 was max at that time)

------
dannylandau
Strange to hear, my father got into Michmat (Moscow State University Math
Department) in the 70's. In 80's we immigrated to Israel.

------
bitL
And now they are given to programmers at large companies during interviews...
We should revolt as well ;-)

------
erdbeerkuchen
What was the percentage of Jewish applicants passing these examinations
despite all these efforts?

~~~
dia80
I recall reading elsewhere it was zero, they simply weren't allowed to admit
Jewish students and these problems were just to try and cover up the
discrimination.

~~~
betaby
Not true at all. How that explain then world known physicists and
mathematicians from USSR with Jewish names?

~~~
lohankin
If not for this quota, you would have much greater number of "known physicists
and mathematicians from USSR with Jewish names" LOL In some places (Moscow
University math dep-t) the target was about 2%, but I heard some technical
schools didn't accept anyone (after Natan Scharansky affair. Long story...)

------
louprado
Jesus' full fish basket has a capacity of 0.1 cubic meters. Each fish in the
basket has a volume of 0.0008 cubic meters and a packing density of 1.25.
Jesus then distributes 33 fish. How many fish remain in Jesus' basket ?

Since the title of the post doesn't properly describe the article, this
comment feels appropriate albeit insensitive.

