TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
I wish people would read past posts and I quote again the article I quoted at the top.
China Takes home World Sniper Cup. 2011
- Thread starter TerraN_EmpirE
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
When you actually stop to think about the required core skills of good snipers, you would see that that list of requirements actually favours the Chinese in many ways.
When you are going past 600-800m (depending on the weapon), sniping becomes a math problem. Calculating bullet drop, windage, time to target etc comes down to remembering tables. Experience will help someone to be able to guess it, but that is far less reliable than knowing the exact, scientifically tested and proven numbers.
It is not uncommon for even top snipers to whip out their ballistic tables to consult when taking a really long shot when they have time.
Considering all Chinese middle school kids learn the Pi times table, I would almost expect their snipers to have all the ballistic tables committed to heart.
That means in the time pressured environment of these sniping competitions, the Chinese snipers would be aiming their shots based on actual ballistic table figures, whereas the vast majority of others will be going by experience of 'feeling'. Little wonder who would have the upper hand in such circumstances.
The Chinese snipers are also far more dedicated in developing their 'hard skills'. Part of their standard sniper training is for their snipers to assume sniping positions, and hold it steady enough that an empty shell casing placed on the tip of the barrel of the sniper rifle will not drop off for 'half a day' (although that also means 'ages' colloquially in Chinese, so might not be meant to be taken literally, but the minimum amount of time possible is 30 minutes, but probably over an hour).
That is just standard training for the guys using Type 88s, what many in the west insist on calling DSM instead of 'snipers'.
I think the main reason the PLA snipers 'lagged by 20 years' when they first entered the competition was because up to that point the PLA paid little attention to sniping beyond 600-800m. Possibly because up until recently, their only sniper weapons were SDVs and Type 88s that lacked the range and accuracy to be useful beyond those ranges.
But once they woke up to the advantages of being able to snipe up to 2km, and started to invest in R&D and purchases of true sniper class weapons as well as doing research on long range sniping, is it any wonder they would do well when they brought the work ethic and dedication that they used in training with the Type 88 to training with R700 and newer indigenous Chinese sniper rifles?
When you are going past 600-800m (depending on the weapon), sniping becomes a math problem. Calculating bullet drop, windage, time to target etc comes down to remembering tables. Experience will help someone to be able to guess it, but that is far less reliable than knowing the exact, scientifically tested and proven numbers.
It is not uncommon for even top snipers to whip out their ballistic tables to consult when taking a really long shot when they have time.
Considering all Chinese middle school kids learn the Pi times table, I would almost expect their snipers to have all the ballistic tables committed to heart.
That means in the time pressured environment of these sniping competitions, the Chinese snipers would be aiming their shots based on actual ballistic table figures, whereas the vast majority of others will be going by experience of 'feeling'. Little wonder who would have the upper hand in such circumstances.
The Chinese snipers are also far more dedicated in developing their 'hard skills'. Part of their standard sniper training is for their snipers to assume sniping positions, and hold it steady enough that an empty shell casing placed on the tip of the barrel of the sniper rifle will not drop off for 'half a day' (although that also means 'ages' colloquially in Chinese, so might not be meant to be taken literally, but the minimum amount of time possible is 30 minutes, but probably over an hour).
That is just standard training for the guys using Type 88s, what many in the west insist on calling DSM instead of 'snipers'.
I think the main reason the PLA snipers 'lagged by 20 years' when they first entered the competition was because up to that point the PLA paid little attention to sniping beyond 600-800m. Possibly because up until recently, their only sniper weapons were SDVs and Type 88s that lacked the range and accuracy to be useful beyond those ranges.
But once they woke up to the advantages of being able to snipe up to 2km, and started to invest in R&D and purchases of true sniper class weapons as well as doing research on long range sniping, is it any wonder they would do well when they brought the work ethic and dedication that they used in training with the Type 88 to training with R700 and newer indigenous Chinese sniper rifles?
Agreed. Back in the 1960s and 70s one of the requirements for Chinese artillerymen was the ability to compute coordinates using mental arithmetic.
solarz
Brigadier
Well-documented, or more more hyped? Can you point to any statistics from well-known sources that compare cheating in academic institutions between Chinese and Western university students?
vesicles
Colonel
I don't think it's hype at all. I finished junior high in China and went to high school and beyond in the States. So I have first-hand experience on this issue from both sides. While I was in junior high in Beijing, students in my class cheated on a regular basis. By that, I mean I would either overhear someone cheating or personally see someone cheating on every test. And I didn't go to some crappy junior high. I was in one of the key junior high schools in Beijing. When I came to the States, teachers were not even in the classroom during tests and no one, I mean no one, would cheat. In college, we regularly had close-book time-limited take-home exams, where we had to take the test at home without looking at books and had to finish within a time limit. everyone that I know did these tests without cheating. I know this because many people complained about not being able to memorize equations and not being able to finish on time. As you can imagine, you can simply open your text book and get a glance at the equation and no one would know since you are doing this at home. Yet no one did that. they either left it blank or guessed. I was a teaching assistant for 3 years when I was in graduate school. One of my main tasks was to grade tests. When grading a take-home test, I noticed that many students turned in their tests with all the correct calculations but no final answer. It was apparent that time expired before they could write down the final answer on the sheet. Imagine you are sitting at home by yourself taking this test. It is hard to imagine someone would voluntarily put down their pen when time expires when there's no one to enforce the time limit and all they had to do was to write down the final answer which would take at most 2-3 seconds. Yet, most of them chose to honor the integrity of the test system. I know this because I have personally taken plenty of this kind of tests and have graded many of these tests as a TA.
Most of my Chinese friends who went to college in China and were in the States for graduate school were shocked when told of this kind of take-home exams and could not believe we had something like this. they told me this kind of system would never work in China since everyone would cheat. they told me that, even with the most strict proctoring, most of the college students in Chinese universities do some type of cheating. And this is only the hard-core classroom tests. If it is some kind of projects/essays, the cheating would be even more wide-spread.
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solarz
Brigadier
There are a lot of variety among different schools both in US and in China. Some schools have more incidences of cheating, while others have less. The very fact that your school has take-home exams like you described shows that cheating is not a big concern at your school.
I've been in the Canadian education system from grade 2 to university, and in the few cases where we've had take-home exams, it was pretty much acknowledged as an open-book exam.
I remember one incident in high school. A classmate asked if he could see my assignment because he hadn't finished his yet. Thinking that he just wanted to know how to do the assignment, I lent it to him. Imagine my surprise when my teacher gave me a zero for plagiarism! The guy had copied my answers verbatim... And this was one of the best high schools in Montreal.
This is why I question the value of anecdotal evidence.
Below are two articles I found from a little googling. You can draw your own conclusions:
China said:
US said:
More specifically to Vesicles, I found this interesting:
wiki said:
Kind of supports what I hypothesized above.
vesicles
Colonel
That makes sense. Colleges I went to for undergraduate and graduate both have honor code...
GUYS WE ARE WAY OFF TOPIC. This discussion is about the Sniper World cup and not the 2008 Olympics. We shouldn't get too political.
I just want to add that the overall medal difference was 10... so I don't think we can make any assumptions on whether there was specialization or general achievements or whatever. If it was 50 or something then there'd be a point.
If we're too off topic, maybe move these posts to the "sport in china" or the old 2008 olympics thread?
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