As Usual, We Read Half What is Written

Weeks ago, a friend of mine shared on my facebook page a ranking about Lebanon being in the top 5 countries in the quality of Math and Science education.  I checked the data and it turned out that it comes from a report published by The World Economic Forum’s 2013 Global Information Technology Report. 

For the first glance I got excited and started researching this fact. Searching online, one sees Lebanese blogs posting about the findings and referring to the original report.  However and as a mathematician, I had my doubts and I thought about investigating this issue in more details. The first thing someone should do in this case is simply visit the original report.  You can visit [Here] for the report.  Most people unfortunately who wrote about this report on their blogs or even thought about doing so, visited only page 213 of the report that summarizes all the statistical results and thus  concluded what they concluded. 

Looking into the individual statistical models, on pages 24 and 25.  One can see the following:

1. Lebanon is ranked number 10 for the quality of the educational system
2. Lebanon is ranked number 4 for the quality of math and science education

However, when someone looks closely at the table, one sees in both cases, it is what Lebanese perceive their country in terms of both qualities.  The questions that were asked to people in all the countries of the world were the following:

1. How well does the educational system in your country meet the needs of a competitive economy? (p.324)
2. How would you assess the quality of math and science education in your country's schools?(p.325)

I am sorry for the disappointing news but even as a first look it makes me doubt that Finland could even make it to the top 5.  There is a general impression among the Lebanese that our system of education is excellent but I would be very careful in making such statements specially in Math and Sciences.