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It’s not necessarily unable or unwilling, if you are good at math you get numb after a certain number of these easy problems. Mathson got a 5 on the Calc BC, qualified for AIME, got an 800 on the Math SAT2, but he never managed to get an 800 on the Math SAT1 because he missed problems that any fourth grader ought to be able to do. In fact he did things exactly like what I did, carelessly left out one step. </p>
<p>That said, there’s no excuse for Americans overall to do so poorly on these tests compared to kids from other countries.</p>