Comment Actual link to bill (Score 1) 350
In case it hasn't been posted yet, here's a link to the actual bill hosted on Wired
Seems like a bad transcription of an interview with the researcher.
In the actual journal article they either used an underline or nothing at all, eg. "6 + 9= __ + 4" and "__ + 3 = 5 + 7 = "
I'm also not really surprised since as other posters have mentioned I don't really remember learning any real algebra until 6-8 grade. This really just means that Chinese kids learn this stuff earlier than US kids and maybe US kids should learn it early on as well.
The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that you are working for someone else.