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.
Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself.