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95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

danluu.com

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Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#231

Post by akhilcacharya »

tyingq wrote: post #9

95th percentile for an SAT score is something like 1450. That's fairly impressive to me. Feels like scoring higher might often have more to do with effort than ability. Is that excluded from the line of thought in the blog post because it's among "people who regularly practice?" Or is it that effort vs ability thing? Not impressive because you were born smart? In a totally "no effort" arena, 95th percentile height fo…

A 1450 is not a very good SAT score. Its not good enough to get into top schools.

I had a 1500/1600 SAT and I was basically DOA.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#232

Post by sireat »

crispyambulance wrote: post #70
5cott0 wrote: post #45

There is something so depressingly robotic about the obsession with being the best at everything all the time. Career, income, diet, exercise, lifestyle, hobbies; can't even have fun anymore without spending days holed-up researching esoteric hyper-optimizations. Some of you need to relax and stop sucking the fun out of everything.

> relax and stop sucking the fun out of everything. Yep. It's important to try new things and put yourself "out there". That means you're going to fumble on a regular basis. The best way to master something, in the absence of a god-like mentor, is through endless repetitions of effort, failure, reflection and exploration. The concept is as old, tried, and true as the story of Odysseus.

That is good advice.

Only problem is that we do not have Bill Murray's 10,000 years to endlessly master everything in Punxsutawney.

We have to pick our fights carefully.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#233

Post by hinkley »

malisper wrote: post #197

It seems like most of the top level responses are responding to the title and not the actual argument. The argument Dan is making is that you can easily get relatively good at most activities. This is because most of the people doing those activities aren't actively trying to get to get better. 95th percentile is probably not the best way to put it since there are tons of activities where nearly everyone is trying to…

There's a theory that most people sand-bag on activities as an ego-protecting maneuver. That we are terrified to know, with absolute certainty, that we are just rubbish at a particular task.

I think we'd rather see ourselves as lazy than incompetent. Even though objectively speaking, "lazy" is probably just as damaging a hit to your self image. Because admitting to yourself that you're a shit basketball player isn't necessarily going to dissuade you from learning piano, but feeling stuck certainly will.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#234

Post by malisper »

nebulous1 wrote: post #221
malisper wrote: post #197

It seems like most of the top level responses are responding to the title and not the actual argument. The argument Dan is making is that you can easily get relatively good at most activities. This is because most of the people doing those activities aren't actively trying to get to get better. 95th percentile is probably not the best way to put it since there are tons of activities where nearly everyone is trying to…

This is the author's failure, not the commenters'. In the article he's saying that a lot of people fail to improve because they're practicing wrong. Now that's probably a valid point, and it should have been his thesis. In fact, he probably considers it to be his thesis, but he muddied the waters by providing it with a debatable introduction and title.

> This is the author's failure, not the commenters'.

Putting all the blame on the author is oversimplifying things. Yes the introduction and title could be made better, but that's not an excuse to interpret the post in a way the author obviously didn't intend it to be interpreted.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#236

Post by outworlder »

malisper wrote: post #197

It seems like most of the top level responses are responding to the title and not the actual argument. The argument Dan is making is that you can easily get relatively good at most activities. This is because most of the people doing those activities aren't actively trying to get to get better. 95th percentile is probably not the best way to put it since there are tons of activities where nearly everyone is trying to…

> This is because most of the people doing those activities aren't actively trying to get to get better.

This is true. Most people put the absolute minimum amount of effort in every aspect of their lives – often times even in things they actually care about. Once you realize this and pay attention to people you'll start to notice this everywhere. Some attention to detail and you instantly jump ahead – may be not to 95%, but considerably ahead. The rest tends to be practice, as you point out.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#237

Post by kgwxd »

pja wrote: post #230
hardwaregeek wrote: post #227

Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable: html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 1.1em; } body { width: 650px } As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is…

I always end up hitting Firefox’s readability mode button when reading Dan’s site. Normal browser width is just too wide for wall-to-wall text.

looks perfect on mobile.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#238

Post by applecrazy »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #231
tyingq wrote: post #9

95th percentile for an SAT score is something like 1450. That's fairly impressive to me. Feels like scoring higher might often have more to do with effort than ability. Is that excluded from the line of thought in the blog post because it's among "people who regularly practice?" Or is it that effort vs ability thing? Not impressive because you were born smart? In a totally "no effort" arena, 95th percentile height fo…

A 1450 is not a very good SAT score. Its not good enough to get into top schools. I had a 1500/1600 SAT and I was basically DOA.

1540/1600 here + National Merit (1520/1520). I applied last admissions cycle, and was DOA for top schools, but mainly because of my 3.8 GPA.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#239

Post by solipsism »

malisper wrote: post #234
nebulous1 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the author's failure, not the commenters'. In the article he's saying that a lot of people fail to improve because they're practicing wrong. Now that's probably a valid point, and it should have been his thesis. In fact, he probably considers it to be his thesis, but he muddied the waters by providing it with a debatable introduction and title.

> This is the author's failure, not the commenters'. Putting all the blame on the author is oversimplifying things. Yes the introduction and title could be made better, but that's not an excuse to interpret the post in a way the author obviously didn't intend it to be interpreted.

It's not about fault, it's about actionability. Telling hoards of people they should interpret things differently isn't actionable feedback. You aren't likely to change the behavior of so many people.

But the author is just one person. If that author learned to structure their work better they can singlehandedly improve the comprehension of across the entire mass of readers.

If you're communicating to the masses and they're not getting it, it's your fault. It may not be 100% true, but it's 100% useful to think of things that way.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#240

Post by lpolovets »

I fully agree with this. I wrote a related post a few years ago called The 100-Hour Rule (in contrast to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour Rule). It's at https://www.codingvc.com/the-100-hour-rule/.

It takes tons and tons of time to be world class at something, but very little time to go from newbie to better than almost everyone else. The key is wanting to get better and then pursuing that in a deliberate, thoughtful way. A hundred hours of tennis lessons or of reading books on negotiation will quickly place you in the top 5-10% of the general population in those things -- and possibly even the top 1%.

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