Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...
Jewish problems
21–30 of 203 posts
Re: Jewish problems
#22I don't understand how these problems would be harder for Jews than anyone else. It's controversial in my opinion to claim that educated Jews are worse at these based on their ethnicity. edit: wow people responded too quickly, sorry if it was to something I edited out
They're not supposed to be; the goal was to give Jews harder questions which had supposedly simple answers: > One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral exam. I was told that these problems were carefully designed to have elementary solutions (so that the Department could avoid scandals) that were nearly impossible to find.
They could also give huge boolean formulas, and ask the applicant to decide if it is satisfiable[1] or not. Simple yes or no answer, which is quite a hard (NP-hard) to come by.
But then again, it would probably fool nobody.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem
Re: Jewish problems
#23Here’s a “Russian” problem: find the largest projection on the plane of a box with sides a, b, c.
Re: Jewish problems
#24sounds like a similar (although at least a little bit more achievable) to the "White Australia Policy" that was once one in place, where a language exam was given to 'undesirables' in a language that it was clear the person wishing to emigrate to Australia could not speak.
Re: Jewish problems
#25When they say 'oral exams', are the applicants expected to shoot out an answer without actually looking at the problem or writing a solution? And if that's the case, how much time would they get to solve these problems mentally? I can't imagine being able to solve any of these without a pen and paper. I would assume that unless you already know the answer, there isn't a way for an 'unwanted' applicant to be able to d…
No - an oral exam in this context is more like a programming interview. You get a board and chalk, and you solve the problem on the board in front of the teacher, explaining what you're doing along the way. This is opposed to a "normal" exam where you have your pen and paper and a pre-set amount of time to struggle with the problem on your own.
Ah, that makes a lot more sense now.
Re: Jewish problems
#26[deleted]
Re: Jewish problems
#27> ...these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Like the place to view the problems, for me at least: PDF http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556v1
... also available as the link titled 'PDF' under 'Download' on the right hand side of the page.
Re: Jewish problems
#28Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...
Re: Jewish problems
#29Whereas in the US the reason that colleges use essay questions is because jews score too highly on the SATs. We can thank Harvard for this, as usual. Gladwell has an essay about this here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar... I forget what Gladwell is copying from, but I know that there is an earlier article that goes into even more detail.
He usually cites his sources. Look for the professor in the tweed jacket, with horn-rimmed glasses, and the gaze which pierces through both his students' excuses for late homework and statistical irregularities. Or the 6-3 guy who looks like a line-backer, but now teaches psychology, and still plays ball on the weekends.
In this case, Jerome Karabel writes in “The Chosen” how the Ivy League started to look for "manliness" to avoid too many geeks and Jews. Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale did the economic study on the selection effect vs. value added. James L. Shulman and William Bowen wrote "The Game of Life", on athletes getting an easy ride.
Re: Jewish problems
#30Whereas in the US the reason that colleges use essay questions is because jews score too highly on the SATs. We can thank Harvard for this, as usual. Gladwell has an essay about this here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar... I forget what Gladwell is copying from, but I know that there is an earlier article that goes into even more detail.
> I forget what Gladwell is copying from, but I know that there is an earlier article that goes into even more detail. I'm trying to find a similar - likely the same - earlier article too. I'd be much obliged if you could post the link if you find it.
I know that John Taylor Gatto linked it to from his website at one point, it's possible that you might be able to dig it up through archive.org or somesuch.