11th grade • Hacker News Board

Re: 11th grade

#131

Post by pasbesoin » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 12:06 AM UTC

pasbesoin wrote: post #83

jey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will le…

Slightly off-topic, but s/high school/corporate life/ Some of the same social structures apply to both, as well. The cartoon applies to my comment, as well. "The way we've always done it" can be a mercilessly rote and inefficient path. The bit of Perl I picked up (along with a hodgepodge of regex, SQL, VBA -- I know, but I had to use the tools at hand -- and whatnot) boiled a five person department down to one person…

I feel compelled to add that my work didn't result in anyone losing their job. Rather, the company was already experiencing strong pressure both financially and, perhaps more so, philosophically from the senior management team that was parachuted in from elsewhere. Headcount in my department was reduced via attrition and a slightly accelerated retirement.

I kept the department afloat. I should have bailed, but personally it wasn't a good time for a transition.

I'd hate for my work to result in others being laid off. In a prior position, I spent a lot of time mentoring and defending a replacement, giving her time to get up to speed.

I also spent a lot of time volunteering my "kung fu" to acquaintances in other departments. Saving an accountant two days' work sorting manually through borked phone records, via a couple of minute Excel hack, provided a certain satisfaction.

There's so much emphasis on "competition" as well as "the way". (All the more ironic for all the "corporate speak" espoused regarding "cooperation".) I'd rather grow people while appreciating their differences, and hoping for some of the same in return.

To try to tie this back to "11th grade", it would be nice if "the Perl hacker" didn't so often have to feel themself quite so the outsider. Or maybe that trait is orthogonal fro the "Perl/hacker" trait? Seems to be a fairly strong correlation.

Re: 11th grade

#132

Post by bd » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 1:04 AM UTC

yters wrote: post #124

Retric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 15 years (eep), but 11th grade was not a total waste of time. My public school was large enough to have the full remedial, general, advanced, and honors class spectrum so I could avoid the dumbest elements of society. Granted honor classes where still boring but least they tried to speed things up and my classmates where mildly interesting. Anyway, I was classified as Exceptionally Gifted (IQ 160+?) / Learn…

Is there any difference between your thinking and less intelligent people besides just being able to "get it" faster? Based on the link you give, I'm curious whether IQ isn't just a quantitative metric but perhaps also qualitative. Like, past a certain level high IQ people have a different kind of mental capability. Also, do you meet more people than you would statistically expect who are around your level? Another i…

Well, it's not even quantitative metric, it's ordering metric. Making quantitative statements about IQ is quite meaningless. It is not like height or weight.

It seems to be easy to get it wrong. Even the author of the article, who studies giftedness professionally, made such mistake (she tells that IQ 190 to IQ 130 is like IQ 130 to IQ 70).

What's that supposed to mean? The meaning of IQ 190 is that it is 6 standard deviations from the mean (rarity around 1 in billion), while both IQ 130 and 70 are 2 standard deviations from the mean (rarity around 1 in 50).

Re: 11th grade

#133

Post by Retric » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 2:43 AM UTC

bd wrote: post #132

yters wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any difference between your thinking and less intelligent people besides just being able to "get it" faster? Based on the link you give, I'm curious whether IQ isn't just a quantitative metric but perhaps also qualitative. Like, past a certain level high IQ people have a different kind of mental capability. Also, do you meet more people than you would statistically expect who are around your level? Another i…

Well, it's not even quantitative metric, it's ordering metric. Making quantitative statements about IQ is quite meaningless. It is not like height or weight. It seems to be easy to get it wrong. Even the author of the article, who studies giftedness professionally, made such mistake (she tells that IQ 190 to IQ 130 is like IQ 130 to IQ 70). What's that supposed to mean? The meaning of IQ 190 is that it is 6 standard…

When talking about children age * IQ / 100 ~= mental if it's under 16 works as a reasonable approximation for younger children across much of the IQ spectrum. So a 10 year old with an IQ of 70 has a mental age of 7, and someone with an IQ of 150 has a mental age of 15 etc. Now we have redefined IQ to have a more mathematical basis but the approximation still holds.

PS: It's not really completely accurate, but you can treat a 6 year old and a 12 year old with the same mental age in about the same way and see similar types of responses.

Re: 11th grade

#134

Post by Retric » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 3:11 AM UTC

yters wrote: post #124

Retric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 15 years (eep), but 11th grade was not a total waste of time. My public school was large enough to have the full remedial, general, advanced, and honors class spectrum so I could avoid the dumbest elements of society. Granted honor classes where still boring but least they tried to speed things up and my classmates where mildly interesting. Anyway, I was classified as Exceptionally Gifted (IQ 160+?) / Learn…

Is there any difference between your thinking and less intelligent people besides just being able to "get it" faster? Based on the link you give, I'm curious whether IQ isn't just a quantitative metric but perhaps also qualitative. Like, past a certain level high IQ people have a different kind of mental capability. Also, do you meet more people than you would statistically expect who are around your level? Another i…

For the simple truth:

A reasonable analogy might be replacing a 200hp engine with a 300hp engine in the same car. For a wide range of day to day things they only change is their acceleration. However, at higher speeds increased drag comes into play. So the harder the task the longer it takes them to get there. Untill they just can't keep up. For some things there is little noticable difference but othertimes it's striking.

A good example might be an Algebra II homework mistake. We where doing 2 equations 2 unknowns in class which was simple and the homework was the end of chapter quiz. Well I sat down and the first 4 questions where like that but the next set had 3 equations and 3 unknowns and a few seconds later I figured out how to do that. It's seemed odd that the homework had something new but it was easy enough so moving on. The next day I realized I had not been paying attention and did the next chapters assignment. It took the teacher two weeks to get to that point. I remember thinking what are most of these people just dumb?

A more extream example: A few years before that my had an agument with my 3 year older sister and ended up doing some of her math homework. I do recall her say ok yea this is easy. She skipped 8th grade and was the salutatorian and took AP calculus so it's not like so was slow behind or anything it was just obvious based on the questions.

As to the statistics I don't think think there is much point in measuring IQ's over 150 or so. It's not that people don't become smarter, but it's harder to find how generally intelligent someone is. Plenty of people can solve an Rubik's Cube in under 45 seconds, but how long would it take them the first time they saw one? There are plenty of mental leaps that are easy after you have seen them, but they take can take a long time to show up and 3 people might each solve a different one first. According to several people I was 3 before I spoke my first word, but my first words where "Please pass the butter" so how do you measure that?

Re: 11th grade

#135

Post by albertni » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 3:13 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #122

jimbokun wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IMO busywork is why few high school valedictorians do anything interesting or meaningful with their lives." Citation needed. Is it really true that valedictorians perform worse than students with lower class rank, by any objective metric?

Just the first link I found on Google but: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/rvp/pubaf/chronicle/v4/N2/ARNOLD.ht... It's not that they do poorly but they are under represented when compared to others of similar intelligence when you look at CEO's and other top positions. PS: Find the number of US precedents that where valedictorians in high school.

I'm sorry, I don't normally care about misspelling here and there, but it's really hard to take a post seriously when it spells "Presidents" and "were" wrong in a span of three words....

Re: 11th grade

#136

Post by lallysingh » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 3:23 AM UTC

jey wrote: post #40

timr wrote: post #15

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real…

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will le…

11th grade was when I read Applied Crypo & Practical Internet Security within a few weeks of each other... Spent the next few years incredibly paranoid...

It's mostly under control now.

Re: 11th grade

#137

Post by yters » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 12:20 PM UTC

bd wrote: post #132

yters wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any difference between your thinking and less intelligent people besides just being able to "get it" faster? Based on the link you give, I'm curious whether IQ isn't just a quantitative metric but perhaps also qualitative. Like, past a certain level high IQ people have a different kind of mental capability. Also, do you meet more people than you would statistically expect who are around your level? Another i…

Well, it's not even quantitative metric, it's ordering metric. Making quantitative statements about IQ is quite meaningless. It is not like height or weight. It seems to be easy to get it wrong. Even the author of the article, who studies giftedness professionally, made such mistake (she tells that IQ 190 to IQ 130 is like IQ 130 to IQ 70). What's that supposed to mean? The meaning of IQ 190 is that it is 6 standard…

Ah, I see. I usually think about IQ in the way Retric describes, where it is proportional to "mental age." That assumption makes it seem quantitative, so yes, it's easy to get it wrong.

Re: 11th grade

#138

Post by bd » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 1:38 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #137

bd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not even quantitative metric, it's ordering metric. Making quantitative statements about IQ is quite meaningless. It is not like height or weight. It seems to be easy to get it wrong. Even the author of the article, who studies giftedness professionally, made such mistake (she tells that IQ 190 to IQ 130 is like IQ 130 to IQ 70). What's that supposed to mean? The meaning of IQ 190 is that it is 6 standard…

Ah, I see. I usually think about IQ in the way Retric describes, where it is proportional to "mental age." That assumption makes it seem quantitative, so yes, it's easy to get it wrong.

Hmmm, now I realized why child psychologists still use old ratio based definition. It's just more useful for them to think in terms of mental ages.

To respond to your original question, I have a hunch that intelligence variance (as opposed to IQ) is indeed quantitative.

It kind of make sense. Intelligence seems to correlate positively with simple stuff, like reaction speed or short term memory span.

Qualitative differences may arise as consequence of applying different "processing power" throughout your life.

For the first order effects, you can imagine that if you don't have enough "CPU-minutes", for some problems you simply time out.

For the higher order effects, it's like compound interest. For example, as written in the article, smarter kids start to speak and read sooner, thus they acquire more information and they also acquire it at higher rate. And as we know from financial compound interests, even tiny initial amounts can balloon into huge sums given enough time.

Re: 11th grade

#139

Post by brk » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 2:17 PM UTC

sown wrote: post #30

timr wrote: post #15

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real…

When I was in HS I recognized it as a waste. I didn't really learn much. The people around me didn't care and it mostly felt like day care. It all was mostly busy work. The only way to get a "challenging" education was to jump through a bunch of hoops, such as joining Key Club, marching band, AP everything, extracurricular this and that, all of it just a way of padding a college resume. Now those are things you will…

I enjoyed the Key Club in high school. But then again, that's how we referred to our lock-picking training sessions.

Re: 11th grade

#140

Post by xiaoma » Tue, Dec 23, 2008, 8:38 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #90

Retric wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pointless for you to spend the next six weeks doing 3rd grade homework assignments. Back in 9th grade my geometry teacher graded homework assignments which I never did. The class was obvious and I got the highest grade on the midterm without studying or doing any homework. But, I still got a B because he felt busywork was important. Next year I had an English teacher who constantly gave out stupid vocabul…

In the situations you described, there are a couple of ways to respond: 1) Do the work. It's easy, so you'll do it quickly and get a high grade. Then you can ask for more challenging work (or just do something more interesting). 2) Don't do the work. Instead, complain about the inanity of the class and the idiocy of the teacher. You'll get a bad grade, and a bad reputation, too. There are times to recognize busywork…

I was in a similar situation. I took college calculus in 8th grade, and linear algebra and discrete math in 9th. I was still a high school student, though, and my high school expected me to spend ridiculous amounts of time on math I'd learned years earlier. Ditto for science, English and history. My choice was

3) Do the minimum required to stay eligible for sports as an underclassman and then drop out once I was old enough to do so legally.

I've never regretted the decision since.