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Scandal at America's top science fair

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Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#121

Post by EvgeniyZh »

jjeaff wrote: post #93
EvgeniyZh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make tests hard enough so that you wouldn't need lottery

any tests will always be gamed by those with the resources to game them. either ethically (through special tutors and private programs) or unethically (cheating).

Any system can and will be cheated, that wasn't the point of neither OP's or mine proposals.

Standardized testing is a good predictor. In my country people are admitted based on standardized testing only (country wide subject exams and sat-like test) or results of university-adjacent "preparation courses" and it works fairly well. The affirmative action is realized directly as a bonus points to your scores based on the background, which reduces the effect of ethical gaming.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#122

Post by Karrot_Kream »

uneekname wrote: post #10

I was a finalist at the 2017 ISEF and it was quite an experience. A lot of super smart kids there and we all had fun living it up in Los Angeles. There was a stark contrast between those of us who had designed our projects completely ourselves, and those who had significant mentors/lab affiliations. No hate to high schoolers getting valuable STEM experience at local universities, but Regeneron should do more to diffe…

Heh now wait until you realize what it's like for kids coming from areas near the poverty line. I entered ISEF at a local level on a whim, my science teacher knew I was his brightest but didn't know what to do with me, I borrowed a rundown pair of shirt/slacks my dad retired from job interviews. The experience left such a deep mark on me that even now in the middle of a very successful tech career I remember it. I did a project on perceptrons which I learned about at the local community college library (from a copy of Mitchell's Machine Learning!) because my parents knew it kept weird 'ol me busy and off the streets. Fun times!

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#123

Post by fransje26 »

phreeza wrote: post #112
rurban wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freier is not F*cker, just someone who needs to pay for sex, and is more independent then

No it more likely comes from archaic "freien", which still is used for "to marry" but used to mean something slightly different ;)

They still use a variant of that word in Dutch: vrijen. With the old meaning.. ;)

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#124

Post by krisoft »

armchairhacker wrote: post #36
saagarjha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need the money. They want to win so they can get into college.

Googling his name brings up this article as the third result. Someone in whatever college he has been accepted to will surely discover and spread rumors, which he can’t really defend against because all the evidence supports that he did it. If he tries to publish anything, people will see his name and immediately question its legitimacy. If he gets an offer and the employer finds out they may rescind it because they…

Sure. The gist of what you write is true. Being caught cheating harms his future prospects.

You are thinking that now because he was already caught. But when he decided to cheat he didn’t know he will be caught. Probably he either estimated the chanches of him it wrong. Thinking perhaps that he will do a better job with the cheating, or that nobody looks that hard. Or he assumed lower consequences. Perhaps assuming if they catch him they just won’t give him the award, as opposed to making a big deal out of it.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#125

Post by throwawaysleep »

fattegourmet wrote: post #57
throwawaysleep wrote: post #11

I wrote an earlier reply to someone about how all I learned from the several mandatory ethics courses is that the people who cheat tend to be winners even after their punishment, if any. I bet that even after all this, that kid will still be better off having cheated than not.

I had an ethics (philosophy) course in uni and I don't think _ethos_ is about winning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos

It isn't. But that is what makes it irrelevant to the target audience.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#126

Post by fransje26 »

teekert wrote: post #115
uneekname wrote: post #10

I was a finalist at the 2017 ISEF and it was quite an experience. A lot of super smart kids there and we all had fun living it up in Los Angeles. There was a stark contrast between those of us who had designed our projects completely ourselves, and those who had significant mentors/lab affiliations. No hate to high schoolers getting valuable STEM experience at local universities, but Regeneron should do more to diffe…

Honestly, in my country (the Netherlands) this whole attitude changed within 1 generation. My parents left met largely alone with my school stuff. Now I hear all my friends complaining that their kid's school "is so much work" for them. Crazy right? When I ask them: Why help them at all (my kids are younger btw), they tell me that "sure we can just not help them, they won't make it into university (but something "low…

Unless something drastically changed in the education system the last ten years, I wonder where all that perceived workload is coming from.

Because 10 years back, the homework load, as expressed by the post high-school students I was hanging around with, was significantly lower than in some other European countries.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#127

Post by eigenket »

tokai wrote: post #113
eigenket wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: according to the etymology I could find online it's actually originally a German word (meaning client of a prostitute) that was borrowed by Yiddish, then borrowed in turn by Polish from Yiddish and also ended up in a couple of other European languages.

Yiddish is a German language.

Not exclusively. It has elements from Hebrew and Aramaic (of course) as well as from various Slavic languages. A big chunk of it derives from High German but not all.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#128

Post by tromp »

neilv wrote: post #76
vsnf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parental "help", e.g. doing most or all of the work for a science fair entry, is an open secret among Asian communities. This has been a meme/running gag in countless sitcoms and Sunday morning newspaper comic strips for as long as I can remember. Not the Asian community part, just the 'parents actually doing the work' part. The joke is typically about overly competitive middle class suburban fathers juxtaposed aga…

The Cub Scout Pinewood Derby that I saw -- in which the kid is to carve a model car out of a block of wood at home, to race at an event -- they had wisely issued extra kits ahead of time, for those parents who would get a little too enthusiastic about helping Junior, and had separate races among the parents' cars. Of course, the stakes were much smaller than an award or school admission that potentially makes/breaks…

As featured in South Park episode "Pinewood Derby" [1] [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_Derby_(South_Park)

[2] https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/oki0th/south-park-...

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#129

Post by edanm »

snickerbockers wrote: post #30

>Everyone makes mistakes — Lord knows I did plenty of stupid, immoral things when I was 17 — and there is always the opportunity for growth and redemption. when did the definition of 'mistake' change to encompass actions done on purpose? a mistake is when your data is invalid because you did the math wrong, not when all your data is simultaneously false and plagiarized. i don't mean to disagree with the notion that h…

> when did the definition of 'mistake' change to encompass actions done on purpose?

It didn't change, it's always been that way.

From Google search: > an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong. > Example: "coming here was a mistake"

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#130

Post by fnordian_slip »

jgord wrote: post #28
defrost wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you attempting to say with "scare quotes" and conspiratorial nods to The Consensus ?

Slightly offtopic : there seems to be a lack of articles loosely related to climate change / green-tech on HN... given the amount of new tech and the size and urgency of warming, Id expect to see more discussion/argument. It seems to be a self-censored topic on HN, for reasons I genuinely cant guess.

There are a lot of climate change deniers on hn, though they have mostly moved on to denying the human impact on climate instead, after outright denial became harder and harder to argue for. Some have even already moved on to the third phase, "it's too late now, so we might as well not do anything", but these are still few.

It's sad, but education and intelligence do not guarantee understanding or wisdom.

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