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Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

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Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#41

Post by apl »

andjones wrote: post #16

This test shows what was valued - at least at Harvard - in the late 1800's. Greek and Latin were more important, as well as knowledge of geography of the known world and algebra and geometry. Algebra and geometry, I feel, are still important today (see SAT). Greek and Latin are less important, although they are still in the background. The humanities have changed and we now learn about more modern authors / topics an…

  > Perhaps I'm preaching to the choir, but learning about
  > entrepreneurship or practicing selling things would have
  > been much more useful to me than many of the things I
  > learned in high school or undergrad.
Does that have anything to do with your current life goals, by any chance?

You shouldn't argue from your personal viewpoint here. Sure, in retrospect it would've been great if school had taught me statistics and neurobiology from year one. But that is not what general, state-sanctioned education is or should be about. I suspect that for 80% all kids, entrepreneurship classes would have been a costly waste of time.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#42

Post by mjs »

nanijoe wrote: post #35
mjs wrote: post #20

I found some Cambridge exam papers from 1899 a while back. I don't have scans, but there's a few of the more interesting/mysterious questions at: http://beebo.org/lately/2001-07-10_cambridge.html I quite like the 2.5 hour "English Essay" for bizarreness: Write an English Essay on one of the following subjects: 1. English country life in the 18th century. 2. The battle of Blenheim. 3. The character of Rachel Lady Cast…

I'm not sure what you find bizarre, having to write an essay or the choice of topics? This type of question is pretty much standard on (high school) English exams in many commonwealth countries, even today.

The choice of topics, really. This was for (I think) an entrance exam, and so the only topic I think even vaguely suitable to write about without forewarning is "English country life in the 18th century." The Battle of Blenheim and the character of Rachel Lady Castlewood can only be attempted if you already know about those (very specific) things, and duelling is broad, and odd.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#43

Post by ddol »

jbermudes wrote: post #3
azazo wrote: post #2

The stamp says 1899, but it says 1869 at the bottom of each page. Is it actually from 1869?

The test is from 1869, but the stamp indicates that it was placed in the archive in 1899.

It's fascinating to think that in 1869 there were Transatlantic telegraph links. One could have sat this entrance exam in London while it was being sat in MA simultaneously, with Questions/Answers transmitted digitally.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#44

Post by cema »

Gatsky wrote: post #14

Hurray for algebra! Still as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. Are programming languages going to be equally durable?

Lisp, Fortran, Cobol have all been used and working, in one form or another, for more than 50 years.

Algol, on the other hand, has evolved into a great family of languages. Not unlike Latin, if I might say so.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#46

Post by yequalsx »

brettnak wrote: post #25
yequalsx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach mathematics at a community college and I can tell you that for most people the mathematics on the test is hard. Our course with the largest number of students is on arithmetic and the students just don't comprehend fractions. They can't even comprehend how to convert a decimal to a percent. Especially when given a problem like: Conver 0.25% to a decimal. That really throws them off.

While I understand this question, I think it is a bit of a trick. I think it would make more sense to ask them to convert 1.25% to a decimal, or any percentage that did not have leading zeros.

I think it is important for one to be able to follow instructions even if they might appear counterintuitive. The rule for conversion is to divide by 100. It doesn't matter what percentage I give you; always divide by 100. It's fairly straightforward but many people are unable to do so in the case of 0.25%. They expect the answer to be 25.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#48

Post by yequalsx »

tybris wrote: post #34
yequalsx wrote: post #18

What is truly amazing is how easy it is to find those answers today. With Google, Wolframalpha, etc. retrieving information is cheap both time wise and money wise. Perhaps a test could be made today that would test a person's ability to search for obscure knowledge and comprehend it. A person would have to determine which sources are trustworthy and what conclusion could be made from the information received. Is this…

I think we're moving from single answer knowledge to multi-answer understanding of the matter. This involves being able to absorb large amounts of information, rather than being able to find obscure information. We probably need more knowledge than ever before, but it has more breadth and less specificity. A historian might be asked to discuss why Spain and Portugal were the first of the European countries to build a…

This is the essence of what I was getting at. You've elaborated on what I was getting at.

It's somewhat pointless to ask on a test when the U.S. Civil War ended. A much better indication of intelligence and knowledge is to ask why it didn't end sooner.

Not too long ago people would spend hundreds of dollars (thousands in today's money) for a set of encyclopedias. Now, with Google, Wolframalpha etc. such a product has no use. The cost to find knowledge has dramatically decreased the past 15 years. Education has not caught up with this reality.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#49

Post by jedbrown »

light3 wrote: post #28
derleth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd characterize it as 'pointless tedium' and I'm glad our educational system is rid of it. It's easier to justify teaching Latin than that drudgery.

Of course if you're doing it by trial and error on paper it is pointless tedium. But I'm sure that the point of doing these exercises were not bore you to death, but to really make you understand arithmetic so you can do most given problems faster. If all you knew was how to multiply and divide numbers by hand, that problem would take you hours to solve! A great example is the section 'lucky numbers' in Feynman's boo…

> that problem would take you hours to solve

I don't know, two Newton iterations are enough:

  *GHCi> let croot f x = x - (x^3 - f) / (3*x^2) in take 5 . iterate (croot 0.0093) $ 0.2
  [0.2,0.21083333333333332,0.2102957483409451,0.2102943717551532,0.21029437174614204]
Guessing 0.2 as a starting point is obvious enough because 0.2^3 = 0.008.

Re: Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

#50

Post by xyzzyz »

SandB0x wrote: post #26
jclaassen wrote: post #7

Am I just being an engineer, or is the math way easier than the rest of this test?

Have a look at the UK's STEP mathematics papers. They're the toughest school-level exams we have, used as entrance tests for a handful of degree courses. There are three papers each year, in increasing level of difficulty and assumed knowledge, and each candidate takes papers I and II or papers II and III. http://www.admissionstests.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/adt/st...

Some problems are quite fun, but they spoil them with clues -- it does not feel like solving, more like explaining the solution.
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