tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post3803876341605324491..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: About That Harvard Exam (Sidis Part 3A)Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-75113609366777643682011-12-25T06:47:54.650-05:002011-12-25T06:47:54.650-05:00PS, not "The Gripping Hand" itself (the ...PS, not "The Gripping Hand" itself (the sequel), but the original "Mote in God's Eye." The sequel was OK.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-13980651268865611672011-12-25T06:47:11.751-05:002011-12-25T06:47:11.751-05:00Sam -- don't I know it! One of my favorite no...Sam -- don't I know it! One of my favorite novels. I'll bet I've read it seven times.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-75766772912314191672011-12-24T23:50:09.851-05:002011-12-24T23:50:09.851-05:00Texan99, that third hand is The Gripping Hand.Texan99, that third hand is The Gripping Hand.Sam L.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-57268109839602097212011-12-22T20:05:18.647-05:002011-12-22T20:05:18.647-05:00It has become merely silly to argue with anonymous...It has become merely silly to argue with anonymous. He picks and chooses what he will respond to, then misunderstands what is said.<br /><br />I am content with my statements. You may have the last word.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-89670157984829216552011-12-22T10:27:06.437-05:002011-12-22T10:27:06.437-05:00I have a hard time understanding how anyone could ...I have a hard time understanding how anyone could come to such extravagant opinions about a guy like Sidis on the basis of such spotty evidence, and continue gripping them so fiercely. Is he a relative or something? Do you feel the world has neglected him unfairly? To me it seems mostly a sad story of wasted potential.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-35731120906385311042011-12-22T09:31:54.457-05:002011-12-22T09:31:54.457-05:00“He was admitted as a "Special student."...“He was admitted as a "Special student." We don't know what it means.”<br /><br />It means he did went through the exact same courses, but didn't matriculate until his senior year due to Harvard's admissions policies. The math in his courses would have been harder than the math on the entrance exam. So whether he actually took it is a moot point.<br /><br /><br />“I worked problems like that in 7th grade for fun all the time. I am nothing near the smartest person in town, never mind the world.”<br /><br />In other words, you were in Prometheus, and a self professed math-whiz, but still several years behind Sidis in math at the same age. (though it's notable that you were held back by the educational system, whereas he was not) By the way, what *is* the IQ of the smartest person in your town?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-23813013526846355672011-12-21T18:13:06.579-05:002011-12-21T18:13:06.579-05:00The math is not harder than the GRE. #4 - at a gla...The math is not harder than the GRE. #4 - at a glance, the answer is going to be about 0.21, further decimal places to be worked out tediously by hand. I worked problems like that in 7th grade for fun all the time. I am nothing near the smartest person in town, never mind the world.<br /><br />It is not true that this is only a sample of the types of math they would have studied. These are exactly what they studied. Read the link on Eliot yourself, if you like, or read up on the history of education in the 19th C.<br /><br />Or you can just hold your assumptions about how much harder schools were then.<br /><br />I will also add that we do not know whether Sidis did take any entrance exam. His father claimed he took one for MIT, but no record exists. He was admitted as a "Special Student." We don't know what it means.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-17231402067104735902011-12-21T16:46:42.129-05:002011-12-21T16:46:42.129-05:00Oh, I don't disagree that it's quite a res...Oh, I don't disagree that it's quite a respectable test. I'd love to see high school students take it today. I thought you were arguing that Sidis's ability to do well on it argued for his being the smartest fella evah. Pardon if I misunderstood.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-37955682268968914962011-12-21T16:04:15.763-05:002011-12-21T16:04:15.763-05:00The 50th percentile for math SAT scores falls at a...The 50th percentile for math SAT scores falls at about 500 on a scale of 200-800, and corresponds to getting about half the questions right. Considering that some students who take the SAT don't go to college, and still others drop out, the average score of college graduates is a bit higher, but that puts us in the ballpark.<br /><br />Now which is harder, the average SAT math question when you have a calculator and multiple choice bubbles, or the average math question on the old Harvard entrance exam? It’s not even close. I stand by my previous statements. When subjected to rigorous scrutiny, they hold up.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-49549481849091642702011-12-21T14:43:17.188-05:002011-12-21T14:43:17.188-05:00Anonymous, do you really think nearly all college-...Anonymous, do you really think nearly all college-educated people we know could solve less than half of the math problems? That's certainly not true of the college-educated people I know. These problems are fairly basic math. The other kids in my 11th grade high school math classes could have taken them in stride. (These were special-track classes for college-bound kids, but not some kind of super-duper genius classes, just public school in the late 1970s.)<br /><br />The really clever folks I sometimes ran into in college, who could solve problems at a glance that I had to labor over, could have done these standing on their heads. Again, these were very bright students, but not ones who were on their way to winning Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals, let alone becoming household names as "the smartest guy ever."<br /><br />The 1869 entrance exam math problems would be really difficult for people who never studied much math, which is quite common nowadays. But you'll get a distorted picture of how smart someone is if you compare his performance in a field he's actually studied to that of people who no longer find it important to study that same field at all.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-88125265463710409542011-12-21T14:41:55.349-05:002011-12-21T14:41:55.349-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-84850481824030226282011-12-21T13:50:19.272-05:002011-12-21T13:50:19.272-05:00So your criticisms of the math section as a measur...So your criticisms of the math section as a measure of intelligence are that:<br /><br />Math in general is abstract. After you learn it, not practicing it can reduce your ability to do it. After your ability has declined, you may be able to remember terms and symbols, but not how to apply them. Even if you're brilliant at it, you may have great difficulty following your own derivations from a year earlier.<br /><br />On this particular test, the difficulty or complexity of a problem is sometimes increased by forcing the test taker to manipulate large numbers rather than forcing them to use novel methods. The test only covers half a dozen areas of math that the test taker may have been exposed to, and is not a survey of all the math known to humanity.<br /><br />In conclusion, the math section looks harder than it *REALLY* is, and just because the questions look like ones from the GRE (only harder), and nearly all college educated people we know could solve less than half of them, we shouldn't assume that passing it is an indication of high intelligenceAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-75962452951500444632011-12-21T10:55:56.307-05:002011-12-21T10:55:56.307-05:00Of course I'd have bombed the Latin and Greek,...Of course I'd have bombed the Latin and Greek, but I could do the math even today, or at least the little that I've forgotten I'd have handled easily when I was 18 and it was fresher. On the other hand, I couldn't have done it when I was 11.<br /><br />On the third hand, my dad was exposing me to fun things about 4D geometry when I was quite young, in part because it was a staple of some of our favorite science fiction (". . . And He Built a Crooked House"). You don't have to be a genius to grasp that stuff, just interested. I'm not saying I'd have come up with it on my own age 11, but as we were discussing below, it's not so clear that Sidis did, either.<br /><br />Now I guess I'm going to have to go try to figure out the function that describes the focus of one parabola that's rotated along another, see if I have any brain cells left.<br /><br />My father attended a podunk local college, all he and his family could afford, where he was mostly self-taught. When he was a senior, he caught the attention of a professor by casually expounding a theory about cyclical expanding and contracting universes. The professor thought it suggested such original brilliance that he got him into Phi Beta Kappa largely on the strength of it. In fact, however, the idea was commonplace among the science fiction writers that my father loved at the time (1940s). It's easy to draw starstruck conclusions from too little data, especially when the judges have lacked exposure to really out-of-the-ballpark genius.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-71936878788348452862011-12-21T09:54:46.042-05:002011-12-21T09:54:46.042-05:00Small Latin and less Greek here; recalling my own ...Small Latin and less Greek here; recalling my own high school days and looking at this exam. (BTW, the link is bad. I went to the comment to find the right one.) If the language were French I could have made a stab at it back when that was fresher in my mind, so you're probably right about the skill levels required. The arithmetic is tedious but trivial (if you remember how many shillings are in a pound), ditto the algebra and trig, and the geometry wouldn't pose much of a problem if you knew the jargon ("are to each other" I gather refers to area).<br /><br />So they looked for grammar, geometry, and arithmetic, but not logic, rhetoric, astronomy or music. Did they assume you'd taken the Grand Tour?jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com