Sanity outbreak at MIT
Yikes. Did you know MIT students' mean math SAT score is 790? I guess if you can't hit a solid 800 there you're chopped liver.
Now for the sanity outbreak: schools all over the country are engaging in the suicide pact of ceasing to require SAT scores in the admissions process. MIT tried it at the beginning of the pandemic, then noticed it was having an awful retention problem with students who had been admitted to a program beyond their reach, so it's reverted to requiring SAT scores. Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but since the school isn't willing to water down its standards, it faced a choice between eliminating students before they arrived or after.
Regardless of how unfair anyone may think it is, SAT scores are a fantastic predictor of academic success, particularly in the elite STEM fields. MIT requires a solid core of STEM courses no matter the students' major, so there's basically no escape from the horsepower requirement. I suppose the next step is to argue that the core STEM curriculum is colonialist and patriarchal.
I don't know what the MIT mean was in 1970 when I took it at 16 (before the renorming), but I thought I was hot shit at time get a score up in that range. Then I went to a summer advanced studies course after 11th grade and found there were actually other people who could do that - and better. Way better. Buried me by week three. I learned the lesson of the Old West, and very valuable - there is always a faster gun. Steve Sailer talks about going to Rice in the 80s and the guys who had 800s would actually laugh in learned humility about who had a "real" 800 and who had an "average" 800.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't mean that a person with a 730M isn't going anywhere. Not often, but sometimes it's gaps in training at your podunk school and you can catch up. But generally not. Usually the number is close to being made of iron. You even have that ability or you don't. Better to learn early, so you can move your 99th percentile math ability to application in archaeology or linguistics or someplace else where the others don't have that and can use your help. Leave the math and physics to the guys with the 99.9%ile
Is the core STEM curriculum colonialist and patriarchal?
ReplyDeleteDo Europeans and Men insist 2 + 2 = 4?
A good friend of mine works at LSAC, where they make the LSAT for law students. They're panicking a bit because Law Schools are now talking about stopping the requirement to take it. It's a good test of a logical mind -- my friend is in fact a logician -- because every question has one and only one correct answer. That means you don't really need to know anything to do well on it except how to think.
ReplyDeleteThe LSAT is just another IQ test, like the SAT, but with the bell curve shifted a little to the right to provide finer discrimination on that statistical tail. The LSAT reports results with some breaks within the top 1%, which rarely matters to a college but certainly matters to a fine STEM university, and often to a top law school. As AVI says, it's the difference between having enough facility in a technical area to apply it as a tool in another field, vs. being able to advance the primary field. Suddenly the difference between the top 1% and the top 0.1% is like night and day. Any system that deliberately gives up on identifying that super-top-slice is suicidal, no matter how pure its woke motives. It's also people self-identifying as unqualified to notice the difference.
ReplyDeleteMath professor claims equation 2+2=4 'reeks of white supremacist patriarchy' (Should be "math education professor)
ReplyDeleteKareem Carr Explains Why 2+2=5 (Harvard biostats Ph.D. student)
When does 2+2 not equal 4? (A Marxist explanation)
Here's Kareem Carr's Twitter thread where he makes his 2+2 != 4 argument.
ReplyDeleteThe Pop. Mechanics article linked to on the Harvard site is paywalled.
There are highly refined circumstances in which commonly understood relationships do not apply. There are several videos circulating proposing to prove that the infinite sum of positive counting numbers (1+2+3...) equals a negative 1/12th. The proofs depend on slight shifts in the meanings of "infinite" and "equals". Professor Carr is pulling similar slights. Even if we might be willing to allow the shifts in peculiar circumstances, the idea that elementary students in basic arithmetic should be confronted with such paradoxes does NOT help them master the life skills taxpayers intend to fund.
ReplyDelete@ J Melcher - "peculiar circumstances" is the correct formulation. There are weirdnesses all over math and physics, but these are based on the simple laws being in play first. None of these mathematicians buy the wrong number of bananas at the store thinking there is something else in play.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite example, easily illustrated:
ReplyDelete1+1=2
2+2=4
4+4=8
8+8=4
This has to be modified a bit if you use a 24-hour clock. Yes, there's a little sleight of hand here--the same name is used for the operation and the element, but it got the kids thinking about what the numbers are used for. (The next step is to look at rotations and "flippings" of an equilateral triangle. After a half an hour or so of playing around with a model it should be pretty clear why those strange adults wanted them to remember fancy words like "commutative.")