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bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   4133 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

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42/50, but I didn't know what to expect and didn't particularly care about the results. I knew I got about three questions wrong as soon as I clicked "next". The test itself looks pretty "grindable" to me. Vocabulary questions are not grindable beyond knowing what to expect (X is to Y is as what is to Z, similar-opposite-unrelated), but are the easiest, logical questions are grindable (I guess most "normies" fail the "A implies B, A is false, is B false?" question), maths questions are super grindable (there's a bunch of mental math tricks that people simply don't keep in their arsenal now that they actually carry a calculator with them everywhere, plus a bunch of "how to discard the obviously wrong answer" tricks). With a few cram sessions you could probably get people to reliably score five to ten points higher.

It's still a good proxy for intelligence. A couple of years ago I binged on YouTube USE math prep videos. USE is the combined HS graduation/college entry exam in Russia, and your score decides if you can get into the MSU or another prestigious university or not. Kids in the stream chat were super serious about cataloguing every possible shortcut to tackling the problems, and at first I was kinda disappointed by this approach, using raw brainpower sounded fairer.

But then I realized: you still need that raw brainpower to catalogue and store these tricks, to select the right one and apply it correctly. Yes, Alice that is even a bit smarter than Bob can get a lower score because Bob spent more time on exam prep, but is it really that bad? Why shouldn't we reward people that can demonstrate diligence and perseverance in addition to raw mathematical brainpower?

Why shouldn't we reward people that can demonstrate diligence and perseverance in addition to raw mathematical brainpower?

It depends on what job you are selecting for. College admissions are a hammer when they should be scalpels.

A rough example; Someone going to college for a math degree might be interested in Research Mathematics or becoming an Actuary.

For the former, you should probably heavily weigh raw mathematical brainpower more. For the latter, you should weigh conscientiousness more.

These two people with radically different brain structures (IMO) and expectations from their future peers; but are made to take the same tests/exams.

Tangentially, if you are of the former type, you might not like the latter for various visceral reasons.

I went to college for Electrical Engineering. I was passionate about it and rarely ever "studied" in any flashy way. Then there were the kids with flashcards and fancy colored notes and whatnot. They often got better grades than me, but were often "worse" engineers. They sucked at programming, didn't know anything outside of the books, could not derive things from first principles if not explicitly mentioned in class, etc.

Those people should be working at powerplants, I should be working at a startup that makes robots.

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