If you have a few hundred dollars (or it’s covered by insurance) you could get an IQ test from a qualified professional. Your college might even offer this service for students attempting to see if they have learning disabilities.
And the compromise is to study economics. The academic market for economists with Phds is great.
It seems unlikely that an IQ test gives very much extra information about polymer’s prospects as a mathematician or physicist, on top of his/her experiences and scores studying mathematics and physics at university.
I agree, that I have a wealth of information to work with right now. Just trying to honestly balance it (felt like LW fit the theme somewhat).
On the one hand, both of those scores are my first time, and they were taken cold. And, I could argue I thought a lot of homework in school was unimportant and unnecessary (because of a poor philosophical attitude).
But of the 26 questions wrong or incomplete on the practice Math subject test, roughly 16 of them I had sufficient knowledge, but I simply wasn’t fast enough. And the Algebra class, was really hard, and I did do homework eventually.
It’s not like I haven’t been very successful in some courses. Graduate Complex Analysis, and stochastic processes come to mind. And the admissions director at my undergrad (University of Oregon) has told me directly I am ready for graduate school, but he would prefer I went to a better school.
I’m just lost. It seems in this context, failure speaks louder then success. Even if I was smart enough, perhaps I simply haven’t worked hard enough (or on the right things). The practical consequence would be the same. I wish I knew what the admissions officer saw, it’s hard to suppress the feeling he’s only saying that because I did well in his courses.
A few disorganized remarks that may or may not be any help:
Different people are good at different things. In particular, the algebra/analysis dichotomy is a pretty standard one and if you’re good at analysis and not so good at algebra, it probably matters how good you are at what you’re best at.
It seems like simply not being fast enough could be largely irrelevant (if it’s really just a matter of speed; the limiting factor in doing mathematical research is unlikely to be how fast you can do practice-test-level questions) or quite important (if what it really means is that you didn’t understand the material well and therefore had to flounder about when someone with a better grasp would have headed straight for the solution). You may or may not be able to judge which.
Motivation is really really important, perhaps more important than talent once the talent is above a certain level. One piece of advice I’ve seen (specifically in the context of academic pure mathematics) is that you shouldn’t become a mathematician unless you couldn’t bear not to. Because mathematics research is really hard, and it will kick your ass, and how successful you are will have a lot to do with how you cope when it does.
(My own background: got the PhD, did a couple of years of postdoc, was quite staggeringly unproductive, got out of academia and into industry, have been reasonably happy there. Probably happier than I’d have been as a struggling academic. Most academics are struggling academics, especially for, say, the first 5-10 years after getting their PhDs.)
Some questions you might want to answer for yourself:
If you go to grad school, get your PhD, and then don’t go into academia, is that a good outcome or a bad one?
If you don’t take the academic path, what will you do instead?
Whichever way you go, regrettably there’s a very good chance that you won’t end up revolutionizing the world. If you compare possible academic futures with possible non-academic futures, and make the assumption that you do just OK—which feels like the better outcome?
if you’re good at analysis and not so good at algebra
Then he might also want to consider applied mathematics programs, especially if he also excels at programming and engineering but feels they’re too easy.
We know what S is, and the solution to the problem follows. In retrospect, I understand one method for how I could find the answer. But during the test, I can’t see through the noise fast enough (although I can smell the clue). I could go through each guess one by one, but I’m just too slow. Maybe there’s something else I’m missing that would’ve made the guess simpler, but that’s what I’m basing the slow opinion off of.
I don’t know if being slow at inference in this sense is a barrier, or indicative, of deeper creativity issues (or if I’m just suffering from the availability heuristic.)
Anyways your questions all very good, I don’t care for academia perse, I care about the questions. If I don’t keep doing academic stuff, I would hope I would’ve formed enough connections to find some route towards practical problems that still require some creativity.
Your last question is very interesting. I’m not sure how to answer it. My unhealthy worry, I think, is I really don’t like wasting peoples time. I suppose I don’t care about either being “just OK”, if “just OK” isn’t wasting peoples time, but I still get to be creative.
I guess I don’t want to be a pundit? I mean I’ll teach, but I’d be much happier if I was doing something theoretically. If this is impossible for me, I’d like to know the reasons why, and fail out as soon as possible.
Your questions are very interesting though, I still need to think about them more. Thank you for your thoughts, they give very good context to think about this, and its clear you’ve worried about analogous issues.
Different people are good at different things. In particular, the algebra/analysis dichotomy is a pretty standard one and if you’re good at analysis and not so good at algebra, it probably matters how good you are at what you’re best at.
(I’ve heard people talk of branches of maths the way gender essentialists such as EY or Ozy Frantz would talk of gender identity.)
One of my pet theories is that math and (applied) statistics require very different brains. People whose brains are wired for math make poor (applied) statisticians and people who are really good at stats tend to be poor at math.
This is partly an empirical observation and partly, I think, is a consequence of the fact that math deals with “hard” objects (e.g. numbers) that might not be known at the time, but they are not going to mutate and change on you, while statistics deals with uncertainty and “soft”/fuzzy/nebulous objects (e.g. estimates). Moreover, for applied statistics the underlying processes are rarely stable and do mutate...
You took the GREs cold. I’m surprised you did half as well as you did. Why? Because anyone who is not mentally handicaped can pay tutor a large sum of money, do exactly what the tutor says, and get a perfect score. I’m not exagerating—I have friends who tutor in this business, and every year they sit for the GRE as a requirement for their job, and get a perfect score. It’s a teachable skill, and one which has very little to do with the subject matter.
Now consider that most of the other people who took the GRE knew about this weakness. Especially internationally in places like China and India where (1) there are a lot of test takers, (2) a much larger test prep industry, and (3) massive incentives to do well (so as to get into an American or European university). Now keeping all that in mind, you still scored better than 72 / 68 percent of the competition despite having absolutely no preparation whatsoever.
I’m not convinced this is a good argument. You’re certainly over-stating how teachable the GRE is, and I have a least anecdotal evidence of lots of people who scored above 90% on the general GRE quantitative section without tutors. This includes at least one person who “took it cold.” Maybe those are super exceptional folks, but I think the statement that most of the people scoring in the top 30% had tutors is a really strong statement. I have worked for a test prep agency before and there aren’t a lot of top tier students in those classes, and indeed the courses and techniques really geared towards the bottom/middle-tier students. Also, you can’t do well on the GRE, especially the subject tests, without knowing the subject matter.
Your argument is plausible, but it’s all conjecture. I’m curious as to whether you think the GRE percentages mean anything at all, and if so, what the ‘adjustment’ for taking it cold should be,
on the practice Math subject test, … I simply wasn’t fast enough
Here’s some heterodox advice: Take stimulants. Before I wrote the SAT, I stayed off caffeine for a couple of weeks. Then I drank lots of coffee right before the test, and in the break between sections. Caffeine affects me very strongly, so you can use some other stimulant. It might shorten your life by a week, but it’s probably worth it.
If you’re not used to using stimulants, including ones as common as caffeine, don’t experiment for the first time on test-day. My cousin had to get a dean’s excuse to postpone a test when he (who never/rarely drank coffee) drank way to much while studying and wound up trembling too hard to hold a pen.
A similar strategy worked successfully for my friend. As a student, he was very enthusiastic about math and programming, but a big part of that was influence of his friends, me included. Later he saw evidence that he was in these topics, let’s say, above average, but not great enough. (He would be able to write simple programs, and he would get the job, but the more complex parts would be too abstract for him.) He tried studying informatics, and dropped out.
So he switched to economics, choosing some study that also included maths. Hanging out with different kinds of people he discovered he had good social skills (he didn’t notice that while hanging out with nerds). These days he is a consultant, and his specialization could be described as applying database tools to examine or improve economical stats of companies. (Imagine a huge company which has a lot of data in dozen different systems, including Excel sheets; those systems are not connected, they don’t even use a similar structure, and the company actually doesn’t even know which divisions or products are profitable. So my friend comes, and uses different tools to connect all those data sources together, and then creates easy-to-read reports. Which is not as easy as it seems, because those data sources describe the data differently, so he must examine the underlying territory to understand what can be connected with what. Also he must reduce all the available information into cca seven very simple graphs, so that even the most stupid managers could understand that easily.) So, he has some IT things there, enough to make him feel happy for living his dream of working in IT, but no lambda calculus or anything like that. On the other hand, travelling and debating with clients is okay for his extraverted nature.
If you have a few hundred dollars (or it’s covered by insurance) you could get an IQ test from a qualified professional. Your college might even offer this service for students attempting to see if they have learning disabilities.
Btw, is an IQ test by Mensa usually as trustworthy and worthwhile than a similar test by a psychologist?
If you have a few hundred dollars (or it’s covered by insurance) you could get an IQ test from a qualified professional. Your college might even offer this service for students attempting to see if they have learning disabilities.
And the compromise is to study economics. The academic market for economists with Phds is great.
It seems unlikely that an IQ test gives very much extra information about polymer’s prospects as a mathematician or physicist, on top of his/her experiences and scores studying mathematics and physics at university.
I agree, that I have a wealth of information to work with right now. Just trying to honestly balance it (felt like LW fit the theme somewhat).
On the one hand, both of those scores are my first time, and they were taken cold. And, I could argue I thought a lot of homework in school was unimportant and unnecessary (because of a poor philosophical attitude).
But of the 26 questions wrong or incomplete on the practice Math subject test, roughly 16 of them I had sufficient knowledge, but I simply wasn’t fast enough. And the Algebra class, was really hard, and I did do homework eventually.
It’s not like I haven’t been very successful in some courses. Graduate Complex Analysis, and stochastic processes come to mind. And the admissions director at my undergrad (University of Oregon) has told me directly I am ready for graduate school, but he would prefer I went to a better school.
I’m just lost. It seems in this context, failure speaks louder then success. Even if I was smart enough, perhaps I simply haven’t worked hard enough (or on the right things). The practical consequence would be the same. I wish I knew what the admissions officer saw, it’s hard to suppress the feeling he’s only saying that because I did well in his courses.
A few disorganized remarks that may or may not be any help:
Different people are good at different things. In particular, the algebra/analysis dichotomy is a pretty standard one and if you’re good at analysis and not so good at algebra, it probably matters how good you are at what you’re best at.
It seems like simply not being fast enough could be largely irrelevant (if it’s really just a matter of speed; the limiting factor in doing mathematical research is unlikely to be how fast you can do practice-test-level questions) or quite important (if what it really means is that you didn’t understand the material well and therefore had to flounder about when someone with a better grasp would have headed straight for the solution). You may or may not be able to judge which.
Motivation is really really important, perhaps more important than talent once the talent is above a certain level. One piece of advice I’ve seen (specifically in the context of academic pure mathematics) is that you shouldn’t become a mathematician unless you couldn’t bear not to. Because mathematics research is really hard, and it will kick your ass, and how successful you are will have a lot to do with how you cope when it does.
(My own background: got the PhD, did a couple of years of postdoc, was quite staggeringly unproductive, got out of academia and into industry, have been reasonably happy there. Probably happier than I’d have been as a struggling academic. Most academics are struggling academics, especially for, say, the first 5-10 years after getting their PhDs.)
Some questions you might want to answer for yourself:
If you go to grad school, get your PhD, and then don’t go into academia, is that a good outcome or a bad one?
If you don’t take the academic path, what will you do instead?
Whichever way you go, regrettably there’s a very good chance that you won’t end up revolutionizing the world. If you compare possible academic futures with possible non-academic futures, and make the assumption that you do just OK—which feels like the better outcome?
Then he might also want to consider applied mathematics programs, especially if he also excels at programming and engineering but feels they’re too easy.
Endorsing this post. I am an academic that mostly proves theorems for a living.
So, my point regarding the speed.
In the middle of working out a problem, I had to find the limit of
S = 1/e + 2/e^2 + … + n/e^n + …
I had never seen this sum before, so now cleverness is required. If I assumed guess C was true, that would imply
e/(e − 1) = (e − 1)S
This claim is much easier to check,
(e − 1)S = 1 + 1/e + 1/e^2 + … = 1/(1 − 1/e) = e/(e − 1)
We know what S is, and the solution to the problem follows. In retrospect, I understand one method for how I could find the answer. But during the test, I can’t see through the noise fast enough (although I can smell the clue). I could go through each guess one by one, but I’m just too slow. Maybe there’s something else I’m missing that would’ve made the guess simpler, but that’s what I’m basing the slow opinion off of.
I don’t know if being slow at inference in this sense is a barrier, or indicative, of deeper creativity issues (or if I’m just suffering from the availability heuristic.)
Anyways your questions all very good, I don’t care for academia perse, I care about the questions. If I don’t keep doing academic stuff, I would hope I would’ve formed enough connections to find some route towards practical problems that still require some creativity.
Your last question is very interesting. I’m not sure how to answer it. My unhealthy worry, I think, is I really don’t like wasting peoples time. I suppose I don’t care about either being “just OK”, if “just OK” isn’t wasting peoples time, but I still get to be creative.
I guess I don’t want to be a pundit? I mean I’ll teach, but I’d be much happier if I was doing something theoretically. If this is impossible for me, I’d like to know the reasons why, and fail out as soon as possible.
Your questions are very interesting though, I still need to think about them more. Thank you for your thoughts, they give very good context to think about this, and its clear you’ve worried about analogous issues.
(I’ve heard people talk of branches of maths the way gender essentialists such as EY or Ozy Frantz would talk of gender identity.)
Possibly relevant: the relationship between algebra/analysis and how one eats corn on the cob.
One of my pet theories is that math and (applied) statistics require very different brains. People whose brains are wired for math make poor (applied) statisticians and people who are really good at stats tend to be poor at math.
This is partly an empirical observation and partly, I think, is a consequence of the fact that math deals with “hard” objects (e.g. numbers) that might not be known at the time, but they are not going to mutate and change on you, while statistics deals with uncertainty and “soft”/fuzzy/nebulous objects (e.g. estimates). Moreover, for applied statistics the underlying processes are rarely stable and do mutate...
You took the GREs cold. I’m surprised you did half as well as you did. Why? Because anyone who is not mentally handicaped can pay tutor a large sum of money, do exactly what the tutor says, and get a perfect score. I’m not exagerating—I have friends who tutor in this business, and every year they sit for the GRE as a requirement for their job, and get a perfect score. It’s a teachable skill, and one which has very little to do with the subject matter.
Now consider that most of the other people who took the GRE knew about this weakness. Especially internationally in places like China and India where (1) there are a lot of test takers, (2) a much larger test prep industry, and (3) massive incentives to do well (so as to get into an American or European university). Now keeping all that in mind, you still scored better than 72 / 68 percent of the competition despite having absolutely no preparation whatsoever.
Why are you not congratulating yourself?
I’m not convinced this is a good argument. You’re certainly over-stating how teachable the GRE is, and I have a least anecdotal evidence of lots of people who scored above 90% on the general GRE quantitative section without tutors. This includes at least one person who “took it cold.” Maybe those are super exceptional folks, but I think the statement that most of the people scoring in the top 30% had tutors is a really strong statement. I have worked for a test prep agency before and there aren’t a lot of top tier students in those classes, and indeed the courses and techniques really geared towards the bottom/middle-tier students. Also, you can’t do well on the GRE, especially the subject tests, without knowing the subject matter.
Your argument is plausible, but it’s all conjecture. I’m curious as to whether you think the GRE percentages mean anything at all, and if so, what the ‘adjustment’ for taking it cold should be,
Here’s some heterodox advice: Take stimulants. Before I wrote the SAT, I stayed off caffeine for a couple of weeks. Then I drank lots of coffee right before the test, and in the break between sections. Caffeine affects me very strongly, so you can use some other stimulant. It might shorten your life by a week, but it’s probably worth it.
If you’re not used to using stimulants, including ones as common as caffeine, don’t experiment for the first time on test-day. My cousin had to get a dean’s excuse to postpone a test when he (who never/rarely drank coffee) drank way to much while studying and wound up trembling too hard to hold a pen.
A similar strategy worked successfully for my friend. As a student, he was very enthusiastic about math and programming, but a big part of that was influence of his friends, me included. Later he saw evidence that he was in these topics, let’s say, above average, but not great enough. (He would be able to write simple programs, and he would get the job, but the more complex parts would be too abstract for him.) He tried studying informatics, and dropped out.
So he switched to economics, choosing some study that also included maths. Hanging out with different kinds of people he discovered he had good social skills (he didn’t notice that while hanging out with nerds). These days he is a consultant, and his specialization could be described as applying database tools to examine or improve economical stats of companies. (Imagine a huge company which has a lot of data in dozen different systems, including Excel sheets; those systems are not connected, they don’t even use a similar structure, and the company actually doesn’t even know which divisions or products are profitable. So my friend comes, and uses different tools to connect all those data sources together, and then creates easy-to-read reports. Which is not as easy as it seems, because those data sources describe the data differently, so he must examine the underlying territory to understand what can be connected with what. Also he must reduce all the available information into cca seven very simple graphs, so that even the most stupid managers could understand that easily.) So, he has some IT things there, enough to make him feel happy for living his dream of working in IT, but no lambda calculus or anything like that. On the other hand, travelling and debating with clients is okay for his extraverted nature.
Btw, is an IQ test by Mensa usually as trustworthy and worthwhile than a similar test by a psychologist?
Mensa tests are administered by psychologists. At least in Germany that is, but I assume Mensa has standards on this.