1) True, but by the time that roommate took the class he had had comparable math foundations to what I had had when I took the class. Considering the extra years, arguably rather more. (Upon further thought I realized that I had taken the class in 1988 at the age of 15)
2) That was first-semester calc, Purdue’s Math 161 class (for me and the roommate). Intro calc. Over the next two years I took two more semesters of calc, one of differential equations, and one of matrix algebra. By the time I met my freshman roommate (he was a bit older than me) and he started the calc class, I’d had five semesters of college math (which was all I ever took b/c I don’t enjoy math). Also, that roommate was a below-average college student, but there are people in the world with far less talent than he had.
3) Because time is the only thing you can’t buy. Time in college can be bought, but not cheaply even then. I got through school with good grades and went on to grad school as planned; his plans didn’t work out. Of course time marched on and I had failures of my own.
I agree that there’s more to success than one particular kind of intelligence. Persistence, looks, money, luck, and other factors matter. But my roommate’s calculus aptitude was a showstopper for his engineering ambitions, and I don’t think his situation was terribly uncommon.
1) True, but by the time that roommate took the class he had had comparable math foundations to what I had had when I took the class. Considering the extra years, arguably rather more. (Upon further thought I realized that I had taken the class in 1988 at the age of 15)
2) That was first-semester calc, Purdue’s Math 161 class (for me and the roommate). Intro calc. Over the next two years I took two more semesters of calc, one of differential equations, and one of matrix algebra. By the time I met my freshman roommate (he was a bit older than me) and he started the calc class, I’d had five semesters of college math (which was all I ever took b/c I don’t enjoy math). Also, that roommate was a below-average college student, but there are people in the world with far less talent than he had.
3) Because time is the only thing you can’t buy. Time in college can be bought, but not cheaply even then. I got through school with good grades and went on to grad school as planned; his plans didn’t work out. Of course time marched on and I had failures of my own.
I agree that there’s more to success than one particular kind of intelligence. Persistence, looks, money, luck, and other factors matter. But my roommate’s calculus aptitude was a showstopper for his engineering ambitions, and I don’t think his situation was terribly uncommon.