screwperman
Joined 18 years ago
Karma
327
Submissions
50
Member since
Oct 26
Recent submissions
Comment · 17 years ago
While I'm not an MIT student, I think the school puts a huge emphasis on being pragmatic ( see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=530659 ). Also, given the huge disparities in abilities of the freshmen there, I'd reckon that, more often than not, an MIT education would be a humbling experience.
Comment · 17 years ago
Oh, what a debacle! Even after being such a devout tennis buff, I have confused "game" with "match". Or maybe I just can't read :(.
Comment · 17 years ago
She was leading 4-1 and serving at 40-30, meaning that she was one point from winning the game
Eh, what?
Comment · 17 years ago
Bernoulli's principle also doesn't explain how planes can fly upside-down.
Comment · 17 years ago
Here is a documentary on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMSYGLbIUxc
Comment · 17 years ago
If you like this, you'll love the book Proofs without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking: http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-without-Words-Exercises-Classro...
Comment · 17 years ago
I'm in India right now and I've spent a total of 14 years here. The places I'm referring to are the ones the article seems to talk about: China, India, Japan and Korea.
A few months ago, there was a discussion on this right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482257
Comment · 17 years ago
We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel.
Asians rarely value individuality. Doesn't the American system do better in teaching kids to be different from the norm?
Comment · 17 years ago
It always seemed like more of a cultural difference than a financial one to me. Don't you think that TopCoder could be useful for American high school and undergraduate students, who could be preparing for the IOI and ICPC respectively?
Fun fact: this year's TopCoder Open Algorithm Championship winner was a Chinese high school student who never qualified for the IOI.
As an aside, if you don't mind telling me, do you think your participation in the IOI helped get you into grad school at MIT? If so, to what extent?
Comment · 17 years ago
Seems like I've finally found a way to Bing for "sex" in India.
Comment · 17 years ago
To see the equivalent of this initiative on steriods, take a look at Bihar's Super 30: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMSYGLbIUxc
Comment · 17 years ago
"Great job, Joel."
Joel does 0.1% of the work on StackOverflow and ServerFault. Give Jeff some credit.