<p>I never suggested spending hours upon hours of studying. Whats the point of homework then if you should only think about problems instead of doing them… I am suggesting that conceptually understanding something is the beginning. If you think you understand something, then just go ahead and do it and make sure that you can hand write what you know. After all that is basically what a test is.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t memorize and spit out the information. You should understand since a lot of the test questions are basically rehashed versions of stuff you learned, but applying the concepts. Practicing problems just makes you understand the concepts… The more errors you get the more gaps and lack of conceptual understanding you have. The test shouldn’t be your first attempt at applying your concepts. </p>
<p>I don’t even know how you could say that you “learned” the quotient rule without practicing it… In the end, how you learn also plays a large factor. There are some students who go to lecture and have no need to take notes, while there are many more who take notes that they study from later on.</p>
<p>Do you think they dropped out or didn’t do well because they were so unintelligent that they had to do so? You are pointing out examples of people who didn’t do well, and saying look at these people who didn’t do well, yet were brilliant. What is the significance of that? We are talking about the students who do well. This is not an if and only if statement. Also, it is clear that these people you mentioned were led into their particular situations because of their unique intellects. " He loathed the ‘dull, mechanical method of teaching’;" He found school boring and uninspiring. That has absolutely NOTHING to do with with why some kids are able to absolutely kill every test they take. You are defending a point on an emotional basis and there is very little substance to the argument. And please don’t point out specific cases when we are talking about trends of a population. They are meaningless. It is the same thing as if we were arguing who is taller, girls or boys, and someone said. Guys are obviously taller, and then another person pointed to a girl who is 6’3, which is significantly taller than the average male and said. See look, just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you’re taller. Most people can understand the flaw in that, but then as the prevalence of the fallacy gets smaller, they tend to adopt the previous stance, because it provides a way to support their opinion.</p>
<p>the wikipedia article really doesn’t talk about him doing poorly in school at all. it mentions that he didn’t pass the entrace exam for the engineering program at that school in zurich, but it also mentions that he was accepted into their math & physics program a couple of years later. the text you quoted didn’t mention that. it is spinning things. </p>
<p>people try to attach false stories to einstein all of the time in order to lend credence to their agenda. i’ve heard that he has never gotten a doctorate degree and that he was devoutly religious, both of which aren’t true.</p>
<p>Lonesin is correct. Your confusion is irrelevant. Showing that some average students are brilliant does not mean that top students (in terms of GPA) aren’t typically smarter/more intelligent than average students. </p>
<p>Even if ALL geniuses were average students, this wouldn’t prove anything, because the proportion of geniuses is small enough that it would leave plenty of intelligent students that could potentially be top students (in terms of GPA).</p>
<p>You need to be considering ONLY high GPA students. Within this group of high GPA students, how many are above-average in intelligence? Or, to throw out the issue of “what is intelligence,” how many are conceptual learners?</p>
<p>EDIT: Due to grade inflation, GPA might not be a good enough indicator of top students. I think lonesin is specifically referring to consistent curve setters–this is a smaller segment of the student body than 3.9-4.0 students are.</p>
<p>There are many versions of the story about Einstein but there is one thing that is consistent- out of his peers that graduated, he was criticized for not following the textbook and was the only one who didn’t go on to teach and had to ask for a patent office job.</p>
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<p>Justtotalk, you’re thinking is flawed. You’re approaching the subject with a set of implications and assumptions that make the argument meaningless.</p>
<p>If we look at it as linear set where there is a range of GPAs and a range of IQs, we can agree out of the subset of higher range of GPAs there will be a higher average IQ than out of the entire set of GPAs. </p>
<p>But there can’t be any assumption made about why they are there. An example- there tend to be higher IQ’s with blue cars- no assumptions can be made about that, it just tends to fall that way. Like I said in my original post, there are so many factors to take into account that making a blanket statement like “People with great grades are smarter” is essentially meaningless. I firmly believe if anyone tries hard enough they can get great grades.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. If most high GPA students are intelligent, conceptual learners, this doesn’t mean that a strong work ethic won’t let you earn a high GPA. In fact, maybe most high GPA students are intelligent BECAUSE intelligence and work ethic are highly correlated. Work ethic could be the determinant of high GPA even if most high GPA students are intelligent. Who knows?</p>
<p>I only meant to point out that your Einstein example (or any other example involving average students) is not relevant–and that Lonesin was correct to tell you so. To use average GPA students in your counter examples, you’d need to show that SO MANY intelligent people are average that there aren’t enough left in the world to make up a majority of high GPA students.</p>
<p>My personal bias makes me think you’re both right. There’s a good chance that curve setters are usually very intelligent, and there’s a good chance that a strong work ethic + a nurturing environment is almost enough to earn a solid GPA. </p>
<p>I just don’t think you two are even talking about the same subset of people. Lonesin seems to be referring to a more select group of individuals within each college. But I hope you both realize that even if you’re talking about the EXACT SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE, your arguments are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>How is it not relevant? If most high GPA students are conceptual learners, and Einstein was a bad student, it is very relevant. </p>
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<p>Why? If I show the majority of smart people that bought red cars, and indeed blue cars do not indicate intelligence, that still does not change anything.</p>
<p>Lonesin never said that conceptual learning led to high GPA’s. He/she only said that high GPA students tend to be conceptual learners (i.e. they are a majority). No causal connection needed here.</p>
<p>The only way to disprove that using average students is by showing that so many conceptual learners are average that there aren’t enough left to constitute the majority of high GPA students.</p>
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<p>I’m probably just slow, but this isn’t making sense to me yet. Can you spell it out? Suppose Einstein isn’t unique in this sense, suppose all geniuses are average students. How is this relevant?</p>
<p>If you look at Lonesins post carefully, he clearly implies high grades are a result of being smart and not simply correlated. I don’t think I am just splitting hairs here.</p>
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<p>It would strengthen the basis of my argument- high grades don’t measure conceptual thinking but hard work and determination, unless you do not think Einstein was a great conceptual thinker.</p>
<p>I think we simply have different interpretation of Lonesin. I still think he’s only saying that high GPA students are intelligent–I don’t see any interpretation saying they got their high GPA by being intelligent. </p>
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<p>Since your Einstein example came after “I disagree 200% lonesin,” I assumed you were using Einstein as an example to show that high GPA students are not conceptual learners.
That would be pointless, but I now understand that’s not what you’re saying.</p>
<p>I still think your Einstein example is not very useful. You don’t have an academic career like Einstein had without having an incredible work ethic. Winning a Nobel, writing a few hundred scientific works–this kind of production is a combo of luck and passion. When a researcher is consistently lucky, you know he/she is tackling problems constantly. </p>
<p>Einstein’s intelligence may have helped him tackle the right problems. But once you reach a certain intellect and have the capacity for breakthrough research, the luck factor is primarily a function of work ethic. (My opinion, of course).</p>
<p>Thus, I’m not sure Einstein is a good example of GPA measuring work ethic rather than intelligence.</p>
<p>A “simple correlation” would imply that high GPA students are intelligent. A causality would imply that high GPA students got a high GPA BECAUSE they’re intelligent.</p>
<p>And like I’ve said before, showing that many average students are intelligent does nothing to disprove that high GPA students are intelligent. Thus, if you disagree with the correlation of high GPA: intelligence, then you certainly haven’t provided any counter examples.</p>
<p>I think you are adept at setting up straw men but I’ll finish with this.</p>
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<p>No, it would imply the average high GPA student is more intelligent. This is very different from what lionsin said which is that a high GPA student is more intelligent.</p>
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<p>Showing average high gpa students are on average smarter, does nothing to prove any given high GPA student is smarter. I know quite a few people, who I wouldn’t consider clever or intellectual who have very high GPA’s. These people typically tend to be the sponge brains who are excellent absorbers but have trouble when it comes to exploring new ideas, leading a company, or creating anything on their own. They make excellent trivia contestants, the ones you see on Jeopardy and who wants to be a millionaire.</p>
<p>The point is, you can make the case smarter people tend to be more driven and therefore are more inclined to make higher grades.</p>
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<p>Work ethic isn’t a bad thing. I used Einstein to show that a gift (brilliance or creativity) does not mean they will earn a high GPA, or do well in school. Certainly, there are more cases like Einstein who do not do well in school and have extraordinary talents, but his was the most famous case. You may say that all that is needed to be successful is a work ethic and passion, and that talents do not exist, but then you’d be agreeing with me that GPA does not indicate any sort of innate ability. Otherwise, Einstein is talented and that coupled with work ethic and focus allowed him to make extraordinary contributions. Either way you would be agreeing with me.</p>
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<p>The article you linked sounds like something you would give your employees so they would make more money for you. I don’t underestimate the importance of hard work, but missing time with your wife just to achieve some sort of obscure benchmark hardly sounds appealing.</p>
<p>Ah, so now we realize that you simply don’t understand correlation. You could have said this earlier and saved everyone time.</p>
<p>A correlation between high GPA and intelligence does not mean that ONLY the average high GPA student is intelligent. (In fact, it doesn’t say anything about the average high GPA student). You need to quantify the strength of the correlation before making any such assertions–and even then, only a correlation of -1 or +1 says something about the average (these are the only linear cases where the intelligence for the average high GPA student can be computed without additional information).</p>
<p>Maybe an example will help you:
suppose that intelligence & gpa (for some weird reason) are related by an inverse parabolic function. </p>
<p>correlation ~ 0. This doesn’t mean that the average high GPA student is as smart as the average mid-range GPA student. In fact, the mid-range students would be smarter. </p>
<p>You can’t infer anything about the average high GPA student, the average mid-range GPA student, or how they measure relative to each other **when using a correlation that involves all ranges of GPA and intelligence. **</p>
<p>This is why I assumed we were agreeing that the correlation is very high–so that a linear approximation is appropriate. Otherwise correlation is nonsense in this context.</p>
<p>Thus my statement: high gpa students are intelligent. If you disagree, fine. But realize that Einstein is not a counter example to the assumption of such a correlation. Einstein could only be used in context of causation.</p>
<p>A high GPA doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart and a low GPA doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dumb.</p>
<p>GPA = intelligence (yes it does play a role) + work ethic + drive to well + w.e else u want to add in.</p>
<p>I know many ppl w/ higher GPAs than me that not only lack common sense, but are just plain old bigots. They cannot hold themselves in an intelligent conversation. Yes, they probably know more about the last English book that we read b.c they read it 3x and highlighted it while I skimmed it.</p>
<p>There definitely is going to be a correlation between intelligence and GPA, but it won’t be a perfect linear graph. There will be some points that deviate. My basis for this statement goes w/ the age old story of if we played chess 100 times he’d beat me 99 times. The graph doesn’t take into consideration the WILL of a person to do well.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t know why people are arguing about this^^^</p>
<p>Sorry, as you can obviously tell I’m not a good writer. I’m not trying to say that intelligence and GPA are highly correlated. </p>
<p>There was a poster above (Prothero) that used Einstein as an example of an intelligent person with poor grades. This supposedly discredited the notion that high GPA students are intelligent. </p>
<p>All I’m saying is that a student with high intelligence but average grades shows nothing about the intelligence of high GPA students. Unless, of course, the correlation between GPA and intelligence is +1. But if the correlation is +1, then Einstein wouldn’t have been able to be an average student. It’s a logical fallacy.</p>
<p>I obviously don’t think that GPA and intelligence are perfectly correlated. There are way too many high GPA students for this to be possible. The common idea is that work ethic plays a much bigger factor, and I suppose I agree (not that there’s any solid reasoning for this, it’s just a collective bias that people perpetuate).</p>