Does anyone actually like probability? Its the worst kind of mathJay wrote:
Besides, reports of Asian dominance in STEM are horribly overblown. See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/in … maths.html
I wouldn't call the daily mail an accurate news source...Winston_Churchill wrote:
Does anyone actually like probability? Its the worst kind of mathJay wrote:
Besides, reports of Asian dominance in STEM are horribly overblown. See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/in … maths.html
It's totally a culture thing, yeah. It's not an indictment of Chinese at all, but they're much more docile and afraid of being seen as foolish than white people are, so they're afraid to speak up. They used to absolutely rape the curve in all my hard engineering classes, but everything they learned was done very methodically and they learned specifically for the test. If you asked them to think about the 'why' of something rather than the 'how' they would be completely and utterly lost. It's just a completely different mentality than western people grow up with.Cybargs wrote:
You're pretty spot on about chinese kids being introverts. I blame the parents pushing their kids k-12 who go to school from 7am-5pm EVERY DAY, come home with a ton of homework and prepping for the weekly exams. They wonder why their kids end up being burned out and producing shitty results in uni.Jay wrote:
Not really, no. Any monkey can do CAD drawings, sure, hell, most of the work is done by design programs already. Draftsmen went the way of the dinosaur unless they are protected by a strong union like electrical workers are. You could hire a roomful of Chinese introverts and they'll produce flawless drawings for much less than I would work for, but that's the thing, they're introverts. You'd probably be surprised based on the type of students that normally walk the halls in engineering schools, but the companies that hire engineers go out of their way to hire the ones that can actually talk to people without wetting themselves. They're the ones that become project managers and interact with customers, you wouldn't want a Chinese kid doing that.Macbeth wrote:
You don't think you are replaceable?
Besides, I'm in a protected industry firewalled behind licensure requirements. Only a licensed engineer can sign off on drawings, and only signed drawings can be used for construction. The project I've been working on with my current company is coming to a close so I tossed out my resume last week and I've already had four interviews and two job offers. I'm not worried
I actually love it. I'm a total stats nerd. Probability leads to forecasting, and forecasting is cool as fuck imo.Winston_Churchill wrote:
Does anyone actually like probability? Its the worst kind of mathJay wrote:
Besides, reports of Asian dominance in STEM are horribly overblown. See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/in … maths.html
Has a lot to do with Confucianism and face... students don't want to "disrespect" the teacher by challenging ideas, and they don't want to ask questions or they think they'll be A. wasting the teachers time or B. appear stupid in front of the class and/or teacher.Jay wrote:
It's totally a culture thing, yeah. It's not an indictment of Chinese at all, but they're much more docile and afraid of being seen as foolish than white people are, so they're afraid to speak up. They used to absolutely rape the curve in all my hard engineering classes, but everything they learned was done very methodically and they learned specifically for the test. If you asked them to think about the 'why' of something rather than the 'how' they would be completely and utterly lost. It's just a completely different mentality than western people grow up with.Cybargs wrote:
You're pretty spot on about chinese kids being introverts. I blame the parents pushing their kids k-12 who go to school from 7am-5pm EVERY DAY, come home with a ton of homework and prepping for the weekly exams. They wonder why their kids end up being burned out and producing shitty results in uni.Jay wrote:
Not really, no. Any monkey can do CAD drawings, sure, hell, most of the work is done by design programs already. Draftsmen went the way of the dinosaur unless they are protected by a strong union like electrical workers are. You could hire a roomful of Chinese introverts and they'll produce flawless drawings for much less than I would work for, but that's the thing, they're introverts. You'd probably be surprised based on the type of students that normally walk the halls in engineering schools, but the companies that hire engineers go out of their way to hire the ones that can actually talk to people without wetting themselves. They're the ones that become project managers and interact with customers, you wouldn't want a Chinese kid doing that.
Besides, I'm in a protected industry firewalled behind licensure requirements. Only a licensed engineer can sign off on drawings, and only signed drawings can be used for construction. The project I've been working on with my current company is coming to a close so I tossed out my resume last week and I've already had four interviews and two job offers. I'm not worried
Ah how can I forget books and libraries. The budget busters of every university.Winston_Churchill wrote:
Really? Books and libraries cost a fortune. Also, most engineering programs pay significantly higher tuition. Plus science departments have industry contracts and build equipment for other departments at universities. That's total nonsense. Most of the equipment you use at university has been there for years and years and cost next to nothing compared to salaries.Macbeth wrote:
Liberal art majors subsidize all the other majors. All you need for a history class is a lecturer and a projector. No labs or machines needed.
Other than massive machines like particle accelerators and the like, but those actually serve a purpose and aren't used by undergrads. So its irrelevant to your argument
I guess, yeah. Engineering is all applied maths. Like, for instance, instead of solving a differential equation for a complex system, we use superposition to break it into smaller parts that can be solved statically, if possible. Only when you get into stuff like vibration analysis do you start using anything much more complex than algebra and trig. Stats is very useful for calculating things like service life of a part, so you can in turn set up a preventative maintenance system. Things like that.Winston_Churchill wrote:
I suppose I havent taken any advanced probability, but it just never appealed to me. Probability to math is like what social science is to science.
Last edited by Jay (2013-03-22 14:21:56)
Looking at the fees breakdown for my university, I can see that ~85% of their budget goes to salaries and building maintenance (most of which is salaries obviously). But yeah, if you really think you're subsidizing anyone its on the order of a few dollars a year.Macbeth wrote:
Ah how can I forget books and libraries. The budget busters of every university.Winston_Churchill wrote:
Really? Books and libraries cost a fortune. Also, most engineering programs pay significantly higher tuition. Plus science departments have industry contracts and build equipment for other departments at universities. That's total nonsense. Most of the equipment you use at university has been there for years and years and cost next to nothing compared to salaries.Macbeth wrote:
Liberal art majors subsidize all the other majors. All you need for a history class is a lecturer and a projector. No labs or machines needed.
Other than massive machines like particle accelerators and the like, but those actually serve a purpose and aren't used by undergrads. So its irrelevant to your argument
You guys are stupid.Jay wrote:
It's totally a culture thing, yeah. It's not an indictment of Chinese at all, but they're much more docile and afraid of being seen as foolish than white people are, so they're afraid to speak up. They used to absolutely rape the curve in all my hard engineering classes, but everything they learned was done very methodically and they learned specifically for the test. If you asked them to think about the 'why' of something rather than the 'how' they would be completely and utterly lost. It's just a completely different mentality than western people grow up with.Cybargs wrote:
You're pretty spot on about chinese kids being introverts. I blame the parents pushing their kids k-12 who go to school from 7am-5pm EVERY DAY, come home with a ton of homework and prepping for the weekly exams. They wonder why their kids end up being burned out and producing shitty results in uni.Jay wrote:
Not really, no. Any monkey can do CAD drawings, sure, hell, most of the work is done by design programs already. Draftsmen went the way of the dinosaur unless they are protected by a strong union like electrical workers are. You could hire a roomful of Chinese introverts and they'll produce flawless drawings for much less than I would work for, but that's the thing, they're introverts. You'd probably be surprised based on the type of students that normally walk the halls in engineering schools, but the companies that hire engineers go out of their way to hire the ones that can actually talk to people without wetting themselves. They're the ones that become project managers and interact with customers, you wouldn't want a Chinese kid doing that.
Besides, I'm in a protected industry firewalled behind licensure requirements. Only a licensed engineer can sign off on drawings, and only signed drawings can be used for construction. The project I've been working on with my current company is coming to a close so I tossed out my resume last week and I've already had four interviews and two job offers. I'm not worried
When was the last time you were in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaysia working with an Asian Engineer PM? Building skyscrapers and underground railways? Yeah, my brother in law. Introvert my ass.Jay wrote:
We were both talking about first generation people, not people who grew up here in America. There's a vast cultural difference between the two, although I see plenty of first gen parents dropping their kids off at all of the academies around here every night.
a pretty respectable proportion of the uk's higher education funding (it is all state run) comes from international appeal. the reason the UK and US universities are considered top worldwide isn't because of their domestic prestige/excellence. in fact most of the UK/US's native best colleges are not worldwide top50. the best 'super universities' are the ones that attract a worldwide mix of scholars. i would say that cultural capital/knowledge economy is a fairly big part of the western countries who no longer 'produce' or 'export' anything material, per se.Jay wrote:
No, you're afloat because you are the banking and investment hub of Europe. All those MBA's you denigrate are putting food on your table.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
it is kind of structural, on the level of a society's development. america's big push for STEM degrees was obviously in the post-ww2 boom years, when everything was go, and new technology and invention was helping to power the american technological gap over the rest of the (pretty much obliterated) developing world. when a country reaches a certain level of comfort, though, you tend to get people studying the more reflective and cultural degrees. it's definitely a luxury. i doubt there are many people growing up in india who can genuinely aspire, with any pragmatic sense, to go and study philosophy or ancient history at an american university. it just isn't the way up the ladder. with that said, western countries like the US and the UK do talk a lot nowadays about 'knowledge' and 'cultural' capital being just as operative parts of a nation's running/success as pure capital itself. the UK still stays afloat on the world level because it is essentially a place of educational and cultural prestige. so it's not as if the maturation into the luxuries of 'liberal arts reflection' are all bad and decadent.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-03-22 15:12:50)
Is he extroverted around white people, or just Asians? In my experience, Asians are perfectly social around people that share their culture, and become next to impossible to get a word out of when confronted with people from other cultures.Ilocano wrote:
When was the last time you were in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaysia working with an Asian Engineer PM? Building skyscrapers and underground railways? Yeah, my brother in law. Introvert my ass.Jay wrote:
We were both talking about first generation people, not people who grew up here in America. There's a vast cultural difference between the two, although I see plenty of first gen parents dropping their kids off at all of the academies around here every night.
Most of the companies he worked for are British subsidiaries. :pJay wrote:
Is he extroverted around white people, or just Asians? In my experience, Asians are perfectly social around people that share their culture, and become next to impossible to get a word out of when confronted with people from other cultures.Ilocano wrote:
When was the last time you were in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaysia working with an Asian Engineer PM? Building skyscrapers and underground railways? Yeah, my brother in law. Introvert my ass.Jay wrote:
We were both talking about first generation people, not people who grew up here in America. There's a vast cultural difference between the two, although I see plenty of first gen parents dropping their kids off at all of the academies around here every night.
subsidizes educations for people like uzi? LOL DUDE YOU ARE FUCKING HILARIOUS. first in that ee chats thread you call me "textbook learned", after people call you that here for 2 weeks. now people have been ragging on your subsidized education hypocrisy for the last 2 weeks, you try to imply i have a 'subsidized education'. lol. hahahaha. i took a bank loan for my education, in my own name. i didn't take a government hand-out. i won an excellence scholarship that is maintained privately by the university, and most of the funds for it come from alum donations. 'subsidized education' no, jay, that's you taking grants and purposefully calculating military career paths to get discounts. you say i "deflect", but you are fucking psychotic when it comes to recycling criticisms that have been levelled at you. it's amazing, in a way. the mental gymnastics you flex.Jay wrote:
They don't put food on the table? Are they stuffing all that money in a vault behind padlock and key? No, the money is taxed, and the rest goes to paying rent, and buying expensive suits and all the other crap they like. That money then works it's way around, gets taxed some more, and then the government turns around and subsidizes educations for people like uzi. The money they don't spend ends up in bank accounts, where it is loaned out to people wanting to buy homes, who give their money to construction workers, who in turn buy goods from grocers etc. Frankly, your view on economics is very similar to Ayn Rand, who made the stupid assumption that every person is their own island and that we're not all linked together by economic transactions we make on a daily basis. We're all in the web, and we all feel the pain to some extent when shit goes bad. It's why a banking crisis can cause a world-wide depression instead of just affecting bankers.
We all have subsidized educations Uzi. I went to a State College that receives ~25% of its funding from the general tax fund. Yours is even more heavily subsidized if 9k a year seemed outrageous to you. It's just the way the system works.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
subsidizes educations for people like uzi? LOL DUDE YOU ARE FUCKING HILARIOUS. first in that ee chats thread you call me "textbook learned", after people call you that here for 2 weeks. now people have been ragging on your subsidized education hypocrisy for the last 2 weeks, you try to imply i have a 'subsidized education'. lol. hahahaha. i took a bank loan for my education, in my own name. i didn't take a government hand-out. i won an excellence scholarship that is maintained privately by the university, and most of the funds for it come from alum donations. 'subsidized education' no, jay, that's you taking grants and purposefully calculating military career paths to get discounts. you say i "deflect", but you are fucking psychotic when it comes to recycling criticisms that have been levelled at you. it's amazing, in a way. the mental gymnastics you flex.Jay wrote:
They don't put food on the table? Are they stuffing all that money in a vault behind padlock and key? No, the money is taxed, and the rest goes to paying rent, and buying expensive suits and all the other crap they like. That money then works it's way around, gets taxed some more, and then the government turns around and subsidizes educations for people like uzi. The money they don't spend ends up in bank accounts, where it is loaned out to people wanting to buy homes, who give their money to construction workers, who in turn buy goods from grocers etc. Frankly, your view on economics is very similar to Ayn Rand, who made the stupid assumption that every person is their own island and that we're not all linked together by economic transactions we make on a daily basis. We're all in the web, and we all feel the pain to some extent when shit goes bad. It's why a banking crisis can cause a world-wide depression instead of just affecting bankers.
Since when did MBAs have anything to do with banking?Jay wrote:
No, you're afloat because you are the banking and investment hub of Europe. All those MBA's you denigrate are putting food on your table.
