coffee_rules Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/05/texas-teen-wins-national-geographic-bee/ As champion, Rahul Nagvekar won a $25,000 scholarship and an all expense paid trip to the Galapagos Islands. Second place finisher Vansh Jain won $15,000 in scholarship, and the third place winner, Varun Mahadevan from Fremont, Calif., won a $10,000 scholarship. Approximately 4 million students from across the country participated in the competition this year. :yikes: :two_thumbs_up: We are the Geek Army!
surajmal Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 isn't the spelling bee around the corner? Too bad you can't rote memorize your way through math or comp sci. Very rarely you see Indian kids do well in those competitions.
Zelig Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 isn't the spelling bee around the corner? Too bad you can't rote memorize your way through math or comp sci. Very rarely you see Indian kids do well in those competitions. Are you kidding me :ohmy: Indian descendants have won the comp seven times in the last decade. The last four years' champions have all been Indians :agree:
Zelig Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 OMG from Fremont .. I haz smart neighbors Irani :phehehe: :--D
punjabi_khota Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 isn't the spelling bee around the corner? Too bad you can't rote memorize your way through math or comp sci. Very rarely you see Indian kids do well in those competitions. What the **** are you talking about champ ? Proof or gtfo. Look at International Physics Olympiad results and report back.
surajmal Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 What the **** are you talking about champ ? Proof or gtfo. Look at International Physics Olympiad results and report back. here are the math results. Pretty mediocre. http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx here are the comp sci olmypiad results. Even worse than Math. http://www.ioinformatics.org/history.shtml Biology Olympiad, they are just mediocre (even though you'd think this would be walk in the park with all the Rattafication that goes on in Indian schools). http://www.ibo-info.org/ibo-results-and-awards I'll give you Physics.
punjabi_khota Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 ^Yes, I am waiting for physics :phehehe:, and your explanation of how India does well there. :hahaha: Here's the link to save you effort: http://olympiads.hbcse.tifr.res.in/subjects/physics/past-performance-at-iphos As you can see, it is pretty impressive. :nice: Now lets stop the whining, shall we ?
punjabi_khota Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 I mean if you know anything about the mental state of high school people preparing for JEE etc, you would know that most people (and especially their parents) don't care about anything that takes time/focus away from JEE/etc. So these olympiads don't always get the best students, since a lot of people don't even care to sit in such exams due to various reasons. To give you an example, Math olympiads don't have calculus in the test, where as calculus is a huge chunk (40-50%) of JEE math, while reverse is true for number theory (no number theory in JEE, quite a bit in olympiads). Maths and Physics olympiads have been organized systematically for last 10-15 years or so, and with increasing efforts, I am sure math will get better. Physics is already top class. 11 years ago when I sat for high school exams, I didn't even hear about comp. sci olympiad, so I am pretty sure it is relatively obscure thing, or atleast pretty new on the scene.
surajmal Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 I wasn't deriding performance of Indian kinds in olympiads, rather just making an observation. Still it is amazing how far ahead Chinese Kids are from rest of the world. Although, I'm guessing Chinese government looks at these types of competitions as ego boosters and probably supports the participating kids heavily.
Zelig Posted May 25, 2012 Posted May 25, 2012 Oh, you guyz are discussing about Olympiads, I thought it was about Spelling Bee
seedhi Posted May 26, 2012 Posted May 26, 2012 I mean if you know anything about the mental state of high school people preparing for JEE etc, you would know that most people (and especially their parents) don't care about anything that takes time/focus away from JEE/etc. So these olympiads don't always get the best students, since a lot of people don't even care to sit in such exams due to various reasons. To give you an example, Math olympiads don't have calculus in the test, where as calculus is a huge chunk (40-50%) of JEE math, while reverse is true for number theory (no number theory in JEE, quite a bit in olympiads). Maths and Physics olympiads have been organized systematically for last 10-15 years or so, and with increasing efforts, I am sure math will get better. Physics is already top class. 11 years ago when I sat for high school exams, I didn't even hear about comp. sci olympiad, so I am pretty sure it is relatively obscure thing, or atleast pretty new on the scene.Thats a reasonable explanation in the Indian context. But what is interesting is that in the US, while Indian-american kids dominate in the Bees, they dont seem to have the same impact in the math olympiad teams from the US. Math olympiad individual results for US team: http://www.imo-official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=USA . There is no doubt Indian-american kids are doing well everywhere. But in the spelling/geographic bees there is massive over-representation simply because they have become a cultural issue in a very specific manner, which in turn could be because these events are more visible/televised etc.
akshayxyz Posted May 26, 2012 Posted May 26, 2012 I mean if you know anything about the mental state of high school people preparing for JEE etc, you would know that most people (and especially their parents) don't care about anything that takes time/focus away from JEE/etc. So these olympiads don't always get the best students, since a lot of people don't even care to sit in such exams due to various reasons. To give you an example, Math olympiads don't have calculus in the test, where as calculus is a huge chunk (40-50%) of JEE math, while reverse is true for number theory (no number theory in JEE, quite a bit in olympiads). Maths and Physics olympiads have been organized systematically for last 10-15 years or so, and with increasing efforts, I am sure math will get better. Physics is already top class. 11 years ago when I sat for high school exams, I didn't even hear about comp. sci olympiad, so I am pretty sure it is relatively obscure thing, or atleast pretty new on the scene. This. In India, best of the science/math brains, @ high school, are too narrowly focused on Engineering entrance exams. And once you are in engineering college, you are a bit late for catching up on (from olympiad perspective) abstract-algebra/number-theory/combinatorics stuff, as you are kind of forced to follow the syllabus towards your engineering degree/jobs... and these topics also form the basis of theoretical computer science, olympiad type of programming problems. And perhaps that also explains relatively better performance at Physics olympiad. I have not seen the paper of physics Olympiad, but I would assume significant part of it would require strong foundation of calculus and other stuff already covered with JEE/resnick-heliday syllabus.
Sidhoni Posted May 26, 2012 Posted May 26, 2012 isn't the spelling bee around the corner? Too bad you can't rote memorize your way through math or comp sci. Very rarely you see Indian kids do well in those competitions. Indian descendant kids have been the best.
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