Just got interviewed by microsoft! wee.

[MRD]

Intelligence != success, achievement, contribution to the world, or grades in class. It's just intelligence, one of many factors. SAT's are not an absolute measure of intelligence, but there is a very high correlation between SAT's and intelligence. You do occasionally find people who are intelligent with poor SAT scores and vice versa, and to some degree you can shift your scores by studying, but there is definitely a correlation.

 

[technoViking]

That is true.

Its not all about being smart to be successful, its if your determined is what counts.

 

[MRD]

Intelligence helps too, but it's one of many factors. There are many, many other talents that play a major role in success (each to different extents in different fields), and there are many factors unrelated to talent that play a major role as well. It also depends how you define success. Who is successful to you? Warren Buffett/Bill Gates for their money? Mother Teresa for the good she has done? The President of the US for his power? Winners of the Nobel Prize / Fields Medal for their academic achievements? The man or woman who was a great parent and loved and raised his/her children well? Success is a difficult thing to quantify. I suppose I believe that you are successful if you meet your own goals, no matter what they might be.

 

[technoViking]

nicely said

 

[El<(')>Maxi]

I'm 31, and have been retired for years. That won't happen at Microsoft.

I know lots of guys who are retired from MS, all under 40. Btw, if you're retired, why are you running an NF7-S?

 

[MRD]

Until recently my socket A's did everything I needed them to, and did it well. I'm finally beginning to see some age in gaming, so I am planning an upgrade. I'm waiting for the geforce 9's to come out so I can pick up an 8800GT at $200 or under.

Computers are depreciating assets. It's a bad investment to put a lot of money into them. I upgrade when I feel that it no longer meets my needs, not before, and I never upgrade to top end, I always try for about 25% below the top, as it's usually much cheaper.

Also, for a long time, I just didn't see much speed increase in the newer chips. The first Athlon 64's were only marginally faster than the XP 3200's and only in some apps. Dual core only helps if you are running 2 apps or multithreaded stuff. I've been waiting to make the upgrade meaningful. At this point, I'm not unhappy with my XP3200, but I want a more powerful video card, which means PCI-E, which means a new motherboard/ps/memory... so big upgrade time soon just to get faster video.

I'll still be running both nf7-s's too, but some of the older ones may get retired. Definitely the k6-2's are going, they just can't even websurf anymore.

 

[technoViking]

Damn where did you work to retire so early? I don't even understand retirement. Is it when you make enough money that you can just say f it, and live off of your 401k?

 

[MRD]

I'm not touching my 401k, but it means you have anywhere from barely enough to eat kraft dinner w/o working to enough to buy a 100 foot yacht every day and sink it for fun, or more. i.e. All it means is that you don't need to work anymore, or for that matter, even that you were dumb enough to quit working when you had no money and you now live in a cardboard box. =P

Damn where did you work to retire so early?

Oh, my first company... not my only one though: www.deshaw.com

 

[technoViking]

very cool

 

[Captain Newbie]

That's just ridiculous, and it's something people say who aren't smart and have bad test scores or who just want to think they are smarter than their test scores indicate. =P

Money has a lot more to do with SAT scores than anything else; "SAT" itself does not stand for anything anymore (EVEN THE COLLEGE BOARD SAYS THIS!) and with the amount of prep classes it's largely stupid to even consider it a measure of anything except how much money you spent preparing for it.

The ACT is slightly a different story as are AP exams — but I digress and I've threadjacked enough for one week already, and it's only Tuesday.

Computers are depreciating assets. It's a bad investment to put a lot of money into them. I upgrade when I feel that it no longer meets my needs, not before, and I never upgrade to top end, I always try for about 25% below the top, as it's usually much cheaper.

TOTALLY TOTALLY TOTALLY agree, the worst financial decisions I have ever made have not been made with respect to airplanes (themselves not always good assets, although twin-engine general aviation airplanes seem to be getting progressively more rare, meaning if you own a twin that is in decent shape you have a goldmine ), but made with respect to shiny computers.

I won't be buying any computers for another year or so, what I have works just fine for me, and I'd rather spend the money on avgas

Its not all about being smart to be successful, its if your determined is what counts.

Yessir!

At the moment, I'm determined to be a flight instructor (CFI) before the end of the year and determined to get into some aspect of the business side of aviation (maybe as an intern at AOPA) this summer, too. Last summer, and the summer before, I worked for a Fortune 500 that was silly enough to ask me back; and although I loved the technical side of the work and a lot of the people I was working with, not having a window of some sort was a major downer. That, and it seems like IS/IT managers are, for the most part, nontechnical people wedged into managing technical people, and don't have a clue about what's actually going on.

That, by the way, is why I think the computer business sucks. It seems that upward mobility is a little limited. But if it's what you want to do I totally get it: the work itself can be very fun.

 

[Sam__]

I dont wanna get into all this about "what is sucess" stuff but i do have to say this - hope you get to the second interview n get offered a job dude!

 

[MRD]

Money has a lot more to do with SAT scores than anything else;

You can claim SAT's have nothing to do with intelligence all you want, but everyone knows that you are just making excuses.

 

[YellowDart]

Meh, you can call any test a measure of intellegence, but IMO, tests are generally a poor benchmark. Hell, I did terrible on my SAT's and ACT's in high school, despite having a very high IQ.

I did better on my Series 6 and Series 63 exams (for my financial lisences) than I did on my SAT and ACT. Both of which, I can vouch are considerably harder (and arguably cover drier subject matter) than SAT and ACT.

 

[MRD]

I passed my series 7 and 63 exams as well, and I can say that there is nothing hard about them. They are simply a matter of studying a defined body of material and being able to regurgitate it on an exam. It requires no reasoning skills at all, simply acquisition of knowledge.

The SAT is different in that it has a lot more to do with reasoning which requires intelligence, and a pure IQ test is even more in this direction. You can study for SAT's to some degree, but not that much, and you can't study for an IQ test much at all.

Pretty much anyone could pass a series 6/7/63 if they spent enough time memorizing stuff. On the other hand, you could pull your average genius college prof without giving him time to study and he'd flunk the 6/7/63 badly. Those tests are just tests of your knowledge, not your intelligence.

I passed my series 7 the first time I took it with a near perfect score after studying for a weekend. I just took a lot of practice tests and memorized stuff like crazy.

 

[YellowDart]

/shrug I had a very different experience. Particularly in the 6. Maybe it was my crap luck of the draw on the questions on my test, but I had some NASTY trick questions. I passed with an 85 on my first try, but dammit if I didn't have to read a lot of those questions several times over to get the exact context.

Luckily, I may not need my 7 for a while. Hopefully the career change will happen before that's required.

 

[Ebola]

That's just ridiculous, and it's something people say who aren't smart and have bad test scores or who just want to think they are smarter than their test scores indicate. =P

You certainly know how to make friends. Is there anyone else you would like to insult in this thread?

 

[MRD]

Shrug, it's more important to me that the truth be told than that I coddle fragile egos.

Am I blunt? Sure. I call it like I see it. People make too many excuses in life.

 

[Adak]

Shrug, it's more important to me that the truth be told than that I coddle fragile egos.

Am I blunt? Sure. I call it like I see it. People make too many excuses in life.

@Techno-Viking, congrats on your interview (difficult as the accented English made it). I know from previous posts that you've worked very hard to get where you are, today.

I am very proud of you - O/C homeboy makes good!!

@MRD, I'm always amazed when I read "truth is more important than ego's", kind of posts.

The author's are such amazing hypocrites!

You know very well you wouldn't talk that way to an excitable acting group of young adults in a pool hall, bar, or on the street. You likely wouldn't have a natural tooth left in your mouth, if you did.

But safely hiding behind your wee keyboard, you're a big-old super cynic, and insulter! What a wonderful way to get attention for your opinions!

Truth (the real truth), is that you've done no research on this yourself, and are not a psychologist dealing with the correlation between IQ and SAT testing, are you? Your opinion on this matter is just not important. Neither is mine, and for the same reasons.

Unless time is critically short (house is on fire!), or the decision to be made is critically important and probably irreversable (let's drink while we drive!), there's no reason to leave your respect and common courtesy for others, behind.

Another simple truth: for many reasons, nearly everyone will have a fragile ego, at one time or another, in their life.

 

[MRD]

Actually, all of your assumptions are wrong. First, I'm well known in real life for being equally blunt and expressing my opinions whether people like it or not. Second, I actually did study the correlations between IQ and various tests in a statistics class in college. There were people who took the opposite point of view back then and I was quite happy to point out that they were wrong to their faces because the numbers and studies supported the simple fact that there is a correlation. If you don't believe it, spend 5 mins googling and you'll find tons of info proving a correlation.

I'm not deliberately trying to insult anyone, but I'm not trying to coddle them either, I'm simply stating the truth. While I believe in respect for all people and trying to be kind when you can, completely burying one's head in the sand and denying obvious reality isn't doing anyone any favors. Telling a kid that he doesn't have to do well on his SAT's because they don't mean anything anyways is only going to hurt him. You can't shield people from real life forever. It's better someone has the guts to tell them how it is. Kids who are always being told how great they are no matter what they do end up going nowhere. Praise should be given when deserved, and so should criticism.

Here's just one of many studies looking at the correlation:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/do...976.2004.00687.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=psci

A quote from the abstract: "These studies indicate that the SAT is mainly a test of g." ("g" is previously defined as general intelligence.)

Here's a site that lets you convert back and forth between SAT and IQ scores:
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/oldSATIQ.aspx

And from our old friend wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

"One study found a correlation of .82 between g and SAT scores. Another correlation of .81 between g and GCSE scores."

Here's an article about a study from the psych department at Case Western Reserve University.

http://www.case.edu/news/2004/3-04/satiq.htm

Title: "Study shows high correlation between the SAT and IQ both in "re-centered" and previous test"

"Meredith C. Frey, a doctoral student in psychology, and Douglas K. Detterman, a professor of psychology, examined the relationship between SAT results and general cognitivie ability in two studies. They found a high correlation between the SAT and IQ both in the current "re-centered" test and the version given prior to 1979. While that may come as a surprise to many who take the test, Frey and Detterman note that the author of the first SAT developed the test from Army intelligence tests. Frey and Detterman believe the results of their study are important for two reasons. First, it means researchers can fairly accurately estimate a person's intelligence without administering a lengthy IQ test. Second, SAT scores can provide a useful baseline for measuring decline in an individual's IQ in cases of head injury or diseases like Alzheimer's."

That's after about 5 mins of googling and taking the first links to show up out of about 91,000. I could quote articles all day showing a strong correlation between IQ and SAT scores.

 

[Adak]

I didn't say you couldn't find research info on this. It's all over, actually. I'm just saying that YOU are not a researcher on the matter, made no cite in your post, and frankly, this isn't the place for your opinion on the matter, anyway.

This was a thread about TechnoVikings interview with microsoft and his options for a job, remember?

You're expected to argue, sometimes passionately, about topics in college, in politics, etc. Did you notice we're not IN a college, here? No debate team, no speech class, no class of any kind.

Being sarcastic or insulting can be funny (think of the comic Don Rickles), but like Don, you have to show good judgement with it. IMO you made no attempt at humor.

And hell no, you wouldn't mouth off anytime, anywhere. You're smart enough to like your bones and teeth, in just the right places.

Just the other day a guy mouthed off at some teens in McDonald's to get them to knock off the "spicy" language because he had his daughter with him. He wasn't too concerned with common courtesy in making the request, so they stabbed him on their way out the door.

IMO people today do not have the forbearance that was common in previous generations. Not only does your lack of courtesy reflect poorly on you, but you have expressed a mis-guided belief that *somehow*, it's OK for you to "speak the truth" where and when you please.

I'd change that idea. Truth is heady stuff, and should be given out in well timed, well aimed, little sprinkles.