My father (who would eat a doughnut with a knife and fork), when taking my brother and I out for ice cream, would constantly be looking at my brother and I eating and remind us to "lick the sides, lick the sides, dammit." Since then, though I love ice cream when I eat it, there's always that little voice in my head reminding me of this.
ogged, if someone stares at you, you must give it a generous interpretation. Most idiosyncratic ways of eating are endearing, I think, so long as the idiosyncracy isn't sloppiness.
Hijacking to discuss new revelations about Chet, in Malcom Gladwell's latest New Yorker piece:
Halfway through the book, however, Shulman and Bowen present what they call a "surprising" finding. Male athletes, despite their lower S.A.T. scores and grades, and despite the fact that many of them are members of minorities and come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than other students, turn out to earn a lot more than their peers. Apparently, athletes are far more likely to go into the high-paying financial-services sector, where they succeed because of their personality and psychological makeup. In what can only be described as a textbook example of burying the lead, Bowen and Shulman write:
One of these characteristics can be thought of as drive—a strong desire to succeed and unswerving determination to reach a goal, whether it be winning the next game or closing a sale. Similarly, athletes tend to be more energetic than the average person, which translates into an ability to work hard over long periods of time—to meet, for example, the workload demands placed on young people by an investment bank in the throes of analyzing a transaction. In addition, athletes are more likely than others to be highly competitive, gregarious and confident of their ability to work well in groups (on teams).
Shulman and Bowen would like to argue that the attitudes of selective colleges toward athletes are a perversion of the ideals of American élite education, but that's because they misrepresent the actual ideals of American élite education. The Ivy League is perfectly happy to accept, among others, the kind of student who makes a lot of money after graduation. As the old saying goes, the definition of a well-rounded Yale graduate is someone who can roll all the way from New Haven to Wall Street.
I just read this. I was a legacy, and I'm sure that that explains my own admission to Harvard (grandfather and two great grandfathers, plus my gran's lawyer gave about a million bucks to the law school.) I got into Yale too, but I applied early there, and that helps a lot. Princeton was honest and didn't let me in. I may have been first in my prep school class, but my year was a little weak compared to others. My SAT scores were certainly low.
I wouldn't have minded being an athlete. Then I would have had the energy to be a chet, which I definitely don't have.
The study was a bit of a nightmare -- the researcher was entirely innumerate, and she hired a high school student with no familiarity with either statistics or programming to do her programming. (Hey, I had a manual.) While the conclusions referred to in the article are pretty reliable, I was was kind of horrified that it was successfully published.
(One of the many low points of the job was being told to run a standard deviation of the incomes of subjects. I'd also done the data entry, and had entered incomes in thousands of dollars: "35" for "35,000", so the SD was a number something like 17.5656.
Dr S. asked "Isn't seventeen dollars awfully small for the standard deviation?" I explained that the incomes had been entered in thousands of dollars, so the SD was also in thousands of dollars: $17,565.60.
"Does that work?"
"Why, yes. Yes it does."
"I'll believe you, but just to be sure, why don't you re-enter all the data from the entire dataset, and re-run the SD."
So I faked the output, and charged her for the week it would have taken me to redo the data-entry.)
Not generally all that stupid, but terrible at math, and had turned anything with numbers into an area in which she simply didn't think at all. I can't imagine how she survived doing research based on statistics.
Huh, that's how I eat my ice cream. Never thought about it before.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 12:49 PM
My father (who would eat a doughnut with a knife and fork), when taking my brother and I out for ice cream, would constantly be looking at my brother and I eating and remind us to "lick the sides, lick the sides, dammit." Since then, though I love ice cream when I eat it, there's always that little voice in my head reminding me of this.
Posted by D | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 1:14 PM
ogged, if someone stares at you, you must give it a generous interpretation. Most idiosyncratic ways of eating are endearing, I think, so long as the idiosyncracy isn't sloppiness.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 1:23 PM
I eat while standing on my head. That's gotten me more women than you can even begin to imagine.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 1:44 PM
You must have a powerful esophagus.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 2:18 PM
Eating ice cream is "innocent and non-sexual"? That's sick.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 2:24 PM
You must have a powerful esophagus.
Peristalsis is teh R0xXorZ!!1!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 3:41 PM
I have the world's strongest esophagus. You can look it up in the Guiness Book of My Ass.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 8:10 PM
I find the Guinness Book more reliable.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 2-05 10:48 PM
Hijacking to discuss new revelations about Chet, in Malcom Gladwell's latest New Yorker piece:
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 9:46 AM
Hey, he cites a study of Hunter College Elementary students that I worked on as a research assistant when I was in high school.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 11:58 AM
Nice!
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 11:58 AM
I just read this. I was a legacy, and I'm sure that that explains my own admission to Harvard (grandfather and two great grandfathers, plus my gran's lawyer gave about a million bucks to the law school.) I got into Yale too, but I applied early there, and that helps a lot. Princeton was honest and didn't let me in. I may have been first in my prep school class, but my year was a little weak compared to others. My SAT scores were certainly low.
I wouldn't have minded being an athlete. Then I would have had the energy to be a chet, which I definitely don't have.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 12:04 PM
The study was a bit of a nightmare -- the researcher was entirely innumerate, and she hired a high school student with no familiarity with either statistics or programming to do her programming. (Hey, I had a manual.) While the conclusions referred to in the article are pretty reliable, I was was kind of horrified that it was successfully published.
(One of the many low points of the job was being told to run a standard deviation of the incomes of subjects. I'd also done the data entry, and had entered incomes in thousands of dollars: "35" for "35,000", so the SD was a number something like 17.5656.
Dr S. asked "Isn't seventeen dollars awfully small for the standard deviation?" I explained that the incomes had been entered in thousands of dollars, so the SD was also in thousands of dollars: $17,565.60.
"Does that work?"
"Why, yes. Yes it does."
"I'll believe you, but just to be sure, why don't you re-enter all the data from the entire dataset, and re-run the SD."
So I faked the output, and charged her for the week it would have taken me to redo the data-entry.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 12:06 PM
LB--That's awesome. What an idiot.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 12:09 PM
Chicagoans, take note of that article by Gladwell. Harvard looks down on you despite the presence of Hanna Gray on the Board of Overseers.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 12:10 PM
Not generally all that stupid, but terrible at math, and had turned anything with numbers into an area in which she simply didn't think at all. I can't imagine how she survived doing research based on statistics.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 12:11 PM