Swerve Wrote:This thread really leaves me speechless.

Horusmaster Wrote:obviously lack of communication between whites and asians at that time.
And because of the culture difference. Whites value intellictual properties alot more than asians. In the asian community, when someone discovers something, he won't get his name next to every equation he made. The person's discovery is usually mentioned without the person's name when applying them.

And what do you mean by usefulness? Did pascal discovered a "use" for pascal's triangle, asides from the properties that is already known by the chinese?

Worthyness Wrote:You can't say that he wasn't smart enough to find an answer per se. Maybe he had been working on it and happened to not live long enough to find a use for it. Who's to say that he DIDN'T find a usefor it and that he just didn't have time to publish it all? I, mister argue. If he found a way to use it, he would publish it: "I found a mathematical proof which proves that God exist, but I don't want to publish it. You can't deny that I'm a smart person because of that." For all we know, he DID find a use for it and he hid it in some mountain cave so no one would find it and use it for some random purpose (unlikely, but this is all speculation and guessing for the most part). We can only guess until we get a time machine and ask him what the hell he was thinking about.

All those mathematicians/scientists must have had some sort of motivation/ previous work to go off of. We can't tell if the Asian guy (i think he's named Yang Hui), given the same resorces of Pascal, could have done just the same as Pascal. Of course we can't, but why should we bother to think about that? It's completely irrelevant. What I say, is that Pascal found a way of using the triangle that noone else did before him. Noone did that before him. Noone. All we know is he found something before someone else, but didn't get his name on it. He found a use of it. Albert Einstein did not make differential geometry, Riemann did. But Alberto found a use for it.

(From this) i say we are all capable of doing great things, it's just a matter of how motivated we are and how much support and such we have behind us. From what i see, people can be motivated in a situation that is utter crap OR a situation that is incredibly high in support. Hell, I've seen it happen. People can choose whether or not they want to be "smart", but it's not all black and white. There are other factors that can affect the motivation of certain people like the group they hang out with, their racial sterotypes, etc. This, I agree with.

Spideyjvc Wrote:Didn't bother reading through this thread, but I feel like pointing out the fact that grades aren't everything. In fact, some of the most influential figures throughout history did horribly in school. Einstein didn't even finish school. I always found it quite foolish to determine how smart someone is based on our grading system. All a straight A report card tells you is that they handed in their homework and memorized what anyone else in the class could have memorized if they put the time into it.

Providence Wrote:You're speaking of two different kinds of love, I think.

MetaSeraphim Wrote:Pretty sure he was talking about the lovey-dovey type of love, and I was also talking about that same kind of love.

Worthyness Wrote:Extra curriculars count for a lot less than people expect them to.

Spideyjvc Wrote:Fixed. High school advisors will feed you this along with the line explaining how important SAT scores are, but colleges only look at those when they have a tough time picking between you and someone else. They're not going to take someone with bad grades just because said person went to computer club every day. If they take such a person, it'd most likely be to fill their quota (not official, of course, but they can't have a 100% white school or people will stir up drama).

The college wants to keep its graduate rate up so it can get more rep and rake in more people. College is a business, and won't usually take a blow to their own balls for the sake of giving someone who most likely will drop out the 1st year a chance.

Worthyness Wrote:Well obviously they take your grades into consideration too, but since you're applying to a school where most everyone will have the same, fi not higher, GPA as you, it is necessary to fill in extra curriculars to help you out. Obviously computer club won't help much, but if they're appling to be an EECs major or a CS major, it could help them immensly if they know what they're doing.

Devil's Sunrise Wrote:If whites value intellectual properties more than Asians, why is it that Asian parents are stricter than white parents when it comes to school?


Probability.

Horusmaster Wrote:First, not all Asian parents are stricker. Second, the "sterotypical" Asian parents believes that a good education would lead to the success of the child in the future in terms of finding a good job and etc, thus stricter, this has nothing to do with intellectual properties.

And why is probability so "important" in pascal's time aside from playing a gambling game?
compare that to the "important" use of math at that time in China in astronomy and inventing the calendar.

Devil's Sunrise Wrote:Finding a good job means you have to be smart. You won't get hired to do something that's already invented or could be done with a computer.

I don't really get what you're trying to say in the lower paragraph. Are you stating that probability is useless? Compared to astronomy, probability has a physical use at a much lower level than astronomy has.
To the astronomy-thing: Newton, Kepler and Galilei. The calendar was invented everywhere, and was not special for the Chinese only.

Horusmaster Wrote:Your point? Finding a good job still won't mean you'll become famous mathematician/scientist.

You said pascal got credited because he find an important use of his discovery: probability. Probability is not important in pascal's time.
While in ancient China, astronomy was very important, and the mathematics they discovered are to be used in astronomy.

Quote:Finding a good job means you have to be smart. You won't get hired to do something that's already invented or could be done with a computer.