Aziz Ansari pointed me to the fact that it’s that time of the year again. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is counting down to the last person standing, and as of now there’s a large contingent of brown kids in the final rounds. Here are the championship finalists.
Update: Congratulations Sukanya Roy.
Sorry, but after last year’s disaster, I’m skipping out. Too many commercials, and the non-stop chatter from the announcers, while the kids are spelling was too much.
At first , I was torn between pride and indifference. (Pride in victory. But what exactly was the intellectual advantage of remembering strings of letters?).
But when I learned of the process (like learning roots) I saw there was a huge advantage in being familiar with foreign cultures and science and technology . Nothing wrong with that!! So go team India!!!
So go team India!!!
mebee it should be team indian american? (also, one of the finalists may be bangladeshi, muslim name + bengali language)
mebee it should be team indian american?
What he said!!
(Spoiler for those of you who taped it)
OK, despite my earlier statement that I’d skip it this year, I would up watching it anyway. ESPN does a much better job of covering it than ABC. The last hour of coverage was effectively commercial free, which added to the tension. There were fewer comedic videos, and even the two broadcasters were more restrained in their talking than the crew last year.
Congratulations to Sukanya Roy of Scranton, PA – this year’s winner.
Good effort but… what kind of creativity is involved in memorizing a whole dictionary? Personally I think this kind of activity is no different from becoming a doctor because it’s the “cool” Desi thing to do. So this girl can memorize a whole dictionary, but can she write a song, invent a cure for a disease… in short, can she do what none has done before? That is true genius, and I know of no Indian that has really and truly fit the bill, save for Ramanujan.
It was a very exciting spelling bee, as spelling bees go. That’s four straight for Indian-Americans — and nine of the last 13. The last three champs have been girls.
So this girl can memorize a whole dictionary, but can she write a song, invent a cure for a disease… in short, can she do what none has done before?
fine points. but do know that memorization is correlated with intelligence. anyway, spelling bees are more than memorization. they don’t just memorize words, but have to have a general feel for the nature of roots and the history of a language to make good “guesses.”
“…..I know of no Indian that has really and truly fit the bill, save for Ramanujan. “
Not sure what Zed means by the above statement. Are you saying – Ramanujan was the true last Indian genius?
So this girl can memorize a whole dictionary, but can she write a song, invent a cure for a disease… in short, can she do what none has done before? That is true genius, and I know of no Indian that has really and truly fit the bill, save for Ramanujan.
So your point is that she’s not a genius? I’m sure you’re right. But that doesn’t mean her accomplishment isn’t worth celebrating. She worked hard and excelled in her chosen field, and that’s something to be proud of in my opinion. It’s not like human accomplishment shouldn’t be celebrated unless the person is a once-in-a-lifetime “genius”.
Anyway – I wonder how these kids prepare for the spelling bee? I read in the article that she said she went through the dictionary twice. It reminds me of those autistic savants that can memorize entire phone books…they’re also not geniuses, but I think it’s pretty cool how their brains can do that, cause mine sure can’t.
It was a great event…4 Indian Americans in a row..thats something.
One thing I noticed after Sukanya won was the applause was rather mild and there were no press questions after she was presented the trophy. Whatever that means.
Anyway, well done Sukanya! We are proud of you.
I hate it when a network (ESPN, in this case) breaks away before we have a chance to see much of the celebration. I often watch the end of sporting events (championship finals) just to see the celebration — even when it’s a sport like hockey that I don’t really care about.
@Zed: I know of no Indian that has really and truly fit the bill, save for Ramanujan.
Here are the names of a few other geniuses from pre-1947 India (Indian subcontinent, more broadly) that you should know about besides Srinivasa Ramanujan: Panini (c. 500 BC), Chanakya (aka Kautilya), Pingala, Aryabhatta (c. 500 AD), Bhahmagupta, Bhaskara (II), Madhava (c. 1300 AD), Sir C.V. Raman (Raman effect and Nobel prize) and Satyendra Nath Bose (of Boson fame).
See MAC Tutor’s overview on Indian mathematics: Indian Mathematics: Redressing the balance, by Ian G Pearce.
Whether one is a ‘genius’ or creative shouldn’t be the question. To win a spelling bee, or go far in one, you have to be pretty smart, very hard working and dedicated. And as for the use of the spelling bee, you learn about words, word origins( particularly) and enrich your vocabulary and exposure to the world’s languages.
Also, these spelling bees are quite exciting and suspenseful, as you watch the spellers and wonder if they are going to get the word right, or miss it by a vowel or consonant. The movie “Spellbound”, a dramatised documentary of the 1999 Spelling Bee, was a very suspenseful movie, and that too without any car chases, explosions, shootings or killings. Imagine that, eh?
For those of Indian origin, it’s great to see our people do so remarkably well, year after year, in this competition. Indians are now associated with winning these high profile contests.
“@Zed: I know of no Indian that has really and truly fit the bill, save for Ramanujan.”
Really? You have very little idea of what you’re talking about when the only Indian genius you can think of is Ramanujan. It’s kinda like people who can think of only Einstein when they’re talking about geniuses.
“Here are the names of a few other geniuses from pre-1947 India (Indian subcontinent, more broadly) that you should know about besides Srinivasa Ramanujan: Panini (c. 500 BC), Chanakya (aka Kautilya), Pingala, Aryabhatta (c. 500 AD), Bhahmagupta, Bhaskara (II), Madhava (c. 1300 AD), Sir C.V. Raman (Raman effect and Nobel prize) and Satyendra Nath Bose (of Boson fame).”
And here are some more that are alive: Kannan Soundararajan, Akshay Venkatesh, Kiran Sridhara Kedlaya, Manjul Bhargava, Chandrashekhar Khare, Srinivasa Varadhan, Calyampudi Rao and Madhu Sudan.
And then there are people who have made seminal contributions to their fields like Narendra Karmarkar, Sanjeev Arora, Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, Nitin Saxena, Salil Vadhan, Raman Sundrum, and Ravindran Kannan.
@ razib:
While memorization may possess a certain utility value, it is not the best marker of intelligence. Memorizing and understanding are two different things; with a good enough understanding, one should be able to reconstruct a theory from first principles. I also think that any right-brained person with moderate intelligence, given sufficient time, can memorize the spellings of several thousand exotic words. Where a spelling bee is concerned, it becomes a question not of intelligence, but of whether they’ve seen the word enough times that reflexive recall is possible.
@ Suraj:
Yes, Ramanujan was the last Indian genius. Those IIT kids don’t count. Neither does the guy who invented hotmail.
@ Alina:
Well, my opinion is that the girl’s parents saw the monetary value of it, and so encouraged her to go for it. Like all good Indian kids, she obeyed; the rest is history. What I fail to see is how this accomplishment can be good for anyone other than herself. It will not contribute to the progression of any field of study. Neither will it contribute to the welfare of society in any positive manner. When she’s old enough, the parents will encourage her to study medicine, which she’ll probably excel at, since it too is basically a lengthy exercise in memorization.
@ IndMath:
None of those people were geniuses. Vedic mathematics was a joke, despite whatever claims it’s supporters want to make. Yes, Indians invented zero; unfortunately, that was the only useful Indian contribution to mathematics until Ramanujan. Proof? Ramanujan’s notebooks are still being analyzed by many people from all over; whereas only the Sanskrit fanatics are interested in the Vedic stuff.
While memorization may possess a certain utility value, it is not the best marker of intelligence. Memorizing and understanding are two different things; with a good enough understanding, one should be able to reconstruct a theory from first principles. I also think that any right-brained person with moderate intelligence, given sufficient time, can memorize the spellings of several thousand exotic words. Where a spelling bee is concerned, it becomes a question not of intelligence, but of whether they’ve seen the word enough times that reflexive recall is possible.
what is the best marker of intelligence? as i said, memorization is strongly correlated with realized outcomes on intelligence tests. intelligence tests themselves correlate with creative/productive outcomes. also, you keep ignoring the fact that the bee winners have to do more than memorize. for low level normal spelling bees, yeah, memorization is what people do. but at this level there’s a lot of understanding of the structure of linguistic roots which has to be done. you can keep repeating yourself in mischaracterizing the nature of what it takes to win the bee (i.e., memorization only), but that doesn’t make it anymore true.
re: ramanujan, i think you do a disservice to chandrasekar. i would add bose, but he’s not as well known, probably because he never relocated to the west like chandrasekar. i wouldn’t put them in the same class as ramanujan, but they weren’t garden-variety scholars.
zed,
What is your opinion of Chinese savants? Middle Eastern savants? Who are the good ones?
@Zed.
Your response is ignorant and moronic. And that’s being charitable about it. And your belittling (of Indians’ contributions) appears to be coming from a bigoted (of anti-Hindu and anti-India flavors) perspective.
Response forthcoming.
Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara et al in the ancient or medieval period had nothing to do with “Vedic Mathematics”. Don’t bring them unnecessarily into that whole issue or controversy. Vedic Maths refers to the achievements of the very ancient period around 1500 BCE or earlier.
It’s typical of a certain Indian mentality( frog in a well?) that the whole subject of whether there are sufficient numbers of Indian geniuses should arise when commenting on Indo-American children winning a national spelling bee. Save it for another time, and let’s just congratulate these fine kids!
Save it for another time, and let’s just congratulate these fine kids!
YES!
Zed seems to have a better sense of genius than Lev Landau:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau
“Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0.5, was assigned to Albert Einstein. A rank of 1 was awarded to “historical giants” Isaac Newton, Satyendra Nath Bose, Eugene Wigner, and the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger. Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted himself to a 2. David Mermin, writing about Landau, referred to the scale, and ranked himself in the fourth division, in the article My Life with Landau: Homage of a 4.5 to a 2.[6][7]”
From: Queens Spelling Bee Finalist Ruined By “Jugendstil”
“What is your opinion of Chinese savants”
China’s produced exceptional Mathematical geniuses in the last 100 years. Shiing-Shen Chern, Shing-Tung Yau, and Terry Tao are pillars of modern Mathematics, though an ignoramus like Zed probably has no idea about them either.
@ razib,
The best definition of a genius would be someone who has exceptional, profound insight, albeit a priori . An example would be the five yr old Gauss summing up the positive integers from 1-100, in a few seconds (he also happened to be a polymath, which explains the speed of his calculations, but that’s irrelevant; what’s important is the method he utilized). Geniuses are constantly inventing new methods and accidentally rediscovering old ones; e.g. Feyman invented Feynam diagrams (just to make his life in QM easier), Newton invented calculus (just to make his work with mechanics easier), and Ramanujan actually rediscovered, independently, a lot of math that was already well-known. Some of these discoveries lead to entirely new fields, while others push the frontiers of pre-existing ones. It goes without saying: geniuses are revolutionaries . But there is nothing revolutionary in memorization; number 1, you’re working with pre-existing knowledge, and number 2, there is no potential to push the frontiers of present knowledge.
But there is nothing revolutionary in memorization; number 1, you’re working with pre-existing knowledge, and number 2, there is no potential to push the frontiers of present knowledge.
you’re talking to nobody. stop it.
@ Kutra:
If the Indians and Chinese produced so many geniuses, such as you claim, India and China would not be as backwards as they are today. Indians and Chinese are not innovative, because the Indian and Chinese cultures never promoted innovation. Most of Vedic Brahminism was not concerned with progress of any sort; it was concerned with preserving caste distinctions and the c**p called “Vedas.”
P.S: Savants are not geniuses.
Some of the searchers to my site, seem to be unaware that there is a major difference between savant and genius. A savant is not a genius – and a genius is not a savant (though some geniuses have had savant like skills). Most savants are impaired in their general intellectual functions, though savant like gifts can exist in unimpaired individuals (but these people are not, then, called savants). The key difference between savant and genius is that a savant is not creative; whilst a genius is creative by definition.
P.P.S: Terrence Tao is not a genius either. He is a very good mathematician, yes, but not a genius.
How is this any different than a parent pushing a child to pursue athletics, music, science, the fine arts, etc? All of these are worthy pursuits that lead to monetary scholarships if a student excels at them. You seem to think there is something wrong with a student excelling in a field and receiving a scholarship for it.
When an Olympic athlete wins Gold or a team wins the National Championships, how is that good for anyone than themselves? You’re so obsessed with “genius†that you’ve missed the obvious: what’s being celebrated here is merit in diligence and excellence. She’s a smart kid who won a Spelling Bee, no one is pretending she’s the next Ramanujan!
For someone so obsessed with genius, you don’t seem very apt in logical reasoning 😉 First, if she grows up to become a physician, she certainly will be contributing to the welfare of society in a positive manner, although I clearly can’t pretend I know anything about her. Second, if medicine was merely an exercise in memorization, then it would be dominated by autistic savants like Kim Peek. At the student level there is much memorization, but it’s not an academic practice – in clinical practice, the focus is on pattern-detection through logical deductive reasoning, and it is constantly progressing through innovation in techniques and procedure.
Anyway, the point you keep missing (or ignoring, since it’s been mentioned repeatedly) is that you don’t just open a dictionary and memorize for this – think of how inefficient and time-consuming that would be! It’s not a Grade school spelling test lol. That’s like saying Math is about memorizing formulas. At this level it requires deeper understanding of linguistic structure, and the roots and derivatives of words.
x2
The abundance of Indian child spelling bee competitors is like the similar glut of South Korean female golfers. An odd social quirk that arose from parental peer bandwagoning after some parents observed, “hey my kid could do that”, and more critically the lack of focused competition due to general lack of interest in the field by society at large.
Silly me, I made a duplicate post in the Huma thread.
Desis are the kings of the spelling bee. But the Chinese seem to be overtaking Indians at tennis despite Indians having a headstart in world tennis. A Chinese American (Chang) male and a Chinese(Li Na) female have now won at least one grand slam tournament. Amirtraj, , Mirza – came closest, but not quite there.
I still think the funniest thing during Spellbound was the Indian American kid not knowing what Darjeeling was and looking initially unsure how to spell it. It’s too bad Wes Anderson made a movie with that word in the title after that time so he could have had an idea. I just found it funny that he had tutors to get him familiar with word origins in several languages, but nearly gets tripped up with a word from a region of the world his own parents could have helped him out with. To be fair to him, he did manage to spell it.
@ Alina,
Actually it had nothing to do with linguistic structure. I took Latin for three years in secondary school and had to memorize tons and tons of words, including the different forms (ablative, indicative, past and present, conjugate, etc.) and of course the spelling. There was no pattern to the form whatsoever. My only saving grace was that the list of words was relatively short and finite, so by writing a word down enough times, I managed to memorize it. Did this exercise help me on the SAT? No. Do I remember the different forms of even one word I memorized? No. Did memorizing words in Latin help me to better understand English? No. Linguistic structure will not help you to memorize the spelling of a word. NOTHING will, except actually seeing the word itself. I can only speak for English and Latin, perhaps French (which its adherents claim is pure) does. And before the curtain falls, let me quote Sukanya Roy herself:
“I’m just kind of in shock,” Sukanya said. “They were very hard words, but all the words I got, I just knew.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/scripps-national-spelling-bee-sukanya-roy-wins/story?id=13749610
That’s how she won the contest; she happened to have seen all the words that were asked of her in the Spelling Bee. She didn’t resort to any linguistic analysis; if not impossible altogether (if only because of the limited amount of time available), that would have caused her task to double in volume. When it came down to the final round, the runner-up was confronted with a word she hadn’t seen, whereas the finalist had seen her word. You see how luck was key here.
Yes, becoming a doctor contributes to the welfare of society, I don’t deny that. But medical school is still an exercise in memorization. Actual medical practice is a matter of experience. I would go so far as to say that almost anyone with above average intelligence could become doctors, though perhaps not surgeons (which requires far more than just intelligence).
Wrong link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110603/ap_on_re_us/us_spelling_bee
“But the Chinese seem to be overtaking Indians at tennis:
Pravin..why do you think that is? I’ve thought about this as well and can find no answers.
this is off topic, but i know that the chinese state is really invested in sports as a way in which they can flex their international muscles. i don’t think the indian state is focused on this.
“this is off topic, but i know that the chinese state is really invested in sports as a way in which they can flex their international muscles. i don’t think the indian state is focused on this.”
Michael Chang, winner of 1989 French open, the first Asian men to do that, is also ethnic Chinese. I don’t think he got any helps from PRC.
re: michael chang, awesome response! N = 1 falsifies my assertion, doesn’t it?
China may just want to start teaching cricket to their folks just to spite India.
do you want to take monetary bets on this? i doubt they will. the chinese don’t really care too much about india, they just want to replicate some of what the soviets and eastern bloc did in sports which can showcase their country’s new status in international events. i haven’t kept track of it but they apparently copied the old GDR’s doping path to success in some events a few years back, particularly women’s sports where there’s a great marginal return on drugs. the chinese army is involved in a lot of this too, cultivating sports leagues and even doing some match making.
“P.P.S: Terrence Tao is not a genius either. He is a very good mathematician, yes, but not a genius. “
LOL! You’re seriously an ignoramus of the highest order. Stop making yourself seem more foolish with every passing post. In Math, the low-hanging fruit have already been picked and Math is too specialized for the kinds of generic breakthroughs you want to term genius. Proving the fundamental lemma or Poincare Conjecture is something only a genius is capable of doing. you really are talking out of your ass completely.
“P.P.S: Terrence Tao is not a genius either. He is a very good mathematician, yes, but not a genius.”
hahahhahahha.. oh man, this guy’s a real comedian. hahahaha.. your ability to make a complete fool of yourself is impressive.
@ Kutra and Jackal
Terrence Tao is basically a learning prodigy. That means he can absorb and pick up information at a phenomenal pace. But he is not at the level of someone like Euler or Perelman. If he (Tao) ever manages to solve a Millenium Problem, then yes, he will have proven himself a genius, but this is unlikely to ever happen. If you want an example of a true mathematical genius, try John Von Neumann; this guy reinvented the wheel in quantum mechanics, led the foundations for game theory, and laid the foundation for computers, in addition to a host of other things.
The problem with your definition of “genius” is that it’s far too broad. Just because someone wins a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal does not make them a genius. There are many people with very high IQ’s, but there are very geniuses out there.
Tao doesn’t even compare to Witten:
You can talk to some profs who were at Princeton at the time and as a school its produced its share of talent (including Tao) but I don’t think the faculty has ever been blown away like they were with Witten. He (Witten) must have had one of the quickest journeys from “I want to be a physicist” to “I am the most important person in the field” in history. Since then he has a ton of important discoveries on his own, and also has done an amazing job of explaining and realizing the significance of other peoples work like his first paper on the Maldacena Conjecture. The latter imo is very unique.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47/science-math-philosophy/greater-living-genius-terence-tao-ed-witten-663604/
*There are many people with very high IQ’s, but there are very few geniuses out there
Zed, please stop. Please! I think it’s hard to compare people working in different fields, but if you want to play that game, then from the very same link we have this quote:
“Originally Posted by genekim I just saw this thread – and for reason, my picture is in here, lol. Tao is much smarter than Witten, hands down. I’ve talked with Witten a few times and have interacted with Tao since he’s in my department. Don’t get me wrong, Witten’s very very bright, but Tao is on a whole new dimension.”
“If you want an example of a true mathematical genius, try John Von Neumann; this guy reinvented the wheel in quantum mechanics, led the foundations for game theory, and laid the foundation for computers, in addition to a host of other things. “
Your definitions are nebulous. If Neumann’s a genius and Tao is not I don’t know what’s going on. For the record, I’m a grad student in a top 10 school and have done advanced coursework in a couple of areas where Neumann contributed, so I have a pretty good sense of what he did. Tao’s breath in an era of super-specialized Math is astounding:
http://www.claymath.org/library/annual_report/ar2006/06report_tao.pdf
And I lack the cognitive horsepower to understand any of his papers in their entirety.
Anyway, I’m done with this discussion.
@ Kutra,
Witten is far more accomplished than Tao. Number 1: Witten predicted M-theory, which is basically equivalent to someone in the 1700’s predicting the coming of quantum mechanics. Some other things Witten has done:
One of Witten’s early contributions in physics is a natural solution to the so called hierarchy problem. The Standard Model of Particle Physics predicts a particle known as Higgs Boson. Its mass however seems much lighter than what the Model predicts. Witten has shown that the mechanism of broken supersymmetry offers a natural explanation to the hierarchy problem. In supersymmetry theory, the Witten Index tells whether supersymmetry is broken or not. Witten went on to make seminal contributions in supersymmetric gauge theories. Along with Nathan Seiberg of the Institute of Advanced Studies Witten developed what is now known as Seiberg-Witten Theory which is related to Donaldson theory in mathematics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten
Furthermore, Witten pretty much single-handedly invented a new branch of mathematical physics, which taken in it’s entirety, is more valuable than the sum total of all of Tao’s papers.
If you look up Tao on Wikipedia, there’s only one accomplishment for him:
n 2004, Dr. Tao, along with Ben Green, a mathematician now at the University of Cambridge in England, solved a problem related to the Twin Prime Conjecture by looking at prime number progressions—series of numbers equally spaced. (For example, 3, 7 and 11 constitute a progression of prime numbers with a spacing of 4; the next number in the sequence, 15, is not prime.) Dr. Tao and Dr. Green proved that it is always possible to find, somewhere in the infinity of integers, a progression of prime numbers of equal spacing and any length.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao
The rest of the article talks about what a great collaborator Tao is, lol. Obviously, Tao is brilliant, but he’s nowhere near Witten. Witten is a genius – every aspect of his life bears this out – from the lack of formal training in physics to going on to becoming the leading physicist of the day – and his amazing ability to switch between mathematics and physics (not very different from Gauss and Newton), making seminal contributions to both .
I don’t think you have any idea about Von Neumann did, or you wouldn’t be comparing him to Tao. There has been no mathematician of Von Neumann’s caliber since his time; in terms of either breadth or depth. Tao is like a little worm at the base of a gigantic mountain, in comparison to Von Neumann.
“Furthermore, Witten pretty much single-handedly invented a new branch of mathematical physics, which taken in it’s entirety, is more valuable than the sum total of all of Tao’s papers. “
Stop trolling. What is YOUR background to make such an assessment?
“Tao is like a little worm at the base of a gigantic mountain, in comparison to Von Neumann. “
You’re really a f****** troll.
My background is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Have you no worthwhile response other than ad hominem attacks?
Can’t make a worthwhile case for Tao? Hahaha.
Personally I feel very sad for these children to have the pressure of trying to grow up in a world dictated to them. There are no choices as they have to repay some debt that been placed on them long before egg met spern. I’m all for racial pride, but I saw a documentary on these kids and how (to me) they are groomed like animals to “perform” on this stage. Just so mommy and daddy can boast about what a great job they did pressuring them in the first place.
My point exactly. I wonder if Desis are just better at mental endurance than physical endurance. I have seen people like Paes, Vijay Amritraj , Mirza start out matches gangbusters but wilt later on. Golf is about the only “sport” where we have world class player in the diaspora. Chess is another “””sport”””™ I guess. Cricket doesnt count as Desis have such a major numbers advantage over the few other cricket playing countries that you are bound to find world class players. And watch out. China may just want to start teaching cricket to their folks just to spite India. Afghanis seem to be taking to cricket in the Pathan region.