QCQ 10

Quote: Put Duckworth’s findings together with the discoveries in crossing the Finish Line, and you reach a rather remarkable conclusion: whether or not a student is able to graduate from a decent American college doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with how smart he or she is. It has to do, instead, with that same list of character strengths that produce high GPAs in middle school and high school.

Comment: Throughout my high school career the discussion about the accuracy of SAT and ACT scores to asses students as a whole has been very apparent. For a while I had no clue as to my position on this matter, that is, until I had actually completed all my college applications and tests. In my experience and after reading this quote, I realize that it makes sense for students who typically have strong grades in high school to be more successful in there future careers. This is because these students generally have a disposition that many people lack: Determination. For these students, success is within their grasp, for they know that if they put in the work they will succeed. This simple mindset is the difference between failure and success.

Question: Would it be more effective to gain this characteristic on your own or be born with these traits?

QCQ 9

Quote: Each summer about twelve hundred young American men and women arrive at the United States Military Academy at West Point to begin four years of study and to take their place in the fabled “long gray line.” But before any of them sees a classroom they go through seven weeks of Cadet Basic Training—otherwise known as “Beast Barracks.” By the time the summer ends, one in twenty of these talented dedicated young adults has dropped out…The experience of these army officers-in-training confirms the second law of mastery. Mastery is a pain.

Comment: I chose this quote for two reasons, one because it relates to the situation I will be in at the Naval Academy, and two because it provides an excellent moral. As stated, “mastery is a pain” reading this I immediately thought of the old phrase, “no pain no gain”, which made me realize that becoming a “master” at practically anything will be difficult, hence the word “pain” in both these quotes. Adding on to my previous posts about mindset, I would like to point out that whenever we want to get better at something we have to acknowledge that it will take work; a lot of strenuous, long, and time consuming work. Once we have identified and accepted this challenge, then and only then will we have the drive to actually become better at something.

Question: Can everyone be a master at anything with the sufficient amount of work?

QCQ: Mindset

Quote: "It goes by different names, but its the same thing. It's what makes you practice, and what allows you to dig down and pull it own when you most need it"

Comment: The quote above is alluding to positive character; having the motivation to train, and having the hunger for honest victory. Great athletes all share positive character. This reading speaks a lot to motivated athletes, it speaks to the idea that athletes aren't champions at the finish line, rather they are champions in the days upon weeks upon years of training they dedicate for a single moment. But why do athletes dedicate so much time and effort for a moment? They give this time and effort for the glory of victory, the sound of success, the feeling of completion, greatness. Math is in some respects the same way, much like how athletes train to attain their goals, students must study and dedicate their time to understanding math. Once they have begun to do this, they are on the right path to the math equivalent of glory, succes, and completion: an A in Dave's class.

Question: In competitive environments, is it still important to help others?

QCQ: Leibniz

Quote: “Leibniz lived in a period when it was still possible – as his own astounding career demonstrated – for a very highly intelligent and hard working scholar to absorb all the knowledge of his time”

Comment: Upon first look of this excerpt, one would likely construe “ absorbing all knowledge” as a great accomplishment, however underestimating its difficulty relative to the same challenge in the present. This perception, of course, is highly inaccurate, for it underestimates the discoveries found by other great minds before Leibniz, such as Euclid, Aristotle, and many others. With this information, one should immediately envy Leibniz for, not only his discoveries and contributions to philosophy and mathematics, but also for his mind and motivation.

With this quote, also comes a very important lesson, that success isn’t only achieved by innate talent, but by the combination of both your innate ability and personal effort. Implied in the reading, Leibniz “aimed to gain credibility of a critical thinker” in other words, he wanted to be known for his academic discoveries. To attain his goal, Leibniz studied and worked for years to increase his mathematical knowledge. With his concentrated effort and commitment, he was able to achieve his goal and leave a legendary mathematical legacy.  My point is that one will not likely achieve his goal on his “God given” abilities; rather he will achieve his goals with a combination of his abilities and concentrated effort.

Question: Was the author of this reading being literal in my chosen excerpt? Could an individual really attain all academic knowledge? 

QCQ: Newton

Quote: There in two years of rustic solitude—from age 22 to 24—his creative genius burst forth in a flood of discoveries unmatched in the history of human thought: the binomial series for negative and fractional exponents; differential and integral calculus; universal gravitation as the key to the mechanism of the solar system; and the resolution of sunlight into the visual spectrum by means of a prism, with its implications for understanding colors of the rainbow and the nature of light in general.

Comment: In two years of his youth, Newton was able to discover an overabundance of scientific and mathematic discoveries. Living in solitude, Newton really had no other resource available than his own mind. This made me think about the availability of knowledge to my own generation. In Newton’s time, networking academic discoveries was mainly through the spoken word and published books, furthermore, most publications were limited to the tightly knit academic community and those who were not part of that community would, for the most part, have trouble comprehending the information. In this generation, all of these discoveries are available to anybody at the click of a button. With this availability, I believe, our generation has the potential to create our own abundance of academic discoveries. If Newton was able to find all of these discoveries without any resources, imagine the possibilities of a modern Newton with modern resources.

Question: Are their any “modern Newtons”?

Chapter 5: The Stone-Breakers

Quote: “Hutton was by all accounts a man of the keenest insights and liveliest conversation, a delight in company, and without rival when it came to understanding the mysterious slow processes that shaped the Earth. Unfortunately, it was beyond him to set down his notions in a form that anyone could begin to understand.”

Comment: This excerpt from the book denotes the importance of clarity and communication. Despite his brilliant contribution to the study of geology, James Hutton could not articulate his ideas clearly in his numerous books. Due to his lacking articulation abilities, geology’s popularity did not increase until his friend, John Playfair, explained Hutton’s ideas in clear detail. Though his brilliance was clear to those who knew him, his written communication abilities were so bad that they caused the growth of the geology to be delayed.

Hutton’s experience enlightened me with the following: discoveries are open source and should always be presented in an articulate fashion. The reason being that science is a universally grown by every culture, and if nobody can understand the idea that is being attempted to portray, nobody will ever be able to build upon said idea. 

Comment2: It was interesting to me how the close speculation of a farm gave Hutton a clue as to the erosion of earth. His method of discovery reminds me of scaled experiments, and how one could find the outcome of a very largely scaled project, by testing it in a smaller scale.  It is amazing to me how this method of science was cognitively being used that long ago.

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Question: Why didn’t Playfair help him write from the beginning? 

Part 4: THE MEASURE OF THINGS

Quote: In America, Benjamin Franklin famously risked his life by flying a kite in an electrical storm. In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face. Cavendish, for his part, conducted experiments in which he subjected himself to graduated jolts of electrical current…”

Comment: Students, including me, often learn about important scientific discoveries and achievements at face value; learning about the results rather than the effort it took to achieve these results. This chapter has revealed to me the great lengths a scholar would go to satisfy his or her thirst for knowledge, and furthermore has made me appreciate their discoveries much more.

From traveling 208 miles on foot in order to accurately calculate the length of a degree, to trekking through extremely dangerous uncharted territory in the Andes, scholars cited in this book have gone to great lengths to answer the world’s most puzzling questions. In truth these efforts are to a degree absurd, and in my opinion unnecessary and stupid, but they serve as great examples of passion and determination.

Furthermore, their accomplishments dually serve as examples of perseverance. Compared to modern technology, the equipment used by scholars in the past was primitive. Much of their work had to do with years and years of tedious, but necessary, tests, which with today’s technology could be completed in seconds. This book, and more importantly those mentioned in the book, deserves the worlds up most respect for their efforts.

Question: ­­What efforts have been taken to find recent discoveries and achievements?