# math teacher needed to teach basic math to Harvard graduate who wants to go to business school **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 14, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943 "2011-05-14T23:17:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/21 "2011-05-15T13:06:45Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. That’s the entire point. If multiple, contradictory conclusions can be drawn from the same data, with no way to differentiate between the likelihood of any of them, then it’s an error to rely on any of those conclusions as accurate. This is basic critical thinking stuff, here. That you have (apparently) graduated from high school without picking any of that up is at least as worrisome as the conclusions you’ve drawn in your OP. No, it really doesn’t. I don’t think he’s offering it as actual proof. It’s like bringing up a story about a politician and then saying that all politicians are corrupt. Assumedly you have a lot more evidence for your conclusion than is offered. Heck, you just did it. You asserted from one interaction that **code\_grey** did not learn about critical thinking in school. I’ve now offered a different explanation. By your own logic, since there are alternate explanations, your statement is invalid, and making it shows you did not learn critical thinking in school. No, what you and **code\_grey** posted are both just fine. MPSIMS does not in any way require rigorous arguments, and **Wagner** was 100% wrong in asserting that **code\_grey** must have statistics or he can’t have an opinion. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/22 "2011-05-15T13:26:42Z")
Color me skeptical about the whole thing, frankly. If this grown-ass woman actually wants a tutor, why isn’t she writing her own damn ad? If she’s asking someone to write it for her, why wouldn’t this intelligent, well-educated person find someone who, you know, is familiar with the use of the shift key? And if this a “friend” situation and the woman is indeed writing her own ad and she’s so good at everything but math, why isn’t she using the shift key? Mind you, I have no problem believing you can be an overall good student but have an anxiety-related mental block about math. My college roommate and her sister are both like that. They’re both the absolute stereotypical liberal arts geek–intelligent, educated, awesome verbal skills, absolutely freak the fuck out about the idea of math beyond basic arithmetic and prefer to use a calculator to check themselves on that. They both made it through high school chemistry with A’s because they understood the concepts and nobody cared if they used a calculator for the actual number crunching. Roomie got through a year of college chemistry with A’s and B’s for the same reason. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/23 "2011-05-15T15:02:46Z")
BigT writes: \> It’s like bringing up a story about a politician and then saying that all politicians \> are corrupt. And that’s equally worthless as a proof of anything. It appears to me that code grey is one of those posters who look through anything they read for any story that ever so vaguely implies something that fits their political leanings. They then post it and say, “Huh, huh, see? This proves that my political theories are right!” Of course code grey is permitted to post such stories, and we’re permitted to tell him that he’s proved nothing. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/24 "2011-05-15T15:21:38Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I simply don’t believe that such a person could ever have been admitted to Harvard in the first place. 750 reading, 750 writing, 600 math = 2100. That’s a bit below average for Harvard, but not crazy low. Throw in a 3.8 GPA, some family connections, and a willingness to pay full retail price, and it sounds very possible. And yes, you can get a 600 math SAT while not knowing a lot. I got a D in Algebra II, but ~540 on the math SAT. As **Wendell Wagner** says, its not likely the kid is as completely ignorant as the ad suggests – just high strung, neurotic, accustomed to having most intellectual things come easy, and surrounded by peers who are (she thinks) picking up math faster than her. Actually, the ad sounds a lot like me – at 41, I am currently preparing to go into business school, and took the GMAT this year and got a respectable math score despite my last class being that D earned during the Reagan administration. I’m terrible at formulas, and I’m ignorant of a lot of standard computational techniques, but I get by because I can “logic the shit out” of a problem (as my wife, the engineer/MBA, puts it). I think it’s a coping mechanism that I developed earlier on, but as one gets farther and farther and farther along, the failure to learn the standard techniques is more and more of a liability. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/25 "2011-05-15T16:14:36Z")
**furt** , back in the old days when the lady was taking her SAT’s there was no writing section. So if she had a 700 on verbal and 400 on math (because her brain shut down the moment she saw numbers printed on the page), the total would be 1100. Then if she wanted to score brownie points by whining about all the difficulties she got to overcome she could do so on the admissions essay itself. Also, given how old she is, she must have taken the SAT verbal version with analogy problems section still in place. So she may well have screwed that test up too and got more like a 600 at best. After all, analogies were removed from SAT specifically because they disparately impacted the dumb people with fake gpa’s and inspiring essay hardship stories. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/26 "2011-05-15T16:27:25Z")
The parent said: > [@](#): > > i think she’s ready to go back to school and make a career change Get an English tutor and a psychiatrist for the mother! ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/27 "2011-05-15T19:58:04Z")
Yeah, nobody who isn’t good at math could possibly be good at anything, right. That’s why math nerds run the world and get all the hot chicks and the big, big bucks.:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/28 "2011-05-15T20:45:50Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Yeah, nobody who isn’t good at math could possibly be good at anything, right. > > That’s why math nerds run the world and get all the hot chicks and the big, big bucks.:rolleyes: I agree, there are other ways to make big bucks that don’t involve being highly intelligent or highly competent in some manual trade. E.g. they say being a prison guard in California pays very well. Other thug-type jobs in other places also pay decently, although not quite up to that standard. At least those prison guards don’t pretend they have a Harvard degree and do not aspire to positions of leadership in government or business. They go through life with an honest motto “I am a member of a powerful gang of thugs - so pay up, peasants and peasant political representatives!” Since no bigger, scarier gang of thugs has yet chased them out, they are for the time being secure in their ill-gotten gains. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/29 "2011-05-16T04:50:22Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Yeah, nobody who isn’t good at math could possibly be good at anything, right. > > That’s why math nerds run the world and get all the hot chicks and the big, big bucks.:rolleyes: It’s not that – It’s just that I don’t believe someone who truly had zero ability in math could be accepted to Harvard. ---
**Author:** ![inkling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f17d59/32.png) [@inkling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inkling)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/30 "2011-05-16T05:45:56Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > It’s not that – It’s just that I don’t believe someone who truly had zero ability in math could be accepted to Harvard. Probably not as a math major, but I don’t doubt there are loads of majors at Harvard that don’t require anything - or at least not much - higher than the high school classes the ad says she has already taken. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943/31 "2011-05-16T16:38:00Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > **furt** , back in the old days when the lady was taking her SAT’s there was no writing section. So if she had a 700 on verbal and 400 on math (because her brain shut down the moment she saw numbers printed on the page), the total would be 1100. Then if she wanted to score brownie points by whining about all the difficulties she got to overcome she could do so on the admissions essay itself. > > Also, given how old she is, she must have taken the SAT verbal version with analogy problems section still in place. So she may well have screwed that test up too and got more like a 600 at best. After all, analogies were removed from SAT specifically because they disparately impacted the dumb people with fake gpa’s and inspiring essay hardship stories. Now, now, this doesn’t make any sense. Why not an 800 on verbal, or (say) a 790? Back in those old bad days before the renorming of the SAT, you had to be a little lucky to answer all the questions right and get an 800, but it wasn’t _that_ hard, and less hard to miss one and get a 790 (let’s see… I can think of 3 people off the top of my head who got 790 or above, and I’m sure there were tons more whose scores I just didn’t know). Why denigrate the woman’s verbal skills just because her math skills suck? I knew tons and tons of people in college who were not math people at all but who could dance circles around the average person verbally, were multi-lingual, had excellent vocabularies, could hammer analogies, etc. Really, it sounds from your posts like you went to a tech school for college and have never been around liberal arts people from a good liberal arts school. Or something. Also, even if her brain shut down when she saw numbers, that doesn’t mean she couldn’t employ multiple-choice test-taking techniques to do a little better than 400. I bet you that just a little in the way of savvy test-taking skills could get her to a 500 or maybe even a 550. Now we’re talking a 1350, which IIRC was around average for Harvard admissions when I was that age. And yes, **inkling** is right – you can absolutely get into Harvard with B-level math skills (see my post above), though I don’t think I knew anyone who did so without exceptional skill and initiative in some other area. I imagine, for instance, Yo-Yo Ma could probably have gotten into Harvard even if he had had very few math skills (though I have no idea what his math scores were actually like). I believe that once you’re there, the only math requirements are a) to pass a very very basic quantitative reasoning class for which extensive tutoring is provided if necessary, and b) to take two science classes which may not even involve any math. So, yeah, once you’re there it matters pretty much not at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/math-teacher-needed-to-teach-basic-math-to-harvard-graduate-who-wants-to-go-to-business-school/581943.md?page=1)