<p>curmudgeon, I have never disagreed with much of what you are saying and am sorry and a bit surprised that what I’ve been saying seems to make you so grumpy, or should I say curmudgeonly. </p>
<p>Places where we agree. Success is not only about IQ or some other version of pure academic ability but drive, integrity (sometimes), people skills, etc. are very important. I’ve been fortunate in my life to know and work with extremely successful people in academia, Wall Street, and the corporate world (and occasionally a government leader or two). In part of an essay I wrote a few years ago, I asserted that what differentiates the truly successful from others tends to be a quality I call intelligent persistence – if the person finds that they cannot achieve their objectives following plan 1, they don’t keep trying plan 1 (persistence but not intelligent persistence) and they don’t give up (lots of people don’t have the psychological fortitude to keep trying when they hit a significant roadblock). Instead, they try plans 2 and 3 and 4 until they achieve their objectives or conclude that the cost exceeds the benefit (but in most cases they keep trying even when the cost may well exceed the benefit).</p>
<p>I also agree that the Rhodes, like the Miss America Pageant, has a number of criterion. Pure intellect (however measured, but in math and physics it is not usually so hard) is one of several factors that the committee or judges weight. But, unless you posit that pure intellect or academic ability are perfectly correlated with the other factors you are going to give weight to, you are by definition going to pick a different group by optimizing pure intellect than if you optimize by weighting a number of criteria. I could lay out a simple mathematical model to show this but unless you make some pretty extreme assumptions about the joint distribution of the criterion in the population, my assertion must be correct. So, the Miss America competitors and winners will not be the absolute best students around (and thank heavens as it wouldn’t be as much fun to watch). Since they place a relatively low weight on intellect, the population will be quite different from that selected by a screen that optimizes against intellect. Similarly, because the Rhodes criteria do not, for valid reasons, optimize intellect, the population that they select is going to be different than a population chosen by a screen that optimizes intellect. Because they weight intellect more highly than the Miss America folks, there will likely be overlap between the Rhodes group and an intellect-only group. But the populations will be different and indeed some who would be in an intellect-only group would not even apply. newmassdad, you are effectively saying the same thing when you say, the Rhodes selection process is “not looking for future nobelists.” You and I agree. I would not say they are looking for something more but that they are looking for something a little bit different. But by selecting for that difference, they are not optimizing for future nobelists. I have no complaints with what the Rhodes committee choses to weight. It just has logical implications that I was laying out. Optimizing against one variable will almost always give you a different result than optimizing against a set of criteria. Do you see a flaw in this logic?</p>
<p>I will also say that while the Rhodes committee has selected a large number of extraordinary folks, it has also selected a few folks I know who were really strong on the form – student council president types, athletes, great at self salesmanship, etc. – who were good but not great from what I knew about them on substance – they were good students but not deep. Not brilliant by any definition that I can imagine though serviceably smart. I don’t know if they would be folks you think the Rhodes process should have selected or not or whether they were mistakes by the Rhodes committee. I wasn’t that impressed with those choices. Don’t get me wrong, self-salesmanship and presentation skills are important for success in almost all fields (and I am not questioning the Rhodes folks including them in their criteria) but these folks absolutely do not fit the “brilliant AND who have the personal qualities such that they can use that brilliance to influence others” criteria that newmassdad referenced. </p>
<p>So, cur, I don’t I’ve been misreading the Rhodes’ criteria or their right to choose however they see fit. I only posted here because collegealum asserted that the USA Today team and the Rhodes selection criteria did not select for the “true scholars” because of their emphasis on changing the world, leadership etc. Someone questioned his/her motivations and personal history as well. All I was trying to do was explain why what collegealum was asserting was likely to be correct. Maybe my perception that your questioning our motives (e.g., we could only assert this belief if we or our loved ones had been snubbed by the Rhodes Committee) as an attack was too strong. But, I think the pure logic of what I was arguing is unassailable. As such, it seemed that although I made a logically valid post, you responded by questioning my motivation and not my logic. I’d prefer if you’d deal with me on the logic and on that I’m not sure we disagree. If I understand you correctly, you don’t want truly brilliant mathematicians who drool as Rhodes scholars and would rule them in favor of a very, very bright mathematician who may not be as great but who is much more presentable. If so, we are in agreement. I don’t argue that that the Rhodes or Marshall or Miss USA selection criteria are incorrect, just that they lead to differing populations, which seemed at the beginning to be what collegealum was asserting and with which others seemed to be disagreeing. </p>
<p>Incidentally, I do know a bit about Oxford as my father was a professor there for a while when I was a child (best school I attended until college) but don’t assume that this gives me authoritative insight. It wouldn’t be high on my list for my kids to attend as an undergraduate. I would be pleased to have them recognized as Rhodes scholars if that were a possibility. </p>
<p>I hope I have been clear about the basic statement I was making. I’ll try to step out of this post at this point – if I’m not communicating, I’m not sure there’s a good reason to keep the conversation going. Pax.</p>
But let’s see what my “attack” entailed.
</p>![http://www.brainfleas.com/WindowsLiveWriter/NolteNowakAnnounceMarriage_C79D/nick_nolte.jpg[/url]](http://www.brainfleas.com/WindowsLiveWriter/NolteNowakAnnounceMarriage_C79D/nick_nolte.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
