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Difference between math and science competitions
By James H. Choi
http://Column.SabioAcademy.com
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Ten years ago, it was not uncommon for parents interested in education to not know what the AMC (American Math Competition) was. It is not unreasonable to say that there are more math teachers in the U.S. who do not know what AMC is than those who do, not even 10 years ago, but even now, AMC is known only to a select few. At that time, it was considered a record to be proud of because it was rare for Korean students to score high in math competitions, but now it is common to go to AIME, and I personally know several students who went to AIME in 8th grade, so not having an AIME record is a disadvantage.
Awareness of science competitions is not yet as widespread among Korean parents as it is in math. Indian students realize the importance and participate early on because many of them are the children of parents who work in science and engineering. When I was a judge at the ISEF six years ago, there were very few Korean students, but many Indian students, and the judges, then and now, don’t look Korean, but many Indian. The most outstanding student I mentor now is also a talented and motivated Indian student. But judging from the inquiries I’m getting, I think Korean parents are starting to recognize the importance of the science fair.
Although the science contest and the math contest are the same, there are many differences between them, so it will be helpful to know the following differences and prepare for the contest.
- No written questions For math competitions, you can prepare by looking at the questions and explanations. However, science competitions do not have such a problem, and it is plagiarism to copy the previous research.
- Winners are announced on the day. While math competitions like AMC make you wait weeks to receive your scores, science competitions, with few exceptions, award winners on the same day as the regional/state competition. This can be exciting, but it can also be frustrating. Don’t get caught up in the frenetic pace of the process and keep a cool head.
- There are no right answers or explanations In math competitions, there is a right and wrong answer, just like math, but in science competitions, you have to evaluate research that approaches different topics in different ways, and especially when it comes to choosing the overall winner, you have to compare fields as far apart as math and psychology to determine superiority, so there are no clear criteria and you have to rely on the judges’ “gut feeling”. There are probably enough cases where the same judges could come back the next day to review the same research and come to a completely different decision. The unpredictability is compounded by the time pressure of the awards ceremony.
- Luck is a big factor The outcome depends on who is judging on the day of the competition and how they are judging. If you are doing particularly high-quality research, you need to have judges who recognize it, otherwise you will be indistinguishable from a student who copied a few Google results.
- You have to present in person, one-on-one. While math competitions are a solitary struggle, science competitions are all about being able to convince others. Every judge is a one-on-one test to convince the doubters of your excellence. Students who are shy or hesitant will unknowingly lose points because they have to answer questions from aggressive adults who are suddenly trying to find fault with them. If you are not naturally a stage person, it is very important to practice public speaking.
- You need to be able to write a science report. As you move up the evaluation stages, you will be evaluated through posters, interviews, and reports. Since it is not considered comprehensively but evaluated as one step at a time, the weakest link among the poster, interview, and report ends up being the culprit. Science reports are different from general essays in terms of order, format, and tone, and equations must be used. Since this cannot all be learned overnight, you must learn how to write a science report well in advance.
- Science competitions are zero-sum games and outcomes are relative. It’s not about how well you did, but it’s about how much better your research is than other research. Getting to AIME is not limited to how many people in your school can be at the AIME level, but science fairs are limited to a strict head-to-head comparison.
The Starless Skies Part 1
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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Those parents who were born in the 1960s or 1970s lived in a singularly unique moment in history. We were born in the analogue world, from which we witnessed with our own eyes the change into a completely digital world. This change has far bigger implications than enjoying the convenience of GPS navigator, or streamed HD video on demand. I call what has emerged the “Starless Sky Phenomenon.”
Think back to the real sky when we were young. Well, even then, many cities were already polluted, and we cold not see the sky. Today, we can see them even less. But this is true of not only the sky above us, but also of the world at our fingertips. Take a clock for our first example. When we were young, clocks were made of gears; they were not digital. So if we were curious, we could open the clock and see its machinery move. One favorite lie that I believed until I opened a clock myself was that its minute and hour hands could be switched so the clock would read incorrectly. I tried to do this myself and realized the clock hands could not physically fit; they couldn’t be installed the wrong way. At any rate the point is we could actually peer into the clock and therefore understand its causes and consequences: the wound up spring turns this, and that in turn pushes this, and this in turn pushes another thing. Of course, we had no understanding of how the bi-metal worked to compensate for the temperature difference and such. But nonetheless we were able to look at them, and understand it in its first approximation.
Take the modern watches. Except for the very expensive ones that we should not open at all, these things are electronic. There is a single chip inside of which even the chip-makers cannot see what is happening. If this chip breaks down, even its designer cannot fix it. That person just has to buy a new one. The mechanism is more than completely hidden because it is not there. This is the world into which our children are born and in which they will grow. When I was in college, I was able to change oil and even tune the car. I used the timing gun to tune the firing of the spark plugs. I didn’t do this out of fun; I worked on the car because I didn’t have money to send it to the mechanic. Nonetheless this taught me the principles of how the car works. Today, many of those functions are delegated to built-in computers which — by design — completely out of our view, and understanding.
Or take one final example: a radio. Back when I was in elementary school, I was able to peer into a radio in my bedroom to see the vacuum tubes, capacitors and wires running between them. I didn’t understand how radios worked. For example, I knew nothing about RC filters or frequencies. Yet I could still build my own transistor radio by following the schematics, connecting wires to match the ones I saw. I gained confidence (however unfounded) that I could look into something and figure out how to recreate or control it.
But these days we don’t have vacuum tube radios with clearly visible components. We carry nano iPods that can’t be opened. Even if we could open one, we would not understand what’s inside. Furthermore, we’d have no clue how to make one ourselves even if we had a schematics. This is totally opposite from back in the days when I was in high school, when students built their own amplifiers. These days students don’t have such opportunities. They might not even know what an amplifier is. Instead they just have a personal MP3 player with which they lock themselves in their rooms and shut out the world. They lack the motivation — or even notion they are capable — of building such an electronic device.
What does this all mean for the education of our children? I believe that the current generation is benefiting from the unprecedented wealth of these digital devices and electronics. At the same time, they’re completely shut out of knowing, or even wondering, how things operate. They don’t have to worry about how an operating system works or how to install a device driver. Everything is automatic. Many of my online students don’t even know whether the computers they are using are PCs or Macs. To them, it is a box that works.
I believe that this lack of access to how things function leads to a lack of curiosity. When a student sees only the final, sleek design of a device, there is nothing to trigger their curiosity into how it works. Indeed, today they select devices not on how they function but rather, largely, based on design and looks. The fruits of an engineer’s labor are so completely packaged that they are invisible to students. Therefore students less and less want to become engineers and increasingly want to become consumers.
When the first Apple 2 came out, the boot-up screen was the BASIC language interpreter. In other words, you had to know some computer language to use that computer. When the first PC came out, all you saw was an unhelpful C prompt flashing A:>. To make the machine do your bidding, you had to know how to program AUTOEXEC.BAT file. But these days, PCs and Macs work right out of the box. In becoming easier to use, these machines had their technologies become completely inaccessible. Students today don’t have to know anything to use one — so therefore they don’t.
In the eyes of the current generation of students, software is something you use, not create. You download apps for free. And whatever you need is likely to be available, yours for searching. Students lack a desire to write programs because they rarely reach the state of “need.”
So what should parents do in this completely digital world? Unlike our generation, these students don’t have any reference point for what pre-digital means. They were born digital and will stay digital. Our digital age was supposed to make people more connected and productive. The young generation might be connected, but, judging from how my students use computers, digitally productive they are not.
Parents have to reveal the hidden machinery behind technology. We must open the curtain, which is not easy to do, to teach students how to be not just consumers but also producers.
I will discuss specific steps parents can take in subsequent parts of this series. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.
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