Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1

1. Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1 ArkadiyReydman Nick Santana Julian Smith Period 1

2. Overview • At a certain point, IQ isn’t really relevant • High IQs in comparison to each other • “A mature scientist with an adult IQ of 130 is as likely to win a Nobel Prize as is one whose IQ is 180.“ • Once you’re classified as “a genius,” it’s all fair game and everyone can seemingly accomplish the same thing • “A basketball player only has to be tall enough—and the same is true of intelligence. Intelligence has a threshold.”

3. Overview Pt. 2 • The aforementioned theory goes for schools as well • Last 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine • Antioch and Gettysburg College • Schools don’t define the knowledge and intelligence; the person does • The Nobel Laureates in Chemistry • Bottom Line

4. Questions • 10,000 Rule (Chris Langan) • High IQ People • Lewis Terman • Is a high IQ as important as that persons morals? • Most people and Companies

5. Questions • Threshold • Test Scores vs. Quality • Divergence vs. Convergence Testing

6. Connections • Good Will Hunting- This movie is great representation of this chapter. This movie is about a boy named Will Hunting who is an orphan and grows up to be a trouble maker. As a job appointed by his parole officer he works as a custodian at MIT. After completing a proof that took the professor over 2 years to complete, people soon started to realize what a genius Will was. He could complete proofs that usually took days, months, even years, and in a couple hours.

7. Connections Cont’d • Text-to-media- • A man named Henry Cowell is talked about in the book. He was raised in poverty and was unschooled since the age of seven. Just like Will, Henry worked as a custodian at a one room school house a few minutes from the Stanford Campus. When he had free time he would sneak away and play the school’s piano. He made beautiful music without ever being taught how to play the piano. He was much more intelligent than the average person and a future IQ test proved that. • Cowell scored a 140 which is just under being considered a genius. Keep in mind that Einstein’s IQ was 150, only ten points higher than Cowell’s.

8. Connections Cont’d • Text-to-world • Geniuses are all around us in the world. Some we may know, others we have not ever heard of, but I can assure you that they are out there. • After reading this chapter and learning about all these different geniuses, one person that comes to mind is Steve Jobs. He is an outlier. • He always chose the most unconventional way for doing things and that’s what made him stick out. • He dropped out of college to pursue his own dreams. He was a genius in his own way. He didn’t need an IQ test to prove it, he just let his action speak for himself.

9. Connections Cont’d • Text-to-text • This chapter was chock full of ideas. But the main point I think was that there are different types of geniuses. In some cases there are literal geniuses. These are the people with the insanely high IQ’s and high test scores. There are also the imaginative geniuses. The ones that let there actions and imaginations speak for themselves. Both each type of genius is just as successful as the other, although the circumstances may be different. • A book that I feel relates greatly to these ideas is a book by the name City of Ember. This book is about an underground society whose only source of electricity is from this huge generator. • The two main characters Lina and Doon are both geniuses and of course, outliers. They solve this big elaborate puzzle to gain knowledge about this odd place, Ember. After solving this huge puzzle, they find themselves outside in the real world only to find out that the city of “Ember” was an entirely underground city. They are not geniuses because of how high their IQ’s are. They’re geniuses because of their imaginations; because they think differently than all the others surrounding them. Even those who are proclaimed geniuses.