pulkit

We have regular school exams in 5 basic subjects (scince (with 3 sub papers), social science (with 4 sub papers), english, a second language and maths) plus maybe a couple more depending on your grade. This goes on till 10 th grade. In 10th you get a country wide standard paper that everyone gives and gets raw scores. THese raw scores are uswed by school to determine if you get the subject of your choice in 11th and 12th grade. The majority of people take up subjects from the following set in 11th and 12th :- 1.science + computers 2.science + bio 3.science + economis 4.humanities 5.commerce + maths 6.commerce + informatics You go thru 11th givin just school exams that don't count anywhere. Then there is the final all India standard 12 paper. If you wanna get into a university you would tend to try and maximize your performance here, because your scores are directly compared to variable cut-offs. I myself did not take this route. I decided to go in for engineering, and professional institutes like mine have seperate entrance exams (which in my case were way touger than these standard 12th grade papers). And then for people like me there isn't any use for 12th grade papers (though I topped through all of my city ). Colleges are mostly public and schools mostly private. College fees is thus in most cases highly subsidized. Given that I am in an engineering college my fee is comparitively steep but on its faced value its just 1000 USD a year.

For this application, why would small differences in conductivities (like those between different metals) matter ?

Well, metric spaces are totally seperate from anything you ever learn in school. It is acctually a post graduate course you do if you undertake an MSc(master of sciences - I dunno if thats what its called elsewhere) in maths. However my engg college decided to turn it into an under graduate course, and I did it right after I got out of school in my 1st sem itself.

If you solve too many complicated problems you sometimes tend to overlook the obvious ones.

If so then you probably know nothing about trigonometry yet. There is this huge list of BASIC trigo formulae, which involve sin cos and tan that can help solve 99% of all problems. For a start check out the sine rule and cosine rule (That should solve your problem).

High school maths involved : single variable Caluculus, complex algebra, coordinate geometry, combinatronics and probability. Off-late : Multi variable calculus, Vector calculus, A bit of analysis, Metric spaces, Theory of groups and rings, Matrix algebra, Discrete and boolean algebra The stuff thats been very useful is Calculus (single variable), because its everywhere in quantum meachnics and in thermodynamics. Vector calculus was used by me in electrodynamics.

Given the technology involved in building it and putting it up there, you just can not call it "stupid".

There is a huge difference between these "western" education structures and the one we have here in India.

It is possible to make things "clever". The fact is that it is extremely difficult. At the present moment we probably can mimic the comprehension of a human a few months old. But if you have ever worked on the problem of comprehension(natural language processing), you will have realized, it is an extremely difficult thing to do.

If it ever happens, I do not see it happening in the next half century atleast.

Given the standard of science and maths we study, the SAT-1 paper is B.S. (I do not want to offend anyone, but compared to the type of papers I gave to get into my college it truly is. The guys who get 1550+ need study only for the english part.) SAT-2 level science and maths paper is also very easy.

Completely untrue in India !! Can happen only in the US. I would definately agree with you there. In SAT-1 i don't think anything below 1550 should be acceptable and in SAT-2 anything below 2050. (Assuming they are evaluated out of 1600 and 2100 respectively). Scoring in the English paper is somehow tougher, thats where most people I knew ever lost their marks, gettin perfect scores in the rest.

The only Amrican science and maths question papers I have ever layed my eyes on were those of the SAT I and SAT II that people give to get into college. Frankly, they were pathetically simple. Way below the standard i'd expect any decent paper to be.

Exactly

I do feel that standardized testing though necessary has limited co-relation to your smartness.

GRADES are a tad unfair at school level where scoring is so high. It is best to distinguish between all individuals with minimum allowable granularity.

If there were no testing, I do not believe too many people would try and learn.

wat exactly do u mean by "standardized testing" ?

My education here is super subsidized by the government (the best professional institutes here are completely autonomous bodies but funded heavily by the govt and alumni). I am definately in the best engg course on offer (in the country) and it costs me less than 1k USD a year.

That seems kind of a strange system, you don't ensure the best education for your best students. What sort of fees are we talkin of here, 30 - 40 k USD a year ? Can most people afford that ?

Given the position he holds, it is shocking the number of times he can allow himself to mess up when the entire world watches. They even run a comic strip in papers here about Bush and Bushisms called "dubyaman". I think this constant screwing up affects not only his reputation but also that of USA (After all he represents US to the world).

I am rather un-initiated about education outside my own country......are the best colleges / universities private ?

I have acctually never known of anyone who succeded doing that, after all it would require extremely good luck. but gettin lower marks than someone like that, when you prepare hard.............thats a one in a million shot.

Wow ! These are quite a series of numbers, and scale a lot lot more steeply than fibonaccis. Have you yet wprked out an explicit solution to this problem ? or just one using induction ?

Neglecting the regular circuit componenets such as resistors and capacitors, do you require anything over and above 1 transistor ?