Computer and Innate Ability Essay

We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either â€Å"have it† or you don’t. But to Schoenfeld, it’s not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try. That’s what Schoenfeld attempts to teach his students. Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds†¦ In the book â€Å"Outliers†, Malcolm Gladwell discusses some specific factors of extraordinary achievement. Some of the main ideas he discusses is advantages to succeed in life. According to Gladwell, there are tremendous advantages people have over their competitors to meet opportunities. In examining what made outliers like Bill Gates and the Beatles such phenomenal successes, Gladwell hits upon the important role played by opportunity. In each case, these successful people are given opportunities that most others do not have. In the case of Bill Gates, he goes to a school that owns a computer terminal connected to a large central computer. This is unusual in the 1960s and 1970s, when computers are room-sized devices costing millions of dollars and are owned only by large universities and corporations. Gates is able to start u We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either â€Å"have it† or you don’t. But to Schoenfeld, it’s not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try. That’s what Schoenfeld attempts to teach his students. Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds†¦ One example of this is Billy joy’s lucky advantage that leads him to success. Bill joy attended University of Michigan the year the advanced computer system was introduced so he began to visit the computer room more often than most; he even got a job with the computer science professor. (Sounds like he got same job with professor. I don’t know I think something wrong with that sentence) Working in collaboration with a small group of programmers, Joy to on the task of rewriting Unix, which was a software system developed by AT&T for mainframe computers. Billy joy took advantage of his early computer skills to allow him opportunity that was given to him. One example of this is given by Gladwell how their (who? ) birthday can affect their overall performance . The age cutoff entry for junior hockey leagues is January, 1. A 5 year old hockey player born on that day is a little older than other competitors, giving them an advantage in size, strength and coordination. The effect at the age of nine or ten, and of course they are more likely to view as talented the bigger and more coordinated players, who have had the benefit of critical extra months of maturity. So the advantage of being more developed can potentially land them on a professional team, all due to the cutoff dates in professional hockey. Another example of an advantage in succeeding is your IQ score. In the book Gladwell interviews Chris Langan who has the highest IQ score in America. Chris Langan discusses how he had an opportunity to go to college, but never did because his mother never turned in the financial aid paper work Chris should have gone to college to reach his full potential to meet better opportunities to succeed in life. I think you have to change those paragraphs†¦?