I consider Math as one stinky, sloven, ass-pirate owning me right from my childhood; I can't take it anymore. It's high time somebody smites Math really hard!
The most depressing yet a very common notion which people carry with them is: "Mathematical brilliance correlates to Intelligence Quotient" hmm...If that's the case, then by now I should have been clinically retarded!
As apparent as it sounds -- I suck at Math!and I ain't proud of it; but, I am definitely not depressed about the fact either.
The reason why I am so frustrated is because these days I have observed that multinational companies and even national/international Universities only consider candidates who have proven mathematical excellence in their academic/professional career. Tests like CAT, GRE, GMAT, etc are increasingly becoming common in the admission process and the so called "Aptitude test" has become a critical factor in the elimination process during recruitment. With this kind of attitude from the admission councils/recruiters -- I feel, eventually, the world would be a place only for mathematicians and no one else.
After all, on what basis do these people think that ONLY mathematical intelligence can make a good engineer, designer or a manager? Look at me for instance: I am a senior software engineer by profession and I don't wanna brag or anything but I am extremely successful at my work and I still suck at math; now where did the good old relation between people skill and math brilliance go?
The ugliest part of the whole ordeal is engineers like me are forced to write aptitude tests by employers during recruitment, in spite of having an under-grad degree in engineering discipline with a reasonably good grade! Come on! After slaving over Math for 16 years, right from elementary school uptil the final year of degree, yet-another test for Math skill? The grimmer part of the whole horrendously bad practice is that it's not just folks in engineering discipline who are subjected to this, but even people in completely non-technical disciplines like psychology,literature, economics etc. get owned by this ass-pirate subject! This is ridiculous!
Interestingly, from my experience, I have seen people cramming aptitude exercise books; solving over 1000 problems and in fact even memorizing solutions prior interviews/tests. This is nothing but rot-learning. What I mean to say here is that: if an individual is motivated to "earn money" by getting a job, then, he/she will definitely get a job, be it whether there is an aptitude test or psychometric test or even a psychoanalytic test, because most of these tests have rigid patterns and getting adapted to pattern based tests is not that hard. But, I can challenge anybody that rarely would such candidates possess the right skill and/or passion required for the job.
I have been in the recruitment panel for about 2 years now and out of my experience - I think intellgence is multi-dimensional by nature. I have seen candidates who are mathematically and even academically super successful lacking even the most basic credentials necessary for a job. This pretty much infers that mathematical intelligence alone cannot be a factor for filtering candidates. Prioritizing math skill for technical/non technical jobs just to ensure that a candidate is intelligent is like asking an aspiring football player to kick a gigantic block of titanium from a cliff, just to check how hard he can kick things!
It's high time employers and admission councils start questioning themselves: "Do we always have to jump on the bandwagon and follow the stupid ass contemporary candidate selection process?" In my opinion there are lot of unexplored efficient methods for selection but recruiters fail to realize or probably they just turn a blind eye on it, because a customized recruitment process can be a little expensive. But, unfortunately they don't realize that the returns they can get out of selecting the right candidate through new innovative and customized methods can fetch them substantial returns when compared to those stupid contemporary selection process.
Math puzzles maybe a good way to test a persons ability to solve problems, but not all puzzles relate to real world problems. After all, real world issue resolution capability is what really matters! And more over, most of these puzzles are not designed to test every dimension of intelligence. I have seen mathematically skilled individuals caught up in the wrong job. Because at the first place, they choose to work not because they were interested in it, but because they just want to earn some bucks! The net result is that they deliver a sloppy work. Obviously the scrutinizing employer will never get his returns in spite of trusting the so called "tried and tested" method of selection!
I attribute few of my thoughts to Howard Gardner. If you haven't heard of him, I would suggest you to do quick wiki on him; in his Multiple Intelligence theory he boldly states that there are eight intelligences: visual-spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, musical-rhythmic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, and naturalist.
Howard Gardner's research paper is fantastic and I recommend every reader of this post to peruse it for it may unravel few of your abilities which you might be surprised to know.
-Chaitanya M Bhatt
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