Freshman English Study Guide Hsu 1

Unit One: The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1

A. Vocabulary

1. (¶ 2) adversary (N) (C) an enemy

- He saw her as his main adversary within the company.

2. (¶ 51) alumnus (N)(C) alumni (plural) someone who has left a school, college or university after
finishing their studies there
- Several famous alumni have agreed to help raise money for the school's restoration fund.

3. (¶ 17) charge (N) a person or thing given to someone to look after

- For the rest of his life, Terman watched over his charges like a mother hen.

4. (¶ 38) concede (V) to admit, often unwillingly, that something is true

- The Government has conceded (that) the new tax policy has been a disaster.
- "Well okay, perhaps I was a little hard on her," he conceded.

5. (¶ 40) conceivably (Adv) possibly

- She could conceivably (= possibly) have already left.

6. (¶ 39) controversial (Adj) causing disagreement or discussion

- The issue of the death penalty is highly controversial.

7. (¶ 54) correlate (V) if two or more facts, ideas etc correlate or if you correlate them, they are
closely connected to each other or one causes the other
- Stress levels and heart disease are strongly correlated (= connected).

correlation (N) a connection between two or more things, often one in which one of them causes
or influences the other
- There's a high correlation between smoking and lung cancer.

8. (¶ 42) credential (N) the abilities and experience which make someone suitable for a particular
job or activity, or proof of someone's abilities and experience
- All the candidates had excellent academic credentials.
- She was asked to show her press credentials.

9. (¶ 7) defy (V) to be extreme or very strange and therefore impossible to believe, describe or
explain
- The chaos at the airport defies description.
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10. (¶ 41) discrepancy (N) difference between two things that should be the same
- There is some discrepancy between the two accounts.
- The committee is reportedly unhappy about the discrepancy in numbers.

11. (¶ 54) dispense with sth/sb (phrasal verb) to get rid of something or someone or stop using them
because you do not need them
- They've had to dispense with a lot of luxuries since Mike lost his job.

12. (¶ 46) divergence (N) (C/U) (1) the act of moving away in different directions from a common
point (2) an infinite series that has no limit
- Recently published figures show a divergence from previous trends.

NOTE: The opposite is convergence

13. (¶ 17) dole out (phrasal verb) to give something, usually money, to several people
- The last of the water was doled out to the thirsty crew.

14. (¶ 9) farmhand (N) (C) a person who is paid to work on a farm

- My father was placed as a farmhand in exchange for room and board.

15. (¶ 48) flair (N) natural ability to do something well

- He has a flair for languages.

16. (¶ 6) hindrance (N) (C) something which makes it more difficult for you to do something or for
something to develop
- I've never considered my disability a hindrance, but other people have.

17. (¶ 48) imagery (N) (C) the use of words or pictures in books, films, paintings, etc. to describe
ideas or situations
- The imagery in the poem is mostly to do with death.

18. (¶ 2) in the wake of If something happens in the wake of something else, it happens after and
often because of it
- Airport security was extra tight in the wake of yesterday's bomb attacks.

19. (¶ 34) laureate (N) (C) a person who has been given a very high honour because of their ability
in a subject of study
- The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 95 times to 128 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and
2014, 103 individuals and 25 organizations.

20. (¶ 48) libidinous (Adj) having or showing strong sexual desires

- Her ideas challenged evolutionary psychologists who insisted that women are the less
libidinous sex, the sex more suited to monogamy.
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21. (¶ 12) mitigation (N) The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of
something
- Following the earthquake, warnings of a tsunami prompted the authorities to work toward the
mitigation of the inevitable destruction and human suffering.

22. (¶ 7) outlier (N) (C) (1) A person or thing differing from all other members of a particular group
or set; an extreme case or exception (2) a fact, figure, piece of data, etc. that is very different from
all the others in a set and does not seem to fit the same pattern
- There are the corporate outliers, people who just don’t fit into the culture of the company.
- In statistics an outlier is a piece of data that is far from the rest.

23. (¶ 52) pinnacle (N) (C) the most successful or admired part of a system or achievement
- By the age of thirty-two she had reached the pinnacle of her career.

24. (¶ 12) poised (Adj) showing very calm and controlled behavior
- Abigail walked to the microphone, poised and confident.

25. (¶ 49) prodigy (N) (C) someone with a very great ability which usually shows itself when that
person is a young child
- The 16-year-old tennis prodigy is the youngest player ever to reach the Olympic finals.
- He read in the paper about a mathematical prodigy who was attending university at the age of
12.

26. (¶ 19) prospective (Adj) (1) of or in the future (2) potential, likely, or expected
- We've had three sets of prospective buyers looking round the house.

27. (¶ 18) stature (N) (U) the good reputation a person or organization has, based on their behaviour
and ability
- If the school continues to gain in stature, it will attract the necessary financial support.
- His stature as an art critic was tremendous.

28. (¶ 48) subversive (Adj) trying to destroy or damage something, especially an established
political system
- He became a journalist, and at an early stage of his career had the first of his many
experiences of imprisonment for the subversive tendency of his writings.

29. (¶ 17) tabulate (V) to show information in the form of a table (= an arrangement of facts and
numbers in rows or blocks)
- If your friend borrows money from you every week, you might want to tabulate what she
owes you.
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30. (¶ 30) threshold (N) (C) (1) the level or point at which you start to experience something, or at
which something starts to happen (2) the entrance to a room or building, or the area of floor or
ground at the entrance
- I have a low/high boredom threshold (= I do/don't feel bored easily).
- His secretary earns £68 a month, well below the threshold for paying tax.
- She opened the door and stepped across the threshold.

B. An Overview of the Main Ideas

Part 1: Christopher Langan

 (¶ 1 - 6) Chirstopher Langan, who many consider the smartest man in America, appeared as a
special guest on the American television quiz show 1 vs. 100 to compete with a group of one
hundred ordinary people. He thought having a high IQ could be a hindrance for one to do well on
the show.

 (¶ 7 - 12) Langan’s exceptionally high IQ has made him the public face of genius and a celebrity
outlier in American life. He has showed signs of high intelligence since he was little. When his
winnings at 1 vs. 100 reached $250,000, he decided to end the competition there and take the cash.

Part 2: Terman’s studies of his "Termites”

 (¶ 13 - 17) In the 1920s, Lewis Terman, a psychology professor at Standford University, initiated
his longitudinal study of the gifted. He identified a group of 1,470 young geniuses known as the
“Termites.” Terman watched over his Termites for the rest of his life and documented his findings
in Genetic Studies of Genius.

 (¶ 18 - 22) Terman believed that his Termites were destined to be successful. His ideas regarding
the significance of high intelligence remain central to the way we think about success—those at
the very top of the IQ scale have the greatest potential. However, Terman was wrong.

Part 3: IQ has a threshold

 (¶ 23 - 28) Extensive research has been done to determine the relationship between a person’s IQ
score and real-life success. The positive correlation between success and IQ, however, works only
up to a point.

 (¶ 29 - 31) According to British psychologist Liam Hudson, the likelihood for a mature scientist
with an IQ of 130 to win a Nobel Prize is about the same as a scientist whose IQ is 180. That is, IQ,
like height in basketball, has a threshold, as it stops to matter so much past a certain point.

 (¶ 32 - 37) The idea that IQ has a threshold goes against our intuition. However, inspection of the
colleges of the last 25 American Nobel laureates in Medicine and the 25 others in Chemistry
shows that to be a Nobel Prize winner, one has to be smart enough to get into a college that is
good enough.
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 (¶ 38 - 42) The University of Michigan law school relaxed its entry requirements to admit 10% of
its students from racial minority groups. Although minority students got lower grades than white
students in law school, they were as successful as white students after graduation because they
were smart enough—the quality of these students was above the threshold.

Part 4: The significance of things other than IQ

 (¶ 43 - 46) If intelligence has a threshold, then beyond that threshold, things unrelated to
intelligence start to matter more. For example, divergence tests measure something much closer to
creativity rather than analytical intelligence, and are as challenging as convergence tests like the
Raven’s.

 (¶ 47 - 51) Hudson’s collection of answers to the “uses of objects” test show that although
Florence’s IQ is higher than Poole’s, his answers lacked the kind of imagination found in Poole’s.
The results suggest that being successful or winning Nobel Prizes is about a lot more than IQ.

Part 5: Terman’s error

 (¶ 52 – 53) Although Terman’s Termites were at the absolute pinnacle of the intellectual scale, he
did not realize how little that meant. As the Termites reached adulthood, the majority of them had
careers that could only be considered ordinary.

 (¶ 54 – 55) By the 4th volume of Genetic Studies of Genius, Terman concluded, “We have seen
that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.” Likewise, Chris Langan’s
extraordinary intelligence is of little use when it comes to his chances of being successful in life.

C. Additional Information

1. Excerpt form “The Vexing Legacy of Lewis Terman” By Mitchell Leslie

July/August 2000 From: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678

In 1910, Stanford offered him (Lewis Terman) a job in its fledgling department of education. He later
moved to the psychology department, which he chaired for 20 years.

Eager to measure human minds, Terman plunged into intelligence testing soon after he arrived at
Stanford. The original intelligence test had been designed five years earlier by French psychologist
Alfred Binet as a tool to identify "slow" children needing special help. Terman and his Stanford
colleagues translated Binet's test, adapted the content for U.S. schools, set new age norms and
standardized the distribution of scores so that the mean score would always be 100. Terman called the
new version the Stanford-Binet test.
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2. Excerpt from “Multiple Intelligences: What Does the Research Say?” from edutopia
March 8, 2013 Updated July 20, 2016 From: https://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-research

Howard Gardner's Eight Intelligences

The theory of multiple intelligences challenges the idea of a single IQ, where human beings have one
central "computer" where intelligence is housed. Howard Gardner, the Harvard professor who
originally proposed the theory, says that there are multiple types of human intelligence, each
representing different ways of processing information:
 Verbal-linguistic intelligence refers to an individual's ability to analyze information and produce
work that involves oral and written language, such as speeches, books, and emails.
 Logical-mathematical intelligence describes the ability to develop equations and proofs, make
calculations, and solve abstract problems.
 Visual-spatial intelligence allows people to comprehend maps and other types of graphical
information.
 Musical intelligence enables individuals to produce and make meaning of different types of
sound.
 Naturalistic intelligence refers to the ability to identify and distinguish among different types of
plants, animals, and weather formations found in the natural world.
 Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails using one's own body to create products or solve problems.
 Interpersonal intelligence reflects an ability to recognize and understand other people's moods,
desires, motivations, and intentions.
 Intrapersonal intelligence refers to people's ability to recognize and assess those same
characteristics within themselves.

3. Excerpt from “Affirmative action in the United States” Wikipedia

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States

Affirmative action in the United States tends to focus on issues such as education and employment,
specifically granting special consideration to racial minorities and women who have been historically
excluded groups in America. Reports have shown that minorities and women have faced
discrimination in schools and businesses for many years and this discrimination produced unfair
advantages for whites and males in education and employment. The impetus toward affirmative action
is redressing the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Further impetus is a
desire to ensure public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more
representative of the populations they serve.

Affirmative action is a subject of controversy. Some policies adopted as affirmative action, such as
racial quotas or gender quotas for collegiate admission, have been criticized as a form of reverse
discrimination, and such implementation of affirmative action has been ruled unconstitutional by the
majority opinion of Gratz v. Bollinger. Affirmative action as a practice was upheld by the Supreme
Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003.