<story><title>Interview with Terence Tao</title><url>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rinL25rC8LnMTzZcGjg1axT-0r-oiCnoKKH1DLQlmVA/edit</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>IkmoIkmo</author><text>Thanks for posting this. Salient point for me was the following bit I&amp;#x27;d never considered before, but explains quite well the feeling I&amp;#x27;ve had about testing for a long time.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;There’s a great observation called Goodhart’s Law that basically says any metric becomes useless once you start using it for control purposes. So the SAT, for example, is a good general test of academic aptitude. But since it’s used so much for admission to college, kids are trained and coached. They spend lots of time and effort, specifically to improve their SAT score at the expense of a well-rounded education, to the point where [the SAT] may not be such a good guide to general academic excellence, even though it used to be before students started optimizing&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Interview with Terence Tao</title><url>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rinL25rC8LnMTzZcGjg1axT-0r-oiCnoKKH1DLQlmVA/edit</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>stiff</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I mean you need a certain amount of base mathematics so that you can learn everything else quickly.  But once you have the foundation, it’s fairly quick.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shame the interviewer did not proceed to ask him what he considers this foundation to be, I think the question almost suggests itself.</text></comment>