Do not compare yourself with the outliers
Okay, today's post is going to be a bit nerdy/mathy.
Returning to school after taking a quarter off really caught me off guard even though I mentally prepared myself for the vast amount of workload that I knew I'd had to face once school started. I tried as hard as I could, but eventually ended up having the waves just sweep me away.
And before I know it, it's the last week of school. I decided to go see my professor for last resort studying tips and advice to end this quarter well. I expressed to him my anxiety,the struggles I face balancing my personal life and academic life. I am what you would call an overly competitive person...or sometimes even an overachiever. I like to set really high bars and standards for myself, even though I know my abilities are far below my expectations. So yeah, I expect to get really good grades even though statistics and math are not necessarily easy subjects.
I complained about how I feel no matter how much I master the material, there are always a group of geniuses who outsmart me and breaks the grading curve, making me extremely depressed at times because in this school system, GPA's are so "important" to get into grad school. No matter how hard I try, I'm always mediocre compared to them.
And then he told me, "You know, as a stats major you should realize that these people are outliers. In every distribution, they exist because the tails go to infinity. These students or people are the points that lie outside the 99.7%, and in statistics, just being in the 95th percentile already gives us enough reason to reject such occurrences as normal/common. Why do you compare yourself with them?"
"We need to remember where the bulk of the distribution are, and they lie mostly around the mean, and some are one or two standard deviations away. Our goal should be to start somewhere around the mean, and work our way as far out as possible, but we will never reach the outliers because we belong to the majority of the population. Just by looking at your current grades, you are already at the far right of the distribution tail. Should you really be looking at the few people far ahead of you and disregard the distance you've come? The GPA system is stupid anyway. This is precisely why I dislike the GPA system. It makes completely capable people feel inadequate because of a number."
This is not the first time I've heard people telling me not to compare myself with others. John has told me the same message before but I somehow just didn't get it. I was surrounded by brilliant people all the time that I was convinced I had to do better to not blend into the background. Yeah, I'm great but so what? These people are even greater! But when my professor put it into terms of statistics and hypothesis testing, it suddenly clicked and made so much sense. Everyday I perform tests on what's significant and what's unusual based on these same statistical rules. In statistics, sometimes just being in the 90th percentile already gives us enough evidence to reject our null hypothesis in favor of concluding that our results are "unusual" or "extreme" enough to make a case. And yet I complain about being not in the top 1% of the class distribution.
I am just so glad I went to talk to him. It's like a wake up call and a slap in the face at the same time. But I just love and respect professors like this. They really know how to get through to you...using the subject you know and love best. LoL.
Anyway, TL;DR: Do NOT compare yourself with people who are super outstanding such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs etc. (unless you are an outlier yourself lol). Just aim to go as far as you can. Don't focus on the outliers. Focus on how far you can go, and get there to the best of your ability.
Returning to school after taking a quarter off really caught me off guard even though I mentally prepared myself for the vast amount of workload that I knew I'd had to face once school started. I tried as hard as I could, but eventually ended up having the waves just sweep me away.
And before I know it, it's the last week of school. I decided to go see my professor for last resort studying tips and advice to end this quarter well. I expressed to him my anxiety,the struggles I face balancing my personal life and academic life. I am what you would call an overly competitive person...or sometimes even an overachiever. I like to set really high bars and standards for myself, even though I know my abilities are far below my expectations. So yeah, I expect to get really good grades even though statistics and math are not necessarily easy subjects.
I complained about how I feel no matter how much I master the material, there are always a group of geniuses who outsmart me and breaks the grading curve, making me extremely depressed at times because in this school system, GPA's are so "important" to get into grad school. No matter how hard I try, I'm always mediocre compared to them.
And then he told me, "You know, as a stats major you should realize that these people are outliers. In every distribution, they exist because the tails go to infinity. These students or people are the points that lie outside the 99.7%, and in statistics, just being in the 95th percentile already gives us enough reason to reject such occurrences as normal/common. Why do you compare yourself with them?"
"We need to remember where the bulk of the distribution are, and they lie mostly around the mean, and some are one or two standard deviations away. Our goal should be to start somewhere around the mean, and work our way as far out as possible, but we will never reach the outliers because we belong to the majority of the population. Just by looking at your current grades, you are already at the far right of the distribution tail. Should you really be looking at the few people far ahead of you and disregard the distance you've come? The GPA system is stupid anyway. This is precisely why I dislike the GPA system. It makes completely capable people feel inadequate because of a number."
This is not the first time I've heard people telling me not to compare myself with others. John has told me the same message before but I somehow just didn't get it. I was surrounded by brilliant people all the time that I was convinced I had to do better to not blend into the background. Yeah, I'm great but so what? These people are even greater! But when my professor put it into terms of statistics and hypothesis testing, it suddenly clicked and made so much sense. Everyday I perform tests on what's significant and what's unusual based on these same statistical rules. In statistics, sometimes just being in the 90th percentile already gives us enough evidence to reject our null hypothesis in favor of concluding that our results are "unusual" or "extreme" enough to make a case. And yet I complain about being not in the top 1% of the class distribution.
I am just so glad I went to talk to him. It's like a wake up call and a slap in the face at the same time. But I just love and respect professors like this. They really know how to get through to you...using the subject you know and love best. LoL.
Anyway, TL;DR: Do NOT compare yourself with people who are super outstanding such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs etc. (unless you are an outlier yourself lol). Just aim to go as far as you can. Don't focus on the outliers. Focus on how far you can go, and get there to the best of your ability.
Comments
If I were an outlier, I'd probably have taken over the world by now muehehehehehe.