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Comment by jpdoctor | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps this is a little bit of inside baseball, but LOL at the breakdown by Course number for "Academically, I would consider myself above average at MIT".

Course 18 in the lead followed by 8 5 and 6. The only thing that's changed in the past few decades is that 5 is getting a bit more uppity.

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For those who don't know the numbers, 18, 8, 5, and 6 correspond to the sciences, math, physics, chemistry, and EECS, respectively.

http://xkcd.com/435/

For those of us, it would be thoughtful to reveal that in some way in the graphs. Do MIT students really memorize the correspondence of course numbers to subjects?

They do.

There's even an MIT "joke" that's just a string of course numbers followed by "out," indicating the stereotypical path of a struggling MIT student.

Out of curiosity, what's the string?

(Anything)->15->Out.

I suspect there are others.

Yes. It's number one on the '101 thugs to do before you graduate' list every year. It's actually not that hard. There's only 24 (including skipped numbers).

You do it without thinking about it.

Yes, it's not that hard when it's totally immersed in the school culture.

The buildings are all referred to by number on MIT campus too (Building 14), and while it takes a little while to get used to that it becomes second nature before long.

Actually: 18 = math 8 = physics 6 = eecs 5 = chemistry

That's what he said.

5 probably is just a factor of a small sample size. It's a small major.

There's also some weird things going on with 17 (political science) and I would speculate that it's due to the high rate of double majoring. AFAIK, there is only one 17 senior that isn't double majoring.

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