
An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat) - aardvarks
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/an-mit-underwear-expose
======
leblancfg
Reading this made me downright sad that I didn't, and probably never will,
attend MIT.

Oh, the interesting people! The interesting projects!

How I wish I had worked harder.

~~~
noname123
FWIW, I never went to MIT (went to a small liberal arts college); but I work
at an MIT affiliate, so by virtue of proximity and affiliation, go to talks
given on campus, eat at their cafeteria, have audited classes and play
basketball at their gym. But basically a third-party observer to campus
culture, my subjective $0.02:

The undergrad population is much to my dismay similar to any American school
trained on the professional treadmill; most conversations I overhear involves
seniors applying to medical school or law school or consulting or
underclassmen discussing Google internships.

To use a Bostonian (maybe NYC too?) metaphor that Bostonians can understand,
there are just as many people with Canada Goose jackets on MIT campus as on
Newbury Street.

Like any school, it is not a homogenous population, "nerd's paradise" as
parodied in the 80's movie "Real Genius"; although there are people who are
genuinely interested in tech, there are people who want to pursue academic
route who don't care for the Slashdot culture, jocks who are also science
nerds, theatre geeks, int'l students who don't get the "American geek"
culture...

The only real insight I can offer in a Computational Biology class I audited,
I've never seen so many interruptions in lecture when the professor is flying
through the slides on the derivation of this algorithm and that proof. Hands
fly up right there asking for clarification on what is this greek variable on
the previous slide... whereas during the same undergrad class I took years
ago, none of us would have spoken on the spot due to lack of confidence to
avoid looking dumb/lack of drive to try to understand something right there on
the spot.

~~~
phd514
You're definitely missing a significant subculture that exists among MIT
undergraduates. The kinds of MIT-affiliated events that you describe are
certainly not the ones where you are likely to discover it. You are correct,
though, in observing that not all MIT undergraduates fit into that subculture
and many will go into finance, law, or medical careers. And there is certainly
nothing wrong with that.

~~~
noname123
Hi phd514, in reading your comment, you are absolutely right; my comment did
paint a broad brush. In reconsidering my response, I'd retract what I said
about MIT culture and say my remarks really says more about me and my own
cynicism/preoccupation at my age, late twenties.

It is in direct response to the parent post where the poster lamented about
missing out a chance to experience the idealistic/radical youth culture when
he was young, I responded more cynically about how in college I and my other
friends did live in creative undergraduate communities; but whereas it was
easy and natural to take on that attitude during undergrad, I found it became
much harder to sustain those ideals in adulthood, as hard choices and
realization of human nature creeps in, whether to truly sacrifice precious
time and energy in your adulthood working towards them vs. "establishing"
oneself professionally and socially; and because I struggle mightily with
this, I put more value on what imperfect choices that people commit to as
adults vs. the exciting (albeit memorable/enriching) experiences that they
partook in as undergrads.

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qwertyuiop924
This is the best thing.

I'm sorry, but I don't feel the need to qualify that statement. This is just
one of those absolutely crazy projects that people do from time to time
(although MIT certainly has a reputation for hosting a lot of them), and I
love that sort of thing. As much as we talk up the importance of Bayes'
theorem and other algorithms as things that can change the world, etc.,
sometimes, you can just build something cool, and have a laugh.

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justinlardinois
> Reasons for emailing all undergraduates include event announcements for
> student groups and departments, flame wars, and occasionally lost items. In
> contrast, the kinds of emails sent within a dorm mailing list include, at
> the top of my inbox right now, parties, house meetings, and foodmobs to
> restaurants in Boston; decisions about when to turn off the heating for
> spring, invitations to test food experiments, and a memo to the person who
> left their clothes in the middle washer; and requests for empty gallon jugs,
> superglue, cooking scales, male-to-male audio cables, MIDI cables, 120V
> twist lock connectors, funnels, and hairdryers.

I can only imagine the volume of email that entails; how do people deal with
it? I would guess that these days the mailing lists are through Google Groups
so you can at least turn off emails and use the list as a forum, but I doubt
most would know or bother to do that and let themselves drown in email.

~~~
doctorwho42
Sort all from: EC-Discuss into folder: EC-Discuss

... Try to sort through it when you are bored... Realize you don't get
anything out of it anymore -> Un-Subscribe to EC-Discuss email list.

Clarification: EC-Discuss = East Campus (of MIT) discussion email list... it
is known for this mass email of random nature.

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tomatoman
Ofcourse Senior House had a lot of black underwear ;)

~~~
kkylin
Of course! Would be interesting to see BC broken down by floor...

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rajeevk
So, if you are aspiring to attend classes at MIT then you know what to do now.
If you are applying for the admission, then you can choose your underwear
color to increase your chances to get in.

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Symmetry
Of course it was a fellow Randomite who put this together. :)

Also, of course it was Senior Haus which had the highest prevalence of black
underwear.

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rosser
This might be my favorite data science post ever to grace the front page of
HN.

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doug1001
this is awesome. Eg, "There is a sad, persistent decrease in multicolored
underwear, ending with none by senior year." Does "none" refer to NA (None,
null, etc.) or to the lack of color in the respondents' underwear, or to going
commando? i suppose like all great research, it raises more questions than it
answers.

more seriously, The OP seems to be inspired by a well-established tradition at
the institute--MIT's sand mandala, perhaps. I graduated in 1992 and i remember
some of my classmates from time to time, engaging in self-assigned projects
that (i) seemed to lack any discernible purpose or utility whatever--certainly
none for the student and (ii) that required a mind-boggling amount of
meticulous effort. Somehow seeing these two attributes juxtaposed in a single
endeavor, was hilarious to us (likewise the OP). Sometimes, though not always,
these projects were deemed "pranks" but separate in my view.

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ayw
This type of thing makes me proud to be at MIT :)

~~~
akhilcacharya
This type of thing made me kind of sad to be unimpressive 2 years ago :) :(

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curyous
How were those pie charts generated?

~~~
bannus
From article:

> so I made pie charts from the parsed data and traced and colored them in BMF
> kitchen.

~~~
doug1001
i think this is a oblique way of saying the OP isn't going to open source
their data visualisation code. :-)

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stared
A silly question for the insiders: what does "teal with cameras" mean?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I assumed that the underwear was teal, and had cameras printed on it.

------
KKKKkkkk1
Shouldn't MIT pay royalties if it's using Harry Potter references in its
marketing material?

------
gyardley
'Creepy' is right.

I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list
because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their
underwear.

I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly
impacts different genders disproportionately.

~~~
DanBC
It is creepy. But US colleges have done far far worse.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-
lea...](http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-league-nude-
posture-photo-scandal.html)

> ONE AFTERNOON IN THE LATE 1970's, deep in the labyrinthine interior of a
> massive Gothic tower in New Haven, an unsuspecting employee of Yale
> University opened a long-locked room in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and
> stumbled upon something shocking and disturbing.

> Shocking, because what he found was an enormous cache of nude photographs,
> thousands and thousands of photographs of young men in front, side and rear
> poses. Disturbing, because on closer inspection the photos looked like the
> record of a bizarre body-piercing ritual: sticking out from the spine of
> each and every body was a row of sharp metal pins.

~~~
DanBC
Not quite sure what's happening with the votes on this post, with some up and
some down votes.

In case it wasn't clear: several US universities took nude "posture
photographs" of most people who attended, and did so for decades. They took
the photos in the name of science, but that science was probably junk.

That feels worse than an unofficial email list asking people what colour
underwear they have on before accepting their post.

~~~
rashkov
Hey I voted you up. I really enjoyed the article and came back to upvote for
that. My initial knee jerk reaction to your post was that it's slightly
besides the point -- an interesting aside but somewhat off topic for the post.
I suppose that could be why you were getting downvoted. Anyway it's super
interesting, thanks for sharing

