
She tried 960 times - da5e
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/world/asia/04driver.html?_r=1&ref=world
======
diziet
To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and
learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and
answers without having contextual knowledge about the actual meaning behind
those questions? It's not dedication, it's thick-headed stubbornness.

The lady has been at it for about five years now. If she did it the right way,
she could have _learned to learn_ , then learned to read and write, and then
passed the exam, plus come out with other valuable skills. Doesn't this remind
you of those college graduates that go through the motions, but when they sit
down and are asked to do something on their own simply fail to even understand
what they're asked? I remember back in college I would sometimes participate
in study groups, and so often encounter students that relied simply on
memorizing problem types and the ways to solve them without actually having
any clue about what they were doing. It seemed more common with students
hailing from asia, and surely had something to do with the way school and
knowledge is treated there.

~~~
Goladus
She's 60+ years old and has been selling vegetables and working on farms most
of her life. She doesn't remind me of college students or graduates at all.

For her, learning how to learn is probably much more difficult than you think
it is.

~~~
kenjackson
Well its not so much that learning to learn is more difficult, but learning to
learn in a given domain. If you don't have someone to teach you, figuring out
the ideal way to learn something can be tricky.

For example, the Rubiks Cube. I'm sure there are great ways to learn to solve
this puzzle, but I learned using a very time consuming technique with a lot of
failure. While I have a really good schema for book learning, I have a
relatively poor schema for learning the optimal way to manipulate items in
3space, despite the fact that I live that space.

~~~
jacquesm
Learning to solve the puzzle would mean that you learned how to solve it
without memorizing a technique.

There is a big difference between actually solving the cube and learning how
to 'solve' it using some technique someone else came up with.

Solving it means that you analyzed the workings of the cube, figured out a way
to return it to its original state without access to some outside source of
information on how to do it.

Screwdrivers probably shouldn't count as a 'solution' in this sense ;)

------
10ren
> "Sajeonogi," or "Knocked down four times, rising up five."

Is Korean really that much more efficient than English, or is that word a
label?

The instructors started to teach her after 949 tries - 949 tries, of watching
this poor woman fail! - then she did learn, and got it on the 11th try after
that. Teaching her was frustrating to them, I think mainly because they
weren't really teaching her about driving, but a subset of civil
administration and technology concepts, such as "regulations" and "emergency
light".

The tragedy is that she could not afford "Middle school", despite dreaming of
it so painfully that taking the driving test daily became a joyous wish
fulfillment of attending school... an attitude of which the stereotypical
student is too invisibly wealthy to properly conceive.

~~~
w1ntermute
> > "Sajeonogi," or "Knocked down four times, rising up five."

> Is Korean really that much more efficient than English, or is that word a
> label?

No, it's a 사자성어 (sajasongoh), or 4 character idiom. They originally come from
Chinese, in which they're called chéngyǔ (成语 or 成語, in simplified and
traditional characters, respectively), meaning "set phrase", and also exist in
Japanese, in which they're called 四字熟語 (yojijukugo, literally "four character
Chinese idiom").

Because of their origin in classical Chinese and their brevity, they're
impossible to understand unless they're explained to you. In Asian countries,
memorizing/understanding these proverbs is a big part of schooling.

I don't know the details of this particular sajasongoh, but I'm guessing that
it either comes from classical Chinese or is a modified version of one that
does. Modifying these proverbs to fit a particular situation is a common form
of wordplay in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. For example, the Chosun Ilbo (a
big Korean newspaper) loves doing this in their headlines.

~~~
forensic
so it's like Brangelina

~~~
kijinbear
More like acronyms, I'd say. For example, "HTTP" = hyper-text transfer
protocol.

It's funny that the word 사자성어 (meaning: 4-character idiom) is itself a
4-character idiom. East Asians like 4-character groups so much, they even read
numbers in groups of 4 digits. For example, 1,234,567,890 would be read 12 억
3456 만 7890.

~~~
slowpoison
I doubt they like it. 4 is considered unlucky in East Asia. Elevators always
read 1->2->3->5->...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia>

~~~
analyst74
Although 4 is considered unlucky in Chinese, decimal numbers is represented in
4-number groups, instead of 60 thousand, we'd have 6 wan, 800 million would be
8 yi, etc

------
kilian
It's probably a webdesigner-thing to think of 960 as a nice round number, but
that's the first thing I thought upon reading that.

~~~
petercooper
I confess: I thought "960 Times" was a newspaper fixed width stylesheet
template of some sort at first.

~~~
SebMortelmans
Haha, I was thinking exactly the same thing :) Professional handicap I guess.

------
siculars
This is quite possibly the most inspiring story of human tenacity and sheer
grit I've heard in quite a while. It really made me smile.

Clearly her method was not optimal but it... eventually worked for her. Just
goes to show that perseverance pays off even when starting from absolute zero.

Good for Cha Sa-soon!

~~~
Mz
And she got a free car out of it:

 _In early August, Hyundai presented Ms. Cha with a $16,800 car.

Ms. Cha, whose name, coincidentally enough, is Korean for “vehicle,” now also
appears on a prime-time television commercial for Hyundai._

Go Grandma!

------
ck2
She tried the WRITTEN test 960 times.

She passed the driving test in 4 tries which is probably like the average
american teenager these days.

At $5 a pop though, she could have hired some personal tutors.

------
paradox95
Either this is a common occurrence in South Korea or the media keeps recycling
this story, I first read about this on Sept 6, 2009 and then again on May 7,
2010.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/06/cha-sasoon-
skorean-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/06/cha-sasoon-skorean-
woman-_n_349290.html)

------
yafujifide
Perhaps she didn't realize that she could study for the test and then pass it
after one try. According to the article she has almost no formal education, so
that seems possible: "It was not until she turned 15 that she joined a formal
school as a fourth grader. But her schooling ended there a few years later."

~~~
yafujifide
I spoke too soon. On the second page, the article says she did study, but did
so "phonetically" and thus didn't understand what she was studying.

~~~
petercooper
This reminds me of something: I saw a documentary about championship Scrabble
players and a lot of them aren't English speakers or even Latin alphabet
language speakers. They treat Scrabble as a visual pattern game rather than a
verbal one.

~~~
zzeroparticle
Pretty much been my experience playing. It's more about memorizing lists of
words without really bothering to know what they mean and figuring out which
words to use when and how to place them to maximize your point total on each
play.

~~~
petercooper
I mean no offense by this but.. is English your mother tongue?

I used to play Scrabble a ton and adopted a more verbal, etymological style
that, I'd assumed, would be more common amongst native English speakers (but
maybe not!)

~~~
zzeroparticle
It is, but my primary strategy has been to commit a huge list of words to
memory, especially the two-letter words to join new words together for point
efficiency.

------
jlees
To me, this is less about the fact a single woman had to memorise a written
driving test by failing it 949 times, and more about the mismatch between the
test itself and the populace.

Surely she is fairly indicative of a rural inhabitant? Why is the test so
inaccessible, and how many others are there like her?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Why is the test so inaccessible, and how many others are there like her?

The test should ensure that a driver can read read and understand street signs
both symbolic and textual ones and respond correctly ... oh yeah, and drive
the relevant vehicle. They should also be able to service the car sufficiently
to keep it safe - pump tyres, check fluids, know mostly when it needs
attention from a mechanic.

Not everyone can do all these things hence the test appears "inaccessible".

------
xenophanes
I wonder what are the odds of passing the written test with random answers. I
assume it's multiple choice.

~~~
lunchbox
Here's what we know from the article: (1) 40 question test, (2) Multiple
choice, (3) She passed it with "60 out of 100"

My assumptions: (1) It's graded on a simple "percentage right" basis, so 24/40
questions necessary right to pass, (2) 4 options for each question

Her score on an individual test is a random variable X following a binomial
distribution with 40 trials and chance of 0.25 for each trial. Her chance of
passing by guessing randomly, P(X >= 24), is an infinitesimally small
2.826E-6.

The probability that she fails all of the 960 tests, assuming independence of
tests, is (1-p)^960. So the probability that she will pass at least one test
is:

    
    
      1 - (1 - p)^960
    

Plugging in p = 2.826E-6, the chance is still practically 0, so a naive
guessing strategy would not work.

However, under the above assumptions, she could practically guarantee her
success by combining this guessing strategy with a simple test-taking strategy
like eliminating 1 or 2 obviously wrong answers per question, or just
remembering the answers to several of the same questions that are probably
being recycled from test to test.

~~~
sesqu
_just remembering the answers to several of the same questions that are
probably being recycled from test to test._

I assumed this is how she did it, but assuming all questions are recycled, 4
options in 40 questions, perfect memory, no knowledge, and a naïve strategy,
she should have passed in just 29 tries (1.75 retries per question, 10
initially right, 24 needed). Mastermind isn't _that_ hard a game. So clearly,
some assumptions are wrong.

~~~
ars
Change your assumptions to assume a larger set of questions, not 40.

------
robryan
The test givers must be quiet stubborn to, can't imagine something like that
ever happening here for some kind of similar test, she would just get passed
or turned away in the first 10.

Interesting question is that now that she got 60/100 does she understand
things much better than 3 years ago, some form of understanding would spike
the scores quickly, while the slow improvement can only seem to be the result
of slightly better memorisation of question->answer each time without much
better understanding.

------
Andrew_Quentin
_Off-Topic: Most stories... they'd cover on TV news [or newspapers], [are]
probably off-topic._ A story that man bites dog I think would be in this
category.

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That
includes... anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

That she took the test 960 times is interesting to know, but hardly
gratifying.

------
Tichy
Sadly, all she got was a drivers license. It's not like she hit success with
her startup after 960 tries and became a happy member of the fym club.

~~~
noonespecial
She was a poor rural villager. She got the right to drive _and a free $16,000
car_. Its like getting magic powers and a king's ransom. I'd wager her life
changed more for the better as a result of these events than most of ours
would if we did get that big fym exit.

In her world, she joined indeed.

~~~
fuzzythinker
Well, after deducting 960 * $5 fee ~= $5k, plus 960 * unknown bus fee (let's
assume it's rounds to $1k), it's more like a $10k car. Also, this car is given
to her, so her value for the car may not be $16k (imagine she's given $16k
towards the purchase of any car, she'll probably ended up with a different
car). Finally, not sure of tax laws in Korean, so she may have to pay taxes on
it before the $6k fee deductions. She still comes out ahead, but probably
close to half of $16k value.

But her fame from the story is priceless.

