What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old?

Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by learc83 on Saturday July 13, 2019 @01:49PM (#20429240)

There was a Doctor, a Bio-statistician, an attorney, and a radio reporter. There were 2 English related academics in the article (and one professor of Classics with a Ph.D. in Ancient Philosophy), so that's definitely overrepresented, but it was more diverse than I would have expected.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by sytelus on Sunday July 14, 2019 @03:03AM (#20432106)

It's unfortunate the article headline is the question but there is no real conclusion drawn in the article. It's just bunch of interviews with past winners. It's apparent that Bee winners have unsurprisingly great memory capacity, ability to fast search their memory and build much finer predictor model of data they consume. So they excel at professions that requires these attributes which are pretty much all science/tech/literature/law professions.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by bane on Saturday July 13, 2019 @11:43PM (#20431515)

However, one might argue the non English ones require lots of memorization.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by Noumenon72 on Saturday July 13, 2019 @01:42PM (#20429194)

Thank you, somehow the article is unskimmable and I didn't follow a single story to the end.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by mtbcoder on Saturday July 13, 2019 @02:48PM (#20429525)

It's corporate click-bait from Dollar Shave Club. Not sure why this is on the front page of HN. Sign of the times I suppose?

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by sct202 on Saturday July 13, 2019 @04:29PM (#20429973)

I thought you were kidding and then I read their bio. What an interesting choice for a startup shaving company. I'm surprised Unilever hasn't axed it by now after they made the acquisition.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by AstralStorm on Sunday July 14, 2019 @03:44AM (#20432252)

It sounds like a good "old fashioned" brand - they have a few of those.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by paulcole on Saturday July 13, 2019 @11:37PM (#20431499)

As you can see from the winning words 30–50+ years ago, the Bee used to be a vocabulary contest among average people. Today it’s a test of who can commit to memorizing essentially the entire dictionary. You’re going to see a lot more high-performing doctors, lawyers, etc. in the future compared to older winners.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by CydeWeys on Sunday July 14, 2019 @10:16AM (#20433495)

> Today it’s a test of who can commit to memorizing essentially the entire dictionary. You’re going to see a lot more high-performing doctors, lawyers, etc. in the future compared to older winners.

Why would the latter follow the former? What does memorizing the words in an entire dictionary (not even the meanings, just the spelling of the words themselves) have to do with being a high-performing doctor, lawyer, etc.?

It may well be that the hyper-focus on rote memorization that the bee is known for now will lead to reduced outcomes. Rote memorization just isn't that important of a skill in modern society.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by paulcole on Sunday July 14, 2019 @12:17PM (#20434227)

They are memorizing (most of) the meanings as well as the roots, patterns in the languages of origins, etc. Why else do you think they always ask the pronouncer for the definition?

Commitment to a years-long slog of seemingly endless and pointless repetition and stressful competition? If that doesn’t scream doctor/lawyer I don’t know what does.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by double0jimb0 on Sunday July 21, 2019 @09:39PM (#20494826)

Most doctors will tell you that they only use about 10% of what they learned in medical school or had to memorize for boards.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by sporkologist on Sunday July 14, 2019 @12:19AM (#20431618)

I don't think they would start allowing the use of professional jargon as spelling words, such as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. But I may be mistaken.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by paulcole on Sunday July 14, 2019 @01:32AM (#20431825)

That word would be of no challenge to the current top spellers. There was an 8-way tie for victory this year because the best kids are all but unstumpable. You are vastly underestimating the level of preparation that goes into competing to win the Bee.

For that and other obvious reasons, Scripps is unlikely to open the word list to include any and all nonsensical jargon.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by sporkologist on Sunday July 14, 2019 @07:32PM (#20436958)

> nonsensical

What would you consider nonsensical jargon? Jargon is jargon because it makes sense to those in that particular profession (medicine in this instance) but not to those outside it. Jargon that doesn't make sense to those who are using it is just fiddle-faddle.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by paulcole on Sunday July 14, 2019 @10:05PM (#20437602)

> pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

This is nonsensical.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by sporkologist on Monday July 15, 2019 @05:57PM (#20445678)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilico...

It is a type of silicosis, and has been around since 1935.

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Re:What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? by paulcole on Monday July 15, 2019 @10:44PM (#20447100)

Did you even read that link?

> artificial long word

> coined by the president of the National Puzzlers' League as a synonym for the disease known as silicosis

Nonsensical.

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