Pocket Rockets
6/16/05
Pocket Rockets, by Victor Niederhoffer
Don't underestimate the brilliance of Adam Robinson's recent book The Rocket Review Revolution: The Ultimate Guide to the New SAT and the value for a lifetime of teaching kids to focus on bottom line answers and estimates.
All of Adam's books are a perfect realization of the contrarian persona in real life. He shows you how to understand the average test-givers Joe and Pam, what they want you to do so they can ply their trade, and then how to go beyond that to reach the top of the class. Adam inspired me to write a program that applies his techniques to beating the market mistress at her own game, and especially to prevent her from making you always answer the hard questions wrong,. We still use the approach today.
I found Adam's discussion of how to write an essay educational on many planes:
- How to set it up with four sets of four-sentence paragraphs.
- How to impress the graders with historical and literary examples. Adam cautions against using examples from hoary assigned reads such as "The Catcher in the Rye" lest the graders think that's the only book you've read. And don't use science examples, as the graders won't know what you're talking about.
- How to organize an essay spelling out what you're going to do and recapitulating it at the end. A timeless template here, typical of what Adam does in every section.
The end result is: you learn how to answer questions, to get to the bottom line, to estimate, to guess, to focus on what counts in tests for admission to college, in the market and in life itself.