What's the difference between GEEKS and NERDS? A data scientist says he has settled one of the most pressing conundra of the digital age. He has discovered the difference between geeks and nerds. Burr Settles, software chap at crowdsourced translation platform Duolingo, rooted through millions of tweets to find the sorts of words that were used at the same time as either …
A Nerd is someone who is socially inadequate and not the sharpest tool in the box who you'd avoid.
A Geek is one of the sharpest tools in the box, you'd let him sort out a problem, is more socially aware, you'd tolerate but avoid because his intelligence make you look stupid under some circumstances. No one like being with the class swot.
Wrong way around my friend - a Nerd is a Geek with a high IQ. You don't have to be clever to be a geek (a trip to any games/comic con or star trek conference will demonstrate that) but you need smarts to be a nerd. Nerds are problem solvers, geeks are just fanboys under a different name.
I thought this had been settled years ago:
The difference between, geek, nerd & dork Venn Diagram
Or, for you XKCD fans..
There might be a few small lobes sticking out the edges, though ... Most show symptoms of Asperger's ... I hire them wherever possible in technical roles. Good folks to have around, on-time, trustworthy, and only jump into a project if they actually know what they are doing. With a little cajoling, they can usually be persuaded to admit that "I don't know, can you show me?" (or words to that affect) ... It's a trust thing in people like this, at least in my perspective and experience :-)
Martin, when people speak the words "I don't know, show me" in my hearing, said words have a positive affect on them. I teach them when I can, and if I can't, I find someone who can. Re-read mine in that context.
Was mine improper written/typoed English? Perhaps. Improper use of the language? Not so much. English is wonderfully flexible that way.
I'll purchase the next round if we can agree to disagree :-)
I'll always accept a beer!
As egregious errors go, I admit that effect/affect doesn't bother me half as much as, say, loose/lose or there/their/they're. I can see effect/affect becoming interchangeable in the future - but loose and lose will never be, so long as I have breath to moan about it.
+1 for insight
But you miss the point of the article. The point of the article was to get the researcher / infographic company some publicity by pigeonholing based on some pretty unimportant attributes. If you want the engineers of this world to be recognised in future in depth studies like this, they need a collective label like 'gineers' or something. We used to use 'hackers' until the press stole it from us...
because theses predicates are patently true
1) twitter is a medium in which the ability to express concepts in the English language is not at limited in any way
2) a wide and representative cross-section of English language speakers use twitter
Like bollocks are they.
>many geeks are also nerds (and vice versa).
Why "(and vice versa)"? Does that mean you can have a geek who is also a nerd but when he's being a nerd he's not a geek? Oh, (and vice versa).
Or maybe it's a process of transformation, a person who is primarily a geek starts to exhibit symptoms of being a nerd and there is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde phase until the nerd takes over (and vice versa).
Which begs the question, do geeks aspire to be nerds or vice versa.
@Chris W
>many geeks are also nerds (and vice versa).
Why "(and vice versa)"?
If the set of geeks is smaller than the set of nerds, then the intersect set will not be a large proportion of the nerd set, so many geeks could be nerds without many nerds being geeks. For example: 80% of 100 geeks are nerds, but there are 1,000,000 nerds, so the 80 geek nerds are a drop in the nerdy ocean.
I'm afraid your scientific reasearch is invalid. Proper scientific research is done in laboratories using data from other studies.
So here's what you need to do.
Write up your study, for the purpose of this example we'll assume that your comment serves and even better it has been published. Put on a white coat. Go into your kitchen and turn on your gas hob, if you don't have gas then light a candle, cigarette lighter or anything with a flame that you can pretend is a bunsen burner. We now have the correct environmnet for performing proper scientific research. Using long words you are not quite sure the correct meaning of write up the findings of numerous studies you have researched, in this case one but what the hell. Submit your paper to a scientific journal for peer approval. In other words repost your comment as true scientific research and wait for us to give our opinion.
Wrote :- "If Marist lads think it is so, then it must be so"
We are already struggling with what "Nerds" and "Geeks" are, now you bring in "Marist Lads". WTF are they? If they were chatting to a young lady it is obvious they cannot be either. So where are they on the Venn diagram?
geek /gēk/ Noun
An unfashionable or socially inept person.
A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest: "a computer geek".
nerd /nərd/ Noun
A foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious: "one of those nerds who never asked a girl to dance".
An intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession.
So basically he's retelling what the interweb memes already knew (including the fact they are both socially inept). Depending on the subject(s), I'm either a Nerd or a Geek... or sometimes both.
Note that "geek" was originally an old carnie term for the freaks in their show, circa 17th/18th century. This was pre-empted by high-school culture circa 1950s.
so I don't fall into either category. Besides, they seem to have ignored the age requirement here. People over 60 who do technical things as a way of life don't call themselves anything. It's only the younger generation who think there is anything unusual about being interested in something.
How the hell can you hate Pizza? All it is is a hot, open-faced sandwich. Dough base[0], zillions of sauce options, including "none at all", zillions of toppings of choice, including "none at all", any and all cheeses (or none!), any & all herbs & spices (again, or none at all!) ...
Bung it onto a hot stone (500F in a home oven, my outdoor grill can get up to 700F, my outdoor 1875 stone bread oven gets to about 950F) until done. Serve with cold fizzy beverage of choice.
Or better, leftover cold pizza out of the fridge for breakfast with a cup of scalding black coffee ...
[0] Thick, thin, whatever ... I prefer a crust that's a cross between ciabatta and focaccia, tossed to about a quarter of an inch in thickness over most of the pie. I make it as plain old bread about three times per month.
'People over 60 who do technical things as a way of life don't call themselves anything'
+1 to this, Sir. But, as a person of approximately half that age, I don't 'call' myself anything either. I never saw why learning things / reading / having interests required apologist labelling. Honestly, I think the more socially insecure are predisposed to label themselves 'nerd' or 'geek', labouring under the misapprehension that a caveat or disclaimer should be slapped on their forehead for having a personality. Or, <GASP>, being a bit eccentric.
I don't talk about or force my interests on anyone unless they ask my advice, in which case they'll get it. If they don't agree / don't listen, I don't care if I know I'm right.
At the moment, it seems to be hip among yoofs to brandish a sort of nerd / geek affectation.
Hell, I even saw a young lady wearing a top at the weekend emblazoned with 'NERD' in minimalist typeface. It's - and I'm gagging to say this - 'fashionable' at the moment. Thick rimmed specs, sultry poses on Facebook in geeky attire. They do really think they are nerds, simply by virtue of the time they spent on Twitt -- OMG DID YOU JUST SEE WHAT DARYL PUT ON FACEBOOK LOL
But it's just that - a trend. Give it another couple or three years, and we'll be back spiritually where we always were - getting picked on for doing our homework.
I may have posted this before, in which case sorry, but the compliment I most value is the one once paid to me by a Royal Tank Regiment sergeant in the early 80s. I had turned up for a field trial with boots and a boiler suit.
"You know, Sir," he said, "you're quite sensible for a boffin".
Both monikers were applied in a derogatory sense originally to those who were seen as 'more interested in the blinkenflashen lightzen'.
Then those who were named such decided to embrace the terms in the vain hope that they could become 'cool' just as the other minorities embraced their derogatory terms in the not-so-vain hope to do likewise (gay, 'nigga' &c).
Unfortunately, this didn't really work, but that's not because geeks and nerds are not cool. It's because we know something they don't, and we're comfortable about that while they are not.
Beware of geeks bearing gifts... The geek will inherit the earth...
We did create the internet, we're keeping it up and running, we're chasing the dishonesty in the banking system, we're cleaning up all the crap.
We will make the world a better place...call us whatever the fuck you like, if you're not one of us we don't give a fuck (maybe that's our 'social ineptitude' but then if bringing the world to financial ruin and all the other crap the non-geek and non-nerd types are doing, I'll take social awkwardness over that any day.)
I too was about to ask "WTF is Etsy?".
Now that I know, I can't help wondering where this guy got his data from, given that "Etsy" occurred frequently enough to be significant. I work in an environment populated entirely by people who are geeks or nerds or both, and I see no evidence of a taste for handmade crafts.
Incidentally, I though a geek was a fairground performer who bites the heads off chickens, though I've never seen a satisfactory explanation of why anyone would pay to see this done.
"Say the magic word and the duck will come down..." *
-- Marx
Here in Michigan we have a self-styled nerd for a governor -- and a computer repair business calling itself The Geek Squad. Possibly better than the other way around.
Imagine a bunch of earnest young men fixing computers, biting the heads off live chickens for lunch. Or a governor who does. Sets bounds on things, doesn't it?
Beer -- because there's no tea. *And no Hundred Dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Bet_Your_Life
The venn diagram seems good enough to me (I don't care if people call me a Geek or Nerd - I take them both as compliments).
I would change one thing though, and that is to relabel the bit of 'obsession' that does not intersect with other areas as 'fanbois'. To me a fanboy is somebody who has all the obsession but has lost rationality and a sense of logic - therefore they sit outside of the 'intelligence' sphere. As they also love showing off their 'toys' they are normally not socially inept either.
Geek = Intelligent, and all that, and really techno oriented. Probably watches Star Trek and like SciFi.
Nerd = Geek + "not only goes to Comicon, but goes dressed as their favourite Klingon." (for extra bonus points, the Klingon in question has to be the most obscure possible, and they'd be happy to explain it at length the significance of "ToR", credited as "Klingon #5" played by ..., who was at the back of scene 5, episode 12, on stardate 749024)
I'm mostly in the Geek category, but I do have Nerdy friends. :) Re-reading the above, I think it could be shortened to:
Nerd = Geek with Aspergers...
He started out with the wrong definition for nerd. Nerd, according to everyone I've ever heard from on the subject who has an opinion worth noting (in other words, people who realize it's not an insult to be hurled at people smarter than them) is simply a very smart person with wide ranging knowledge. His definition of geek is spot on, but nerds aren't subject specific.
So, now we have Geeks & Nerds sorted. How about Boffins??? In the US, we don't use the term boffins, but refer to scientists or engineers or mathematicians or any number of really smart guys and gals. Then what is a boffin and what is a scientist or engineer or mathematician or any number of really smart guys and gals"?
#I don't claim to be either#
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