11 Year Old Pakistani Girl, Youngest to Ever Pass Udacity Physics 100 Class

On Sept. 17, the Pakistani government shut down access to YouTube. The purported reason was to block the anti-Muslim film trailer that was inciting protests around the world.

One little-noticed consequence of this decision was that 215 people in Pakistan suddenly lost their seats in a massive, open online physics course. The free college-level class, created by a Silicon Valley start-up called Udacity, included hundreds of short YouTube videos embedded on its website. Some 23,000 students worldwide had enrolled, including Khadijah Niazi, a pigtailed 11-year-old in Lahore. She was on question six of the final exam when she encountered a curt message saying “this site is unavailable.”

Niazi was devastated. She’d worked hard to master this physics class before her 12th birthday, just one week away. Now what? Niazi posted a lament on the class discussion board: “I am very angry, but I will not quit.”

In every country, education changes so slowly that it can be hard to detect progress. But what happened next was truly different. Within an hour, Maziar Kosarifar, a young man taking the class in Malaysia, began posting detailed descriptions for Niazi of the test questions in each video. Rosa Brigída, a novice physics professor taking the class from Portugal, tried to create a workaround so Niazi could bypass YouTube; it didn’t work. From England, William, 12, promised to help and warned Niazi not to write anything too negative about her government online.

None of these students had met one another in person. The class directory included people from 125 countries. But after weeks in the class, helping one another with Newton’s laws, friction and simple harmonic motion, they’d started to feel as if they shared the same carrel in the library. Together, they’d found a passageway into a rigorous, free, college-level class, and they weren’t about to let anyone lock it up.

By late that night, the Portuguese professor had successfully downloaded all the videos and then uploaded them to an uncensored photo-sharing site. It took her four hours, but it worked. The next day, Niazi passed the final exam with the highest distinction. “Yayyyyyyy,” she wrote in a new post. (Actually, she used 43 y’s, but you get the idea.) She was the youngest girl ever to complete Udacity’s Physics 100 class, a challenging course for the average college freshman.

That same day, Niazi signed up for Computer Science 101 along with her twin brother Muhammad. In England, William began downloading the videos for them.

From Time Magazine, 10/18/12

The top 400 students didn't include anyone from Stanford

This is what happens when you make education accessible. You find lots of smart, hard-working people.

"In 2011 Thrun and fellow professor Peter Norvig decided to put their Artificial Intelligence class online [via Udacity]... by last fall, 160,000 people had enrolled... meanwhile, Thrun had told his Stanford students they could take the class online if they didn't want to attend lectures. More than three-quarters of them did... still, the Stanford students were not the stars of the class. At the end of the semester, not one of the course's 400 top performers had a Stanford address"

- Time magazine, 10/29/12

One Area Where LA Has Us Beat: The Art of Gift Giving

Weekend in Napa for having connected them to an exec they hired. Gift certificate to Masa's restaurant for helping with a fruitful introduction. Bottle of wine for, well, I don't remember but people occasionally send me alcohol. All unexpected but appreciated. Generally though, the Valley does a shitty job of gift giving. We're just not attuned to the nuance and etiquette. In some ways, our culture even rejects the idea. But wow, a well-timed and appropriate "thank you" accompanied by something tangible makes a lasting impression, and actually ends up being a pretty inexpensive way of maintaining relationships.

Oh sure, we know how to offer $10k (or a year of BBQ) as a referral bonus if you find me an engineer. And we're solid on throwing advisory equity grants around for ongoing access to someone - in some ways, access to funding rounds is our equivalent of the Hollywood muffin basket). But tossing someone some hipster socks, an Uber gift certificate or weekend in Big Sur? We just haven't mastered the art of the 'here's a little something' like New York or LA. Why?

1. Friction - fewer assistants or underlings to manage this stuff. And who knows peoples addresses for shipping - i can't even spell or pronounce the last names of good friends (blame email autofill). Maybe mobile gifting via services like Facebook will result in a generosity spike by eliminating the need to do anything outside of clicking a few buttons and entering your credit card.

2. Culture - maybe I'm doing it wrong, but we pride ourselves on being less transactional in the moment and more community oriented. We help out not because we expect immediate recompense but because it's how one pays into the pool. Later you'll ask for favors back, drawing on the goodwill. Giving someone a thank you gift may awkwardly recharacterize the interaction. I'm not a prostitute so why are we haggling over price? I don't want to be indebted to you so don't try to buy me.

3. Conflict of Interest - simple gestures can look very different when they end with an item of value being exchanged. A gift too valuable or in some cases, even just anything with a price tag turns innocence into questionable ethics. That reference check I did for a friend? Bottle of wine sure makes it seem like "thanks for not telling them about the time I falsified my expense reports." Unrequested gifts can lead to unexpected problems.

Now all this being said, I'm going to stick to my original premise: we undergift in Silicon Valley. Consider me guilty of infractions on both sides - situations where I feel like a thank you would have been nice but never arrived; and occasions where I should have sent an appreciative package instead of just an email. Here are my unofficial etiquette tips to gift giving within the tech world.

A. Consider making a charitable donation in someone's name. Removed the obligation and conflict of interest issues. Make sure it's an organization the recipient cares about, not just one you think is worthy.

B. Avoid cash - or things which smell like cash (iTunes gift cards, AmEx cheques, etc)

C. Go for unique as opposed to showy. I don't need another iPad but if you find me a small batch whiskey or the best toe nail clipper I'll remember you. Same thing with experiences - although harder to coordinate, often more memorable.

D. If concerned, ask first - "hey, we wanted to thank you for the great advice the other day. Would you mind if we sent over a small gift?" Most people will respond "Totally not necessary" but you can still send. It's only if they say "My company doesn't let me accept gifts" or some variation on "I really wish you wouldn't" that you can politely back away.