Oppenheimers, move over. It’s time for the Betanabhotlas & Dholakias!

Chirag participated in the Santa Clara County Science Fair (aka the Synopsis Science & Technology Fair) a few weeks ago and was thrilled to be invited to the awards ceremony at the Great America Park and to have won a spot at the California State Science Fair (CSSF). Congrats, Chirag!

As I looked at the winners on the stage, I was struck by the preponderance of Indians. So, I did some simple checking. Here are the facts:

Total Of Asian origin Of Indian origin
Nominated by Synopsis to attend the CSSF (#) 77 64 47
Nominated by Synopsis to attend the CSSF (%) 100% 83% 64%
Percentage of the Santa Clara population (%) 100% 32% ~10%

So, 32% of the population (Asian) won 83% of the spots while 10% (Indian) won 64%! I have my hypotheses… Yours?

Leaves me wondering who is going to pick up a Nobel prize 20-30 years from now… an Indian kid from Bangalore or an Indian-American kid from Silicon Valley. Wager, anyone?

Sources:

  • US Census Bureau, 2010. San Jose Mercury News, page A8, Wed, March 9, 2011
  • Synopsis Winner List, 2011. Synopsis website.
  • Disclosure:

  • My congratulations to Sneha and Vikas Betanabhotla, my niece and nephew, for their impressive performances at multiple Science fairs
  • RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

    Leave a Reply