12 ms·

Terry Tao about his own childhood as child prodigy (1985, at ten)

13 points by zjj 17y ago

mechanical_fish 17y ago
This is a link to a Word document. WTF? Do people still write those things?
- catch23 17y ago
  apparently mathematicians use them. extremely smart ones.
  - zackattack 17y ago
    On a tangent, bragging about intelligence you can't apply is like bragging about a car you can't drive. So you see, can't overvalue innate intelligence. Although it may just be a sign that he has no reason to be in touch with today's trends.
    - lkozma 17y ago
      He seems to be quite up-to-date otherwise: blogging about new results: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/ http://terrytao.wordpress.com/
    - gjm11 17y ago
      Huh? I don't think I've ever known him brag about his intelligence (note: I don't know him personally, but I do read his blog), and he has about as much intelligence to brag about as any person alive. And he applies it all the time; that's his job, and he is very very good at it. Your comments look like they're meant as a criticism of Tao, but I don't see how to apply any of them to anything about him. Would you like to clarify? (Note: the document linked from here does include the word "intelligent" -- in some such phrase as "I may be considered an intelligent child". It may be worth bearing in mind that at this point he was a 10-year-old who had been asked, on account of his prodigious mathematical skills, to talk to a bunch of very eminent adults. It may also be worth bearing in mind that he immediately goes on to say something like "but I still have a whole lot to learn before I have any hope of being as wise as any of you in this room".)
      - zackattack 17y ago
        They aren't a criticism of Tao. It was a tangent. I'm saying that intelligence that can only be applied to a few esoteric fields is overrated. I thought a thread about child prodigies would be a good opportunity to make that comment.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    And here I thought that LaTEX is the standard for mathematicians.
mcav 17y ago
The article in text format (rather than MS Word): http://gist.github.com/raw/190081/6731e974f7175b26e351b40dffb433bd75d1ec55/gistfile1.txt http://gist.github.com/raw/190081/6731e974f7175b26e351b40dff...
mike463 17y ago
It's absolutely true -- the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to someone else. You must get organized and this focuses you.
DarkShikari 17y ago
Speaking of child prodigies--I've noticed something extremely odd about childhood ability in my own experiences. I got a 5 on the Calculus AB AP exam when I was ~10 years old and around the same time got a ~1490 (I don't remember exactly) on the SAT. 6 years later, I did no better on the SAT than I did when I was a preteen and I didn't feel as if I was any better at math than I had been 6 years earlier. Despite the fact that I had done so well at math as a child, I was never competitive in the higher-level math competitions like the AMC and AIME, where I consistently scored mediocre (~110 on the AMC, ~0-1 on the AIME). I went to school with plenty of classmates who scored near-perfect on both competitions and yet had not been nearly as much of a supposed "prodigy" as I was. Today, I doubt I am even above average at my college; I am relieved to have simply passed the math courses required for my major with barely-tolerable grades. And yet whenever I read stories of "real" prodigies, I never see anything like this--they always seem to continue their trend and prove to be brilliant mathematicians. Or is this selection bias? I still don't fully understand what happened. Does mathematical ability plateau at an early age? Is there something special about courses beyond basic calculus that are inherently more difficult? Did my skill simply stop developing because I lost interest?
- nl 17y ago
  " And yet whenever I read stories of "real" prodigies, I never see anything like this--they always seem to continue their trend and prove to be brilliant mathematicians." No, it's very, very rare that child prodigies go on to have significant impact in the field they were brilliant at as a child. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Precocious_Youth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Precoci... for some details. (I read a very interesting article about Tao previously which addressed this - trying to find it now)
  - nl 17y ago
    Hmm. Reading the papers from that study group seems to prove me 100% wrong. I suspect my selective referencing skills need improving.
    - 17y ago

13 points by zjj 17y ago

mechanical_fish 17y ago

This is a link to a Word document. WTF? Do people still write those things?

catch23 17y ago
apparently mathematicians use them. extremely smart ones.
- zackattack 17y ago
  On a tangent, bragging about intelligence you can't apply is like bragging about a car you can't drive. So you see, can't overvalue innate intelligence. Although it may just be a sign that he has no reason to be in touch with today's trends.
  - lkozma 17y ago
    He seems to be quite up-to-date otherwise: blogging about new results: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/ http://terrytao.wordpress.com/
  - gjm11 17y ago
    Huh? I don't think I've ever known him brag about his intelligence (note: I don't know him personally, but I do read his blog), and he has about as much intelligence to brag about as any person alive. And he applies it all the time; that's his job, and he is very very good at it. Your comments look like they're meant as a criticism of Tao, but I don't see how to apply any of them to anything about him. Would you like to clarify? (Note: the document linked from here does include the word "intelligent" -- in some such phrase as "I may be considered an intelligent child". It may be worth bearing in mind that at this point he was a 10-year-old who had been asked, on account of his prodigious mathematical skills, to talk to a bunch of very eminent adults. It may also be worth bearing in mind that he immediately goes on to say something like "but I still have a whole lot to learn before I have any hope of being as wise as any of you in this room".)
    - zackattack 17y ago
      They aren't a criticism of Tao. It was a tangent. I'm saying that intelligence that can only be applied to a few esoteric fields is overrated. I thought a thread about child prodigies would be a good opportunity to make that comment.
- Tichy 17y ago
  And here I thought that LaTEX is the standard for mathematicians.

mcav 17y ago

The article in text format (rather than MS Word): http://gist.github.com/raw/190081/6731e974f7175b26e351b40dffb433bd75d1ec55/gistfile1.txt http://gist.github.com/raw/190081/6731e974f7175b26e351b40dff...

mike463 17y ago

It's absolutely true -- the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to someone else. You must get organized and this focuses you.

DarkShikari 17y ago

Speaking of child prodigies--I've noticed something extremely odd about childhood ability in my own experiences. I got a 5 on the Calculus AB AP exam when I was ~10 years old and around the same time got a ~1490 (I don't remember exactly) on the SAT. 6 years later, I did no better on the SAT than I did when I was a preteen and I didn't feel as if I was any better at math than I had been 6 years earlier. Despite the fact that I had done so well at math as a child, I was never competitive in the higher-level math competitions like the AMC and AIME, where I consistently scored mediocre (~110 on the AMC, ~0-1 on the AIME). I went to school with plenty of classmates who scored near-perfect on both competitions and yet had not been nearly as much of a supposed "prodigy" as I was. Today, I doubt I am even above average at my college; I am relieved to have simply passed the math courses required for my major with barely-tolerable grades. And yet whenever I read stories of "real" prodigies, I never see anything like this--they always seem to continue their trend and prove to be brilliant mathematicians. Or is this selection bias? I still don't fully understand what happened. Does mathematical ability plateau at an early age? Is there something special about courses beyond basic calculus that are inherently more difficult? Did my skill simply stop developing because I lost interest?

nl 17y ago
" And yet whenever I read stories of "real" prodigies, I never see anything like this--they always seem to continue their trend and prove to be brilliant mathematicians." No, it's very, very rare that child prodigies go on to have significant impact in the field they were brilliant at as a child. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Precocious_Youth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Precoci... for some details. (I read a very interesting article about Tao previously which addressed this - trying to find it now)
- nl 17y ago
  Hmm. Reading the papers from that study group seems to prove me 100% wrong. I suspect my selective referencing skills need improving.
  - 17y ago