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multifoliaterose comments on Great Mathematicians on Math Competitions and "Genius" - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (5)
As I said in my earlier comment, I agree with most of what you say here. Some specific comments and questions.
Can you make this statement more precise and give references to support it? I'm not sure what you mean by "indicators."
I'm pretty sure that high caliber mathematicians with a strong track record as advisors (like Hirzebruch, Atiyah, Thurston, Manin) would be better able to predict future success of high school students in research mathematicians by spending a few hours talking with the said students than by studying their scores on math olympiads.
I've heard this from many people and believe it but have not had a chance to chase down references - do you have some handy?
If I turn the present posting into a top level posting I'll definitely take care to mention the point that you make above.
Yes, this was one of my reasons for posting on the subject.
I agree in principle but am not sure what you have in mind here specifically. Are there one or more particular quotations above that you find distortionary? If I turn the present posting into a top level posting I'll definitely take care to add quotations about the reality of natural talent.
I mean that if you were trying to select 100 kids to ensure that at least one would go on to win a Fields medal, picking out those at the top of the Math Olympiad distribution (the highest gold medal scores, youngest gold medalists) would probably suffice.
The biggest datasets are from militaries (with the most representative ones from countries with universal conscription). Check out the APA report on intelligence by Niesser et al, this zoo of references on wikipedia, or Linda Gottfredson's website.
Concerning "predict(ing) future success of high school students in research mathematicians by spending a few hours talking": From my experience by private tutoring a wide variety of (university and other) students is that one develops an intuitive sensitivity for that. I wonder if others experience that too as quite unpleaseant: one has the feeling of an inappropriate intrusion into the personality of others, a violation of privacy, and because such intuitive guess comes very quickly, one feels to be very unjust. The obvious cause is that the human mind is less complex than usually estimated.