Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

My point isn't just that they are really weird, but that people think about mathematics in an extremely heterogeneous way, and reducing human brains to one number as some sort of "math hit points" is silly for that reason. You are just ignoring most relevant information.

What made Erdos good and what made Ramanujan good were weird complicated facts about their brains (I expect Ramanujan's IQ wouldn't be very different from his cohort in India, e.g. likely not super high, but for some reason he just "saw" natural numbers). This does not make Ramanujan or his cohort stupid. I just don't think "smart" and "stupid" is what IQ measures in any interesting way.

Telling people to go take an IQ test as a way to selecting themselves out from trying math is an especially toxic practice (especially if this advice is not coming from a mathematician).

I prove theorems for a living, and I say: ignore the haters, just read about math that interests you, try your hand at following and constructing arguments, etc. Math is hard (for everyone), don't worry about it. It's fun, too.

11Lumifer11y

Sure, that's true. [...] And I agree. But consider the setup: we have a person who doesn't quite know what he wants to do and who has shown no signs of possessing any "supernatural" math abilities. Could he turn out to be another Groethendieck? Well, sure, it's possible, but we are talking about the base population rate here, the chances are, let's say, not very high. Now, it so happens that most math professionals have high IQ. That's not a coincidence, of course -- if your brain is insufficiently weird to see math "directly", you have to rely on the same dimensions of performance (working memory, etc.) which are reflected in the IQ score. Trying out a profession has costs, sometimes considerable. You can't try everything on the off chance that it might work out -- you want to focus on the areas where you expect to do well. And someone with an IQ of 130 has much, MUCH better chances of becoming a mathematician than someone with the IQ of 80.

1[anonymous]11y

Aaaanyway I haven't had a crude IQ test done but I've had a tailored subset of psychometric tests including subscales from the WAIS from which IQ is derived which indicate my maths skills are above average. The same tests indicated my concentration skills are below average....