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Lumifer comments on The Truth About Mathematical Ability - LessWrong
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Comments (138)
Causal stories in particular.
I actually disagree that having a good intuitive grasp of "stories" of this type is not a math thing, or a part of the descriptive statistics magisterium (unless you think graphical models are descriptive statistics). "Oh but maybe there is confounder X" quickly becomes a maze of twisty passages where it is easy to get lost.
"Math things" is thinking carefully.
I think equating lots of derivation mistakes or whatever with poor math ability is: (a) toxic and (b) wrong. I think the innate ability/genius model of successful mathematicians is (a) toxic and (b) wrong. I further think that a better model for a successful mathematician is someone who is past a certain innate ability threshold who has the drive to keep going and the morale to not give up. To reiterate, I believe for most folks who post here the dominating term is drive and morale, not ability (of course drive and morale are also partly hereditary).
"Thinking carefully" is necessary but not sufficient for "math things".
I don't know about that -- there are opportunity costs. Let's say you're smart, and conscientious, and have good analytical skills, etc., but not particularly good at math. Yes, you can probably make a passable mathematician if you persevere and sink a lot of time and effort into learning math. But since math is not your strong point, you probably would have made a better X (social scientist, hedge manager, biologist, etc.) with a lot less effort and frustration. Thus going for math would be a losing move.
And, of course, this.