UIUC is a really good school. Getting in there is not easy.
>UIUC is a really good school. Getting in there is not easy. While overall a good school, their math department is not ranked that high.
Especially compared to engineering and CS.
A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#22As another user pointed out, why should be the chromatic polynomial of rectangle with deleted edge be: q^4 - 3q^3 + 2q^2 and not q * (q - 1)^3. A counter example: when q=2, we have two ways to color the rectangle with a deleted edge. Am I missing something? I think fixating q as the number of possible ways to color the end points of the deleted edge leads to the wrong result.
This article was "reprinted" from the original at Quanta Magazine. The original article has the correct answer of q(q-1)^3. (It was probably corrected after Wired "reprinted" it.) https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak...
Indeed. At the bottom:
> Correction June 27, 2017: The original version of this article included an error in the calculation of the chromatic polynomial of a rectangle.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it lead you to believe that? If they have talented parents, wouldn't the parents raise them in a way to encourage their talents to blossom? Would be interesting to see if the children of talented parents that are put up for adoption and raised by average parents are as successful. Or vice versa, talented parents raising children of average parents.
I guess you're right. I am obviously not that smart... Haha.. But to your point, Steve Jobs is an example of that. He had blue collar adoptive parents, but his birth parents were PhD level people. I am not gonna put my foot in my mouth again and say this is proof of anything, but it is interesting to me.
It's the nature vs nurture thing. It mostly boils down to 'a bit of both' and if you are really lucky in either department then you can still very well manage to succeed.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#24> "Every one of these graphs has a unique chromatic polynomial"
This is incorrect. Two different graphs may have the same chromatic polynomial. For example, all trees of N vertices have the same chromatic polynomial: x(x-1)^(N-1)
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#25Does getting an undergrad degree in astronomy and physics, and then a math PhD from UIUC, really count as "blooms late"? Sounds like a fairly standard career path to me.
Yes, calling him a late bloomer when he's 34 is pretty awful.
There's a traditional view in math that most great accomplishments are had before 30, based on past mathematicians' successes.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, calling him a late bloomer when he's 34 is pretty awful.
There's a traditional view in math that most great accomplishments are had before 30, based on past mathematicians' successes.
"and the truly great ones are dead before they're 40 so all old mathematicians must be worthless" I've heard that one, too. Doesn't make it beneficial to the field.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#27> his father taught statistics and his mother became one of the first professors of Russian literature in South Korea I notice that really talented people, always have talented parents. Rarely do I read stories about poor blue collar parents producing science wiz. It leads me to believe that genetics play a much bigger role in our intelligence than nurture.
Others have noted Feynman, Ramanujan. Walter Pitts is another one, who had a very rough childhood with poor, working class parents.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#28Does getting an undergrad degree in astronomy and physics, and then a math PhD from UIUC, really count as "blooms late"? Sounds like a fairly standard career path to me.
You're correct: Wired has hyped the original title of the article in Quanta Magazine: "A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World". Any time you see the words "Math Genius" you should assume hyperbole.
If you like this kind of story, I highly recommend putting Quanta (https://www.quantamagazine.org/) on your radar and avoiding most of the tabloid-science articles in Wired.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#29Does getting an undergrad degree in astronomy and physics, and then a math PhD from UIUC, really count as "blooms late"? Sounds like a fairly standard career path to me.
Maybe he's a late bloomer in the sense that he was neither a math prodigy or attended IMO.
I personally know several IMO winners who started studying Math when they were 3~4 years old and it's been part of their life.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#30> his father taught statistics and his mother became one of the first professors of Russian literature in South Korea I notice that really talented people, always have talented parents. Rarely do I read stories about poor blue collar parents producing science wiz. It leads me to believe that genetics play a much bigger role in our intelligence than nurture.
I think exposure has a lot to do with it along with aptitude.
I noticed that too but my parents weren't talented in an intellectual sense. In fact, they were fairly ordinary and one was a high school drop out. I was brought up believing that science is for eggheads and worse people who spent too much time studying were socially inept and justly shunned.
Fast forward a few years. I went to university in my mid twenties and study computer science and take as many hard, ball-busting science classes I could. I noticed that a lot of the people there had already had patents who had careers in science, particularly physicians and engineers. I'd say that's very important to grow up with mentors and resources to teach you how to learn in the first place (my life has improved by orders of magnitude since I learned how to grok). Almost everyone I know who performed well in these classes put in more time studying and they struggled just as much as anyone else.
Genetics plays a role in success in science and math but socialization also plays a profound role. Maybe I just have an axe to grind but the myth of science and math being reserved for rarified genius over the curious and dedicated does a lot more harm then good.