I found it very interesting that Terence Tao also did not like doing mental visualizations and preferred non-visual analytic methods (page 225). This strongly matches my own experience. I am also not a fan of doing visualizations in my head. I was once asked to do a visual test that’s similar to tower of Hanoi, and I just can’t do it visually, even though I have studied this problem when learning recursion and could formulate a solution easily analytically.
Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
281–290 of 343 posts
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#282Loved this piece. Especially that it is written in a Gonzo journalism style, including the author as part of the narrative, like a Hunter S. Thompson essay.
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many, many people (math majors, competitive programmers, chess players, etc) who devote incredible effort to becoming better, and simply cannot reach elite levels. And while in most cases elite players are also putting in a lot of effort, there are many cases where it is still relatively less than their peers who are trying harder but still lagging them. Would you ever be tempted to make such a claim (that…
> Would you ever be tempted to make such a claim (that everyone is close to the same in ability and effort is the main determiner of success) about athletes? Well yes, absolutely. People don’t do quadruple axels on the ice because they were somehow born with the ability, they can do it because they practice figure skating every day for years. Innate ability (or in this case, let’s be honest, mostly genetics determini…
> People don’t do quadruple axels on the ice because they were somehow born with the ability, they can do it because they practice figure skating every day for years.
You've changed my claim. My claim isn't that world-class athletes, or even good athletes, don't have to work hard because of their talent to achieve elite levels. It's merely that talent is a huge determiner in success. It's also a huge determiner in how effective training is. An hour of training might improve a talented person 5 or 10x more than an hour of training would improve someone else.
This is all blindingly obvious if you've seen a sample of kids growing up. I remember the sister of one of my daughters friends, at age 3, was easily out-performing her brother and my daughter, who were a couple years older. This little 3 year could fearlessly climb up jungle gyms with ease, and kick around a ball, and swim fast. She hadn't practiced more. She could just do it.
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#284I would really like to know the origin story better. Accounts make it sound like Terence learned to read and arithmetic completely on his own by being plopped in front of Sesame Street. That strains credulity. Those familiar with common Chinese parenting strategies know how involved and directly instructed they can be at times. How much of that has been downplayed (And for what purpose)? I don’t mean to undermine any…
> But I genuinely want to know a true account of what it took to get him there.
I guess it's being one of the biggest geniuses in the history. Why people find it so hard to accept that there can be HUGE differences in intellectual capabilities and that parenting does not account for even 1% of that? I can bet that if Tao's parents did same things they did for him to 1000 of random children, none would come even remotely close to Tao.
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how Tao - or a supermodel - might feel about the idea that they don't have to work for their "gifts"
Not a mystery, Tao has written about how, child prodigy aside, he has to work at math on a regular basis with grit and perseverance.
There's story of how Tao almost failed at university due to playing so much Civilization
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#286As a father of an 8 years old, this is very moving. While Terence is -without a doubt- born with prodigious abilities, I think credit should also be given to his parents Billy and Grace who seem to have managed to simultaneously nurture these special abilities while still letting Terence have a happy (?) childhood. This is not easy to do.
Can't find the reference but from an interview with his parents there apparently there wasn't much "nurturing" other than simply making available the necessary materials which he gobbled up. Its not like they put a made him practice for an hour a day. A boy in my high school class made IMO and got a gold medal (and later on won the Putnam one year). They interviewed his parents and it was a similar story.
That’s simply not quite true if you read the article. When Terence Tao got stuck on a continued fraction problem, his mother told him to use the quadratic.
In contrast when I was a kid and was thinking about optimizing my program to print all prime numbers, my mother, instead of telling me about the sieve of Eratosthenes, told me to do school-approved math instead.
Now shoutout to my actual math teacher, who, having been told that I got stuck on writing a program to solve simultaneous linear equations, told me about Gaussian elimination.
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#287I would really like to know the origin story better. Accounts make it sound like Terence learned to read and arithmetic completely on his own by being plopped in front of Sesame Street. That strains credulity. Those familiar with common Chinese parenting strategies know how involved and directly instructed they can be at times. How much of that has been downplayed (And for what purpose)? I don’t mean to undermine any…
> But I genuinely want to know a true account of what it took to get him there. I guess it's being one of the biggest geniuses in the history. Why people find it so hard to accept that there can be HUGE differences in intellectual capabilities and that parenting does not account for even 1% of that? I can bet that if Tao's parents did same things they did for him to 1000 of random children, none would come even remot…
You _guess_.
It’s quite acceptable, but still learning from watching Sesame Street?
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#288I’d kudos his parents. The parents deliberately brought themselves out of the picture, but as a parent I know how hard it is. No, I don’t mean it is hard to feed a kid and educate him a bit. That’s like at least 70% of the parents can do. What is remarkable is that they not only found Terence’s interests and nurtured on it, consistently without any major error. God you have no idea how hard it is. So many constellati…
I’ve settled on the idea that my job as parent is to introduce my kid to a bunch of different things, help them process that information, but ultimately the decision of where they choose to focus their energy is up to them. I’m proud of whatever they do, as long as they try their best.
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#289Cultivating that passion is an art. A modern tool which I've found great to let my kids grow their math ability is the game Prodigy Math. Worth checking out - it's fun (do math to gain spellcasting ability in the game) and gently pushes the envelope of what they can do. It emails parents with details on what math problems the child didn't get right and with sample exercises to address those areas. I have no connectio…
Hey thanks for this recommendation I'm going to check it out. Have you tried Dragon Box? I've had my son doing that for awhile. Parent reporting is lacking. Also briefly did Khan Academy Kids but he's so far ahead that seems pretty useless now.
We haven't tried Dragon Box. Thank you for the recommendation, we will check it out
Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]
#290I’d kudos his parents. The parents deliberately brought themselves out of the picture, but as a parent I know how hard it is. No, I don’t mean it is hard to feed a kid and educate him a bit. That’s like at least 70% of the parents can do. What is remarkable is that they not only found Terence’s interests and nurtured on it, consistently without any major error. God you have no idea how hard it is. So many constellati…
Phew this resonated with me. Before becoming a parent I'd always thought "when I have a kid I'll teach him such and such" but now turns out that my kid just wants to jump around and break things. I don't know, let me know if you want to talk. Mine is little over 4yo.
I get it. 4 years old is a threshold. After that you can reason with them. Before that they are just mini terminators.
I guess parenting is a bit easier if your interests/work align with the kid’s interests. But if not then it’s going to be tough, because parents only have time to do one thing extra, so they either have to ignore the kids and do what they love, or forfeit what they love and do what the kids may or may not want.
And then most kids are average in most of the ways but have sparks here and there, so it’s again the question of “do I invest here for a bunch of money and one year or just skip for the next?”. My father was very into building me as a pianist and a math wizard from early on, neither of which I had strong interests in, but nevertheless I dragged on for many years. I think he gave up the Math part when I was in early middle school and the piano part when I said I don’t want to go to a music school.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I cost him a whole career. He was one of the top Mathematicians in my country back then but he didn’t publish much after I was born. All for what? I don’t want to repeat his mistake.