The author lost me at "Mathematical genius resides within every one of us — most people just don’t know it yet."<p>The movie Ratatouille captured the sentiment much better, "a great chef can be anyone". Which is not the same as "anyone can be a great chef". It seems the author is mixing up those two.<p>I fully agree that gender, background, schooling, etc is not the key determination of genius. However, saying anyone could be a genius is disingenuous.
His last point about poverty destroying genius was what really struck me. I remember reading that 71% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day. That doesn't seem to be enough to get a decent education and contribute meaningfully to any field. This means that the world is working at 30% capacity. Our species only gets innovations from the 30% of inventors, entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists who were born in circumstances that allow them to contribute. How many more Srinivasa Ramanujans are there scattered throughout the world who simply didn't run into an obscure textbook or write to all the worlds top mathematicians. What would our species be like if we were working at closer to 100% capacity in terms of scientific innovations and discoveries.
The thing about first example is that the speed of brain development in child and adulthood geniality/iq/whatever are only loosely related. It is perfectly possible for a child to be bad in math in first few grades and good later on. It did not had to be test, it is perfectly possible for him to be slower at that age or him having lower attention span. (That assumes school systems that wont give up on such child as bad early on.)<p>The situation of women now is a lot better then it was in 19 century. There is some bias and unequal expectation toward gender, but nowhere near as was at the time. While all the kids now know what is supposed to be girly toy/profession and what is boyish, there is no particular stigma facing working females nor female mathematicians. The 'it could easily play out like that now' is far from being accurate.<p>I don't think you are helping equality when you compare stigma of being women who knows stuff with unequal representation of genders now. One, you are lowering her achievement and strength of will which had to be huge. I would say she was anything but fragile. Two, you are not doing service to women now - our situation is not the same as situation hundreds years ago and talking about it as it would helps no one.
I find it hard to accept the "you must be 7ft tall to play basketball" story about why people become good at something.<p>My own view is more something like what bodybuilders say. Some people find it harder to grow than others, but everyone can do it. And people who put effort into it will definitely be separable from people who don't, regardless of endowment.<p>Now as for who gets to be written into history books, there's a fair bit of randomness about that. A hard working person can well find that the only phd advisor who will take them wants them to work on some dead end. Or you may work on something hot, but other people will know it's hot, too, and they may well beat you to publication. Doesn't make you any dumber, but your name will not be enshrined in that theorem.<p>There's also a necessary confluence of factors that depends very much on your parents, specifically whether they figure out how to manage your development. Look at the current first-in-most-people's-minds genius, Terence Tao. Not only did his parents figure out that he was good at math, they somehow got him the right guidance. I'm guessing very few parents, even quite well educated ones, would know what to do if a guy like that turned up in their house. There's also the sheer randomness of whether you'll end up doing things that encourage the kid. Most parents, myself included, have very little idea of how to get a kid to do what's good for them. You laugh, unless you are a parent.
There are other examples of mathematical late bloomers. Check out <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Smale" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Smale</a><p>He almost got kicked out of graduate school. Later went on to win the Fields Medal.
With common core, math is mostly now word problems, which makes them as much reading comprehension as abstract mathematical problems. This is going to be especially brutal for boys, who typically trail girls in reading skills early on.<p>I expect in a decade the current 2-1 female-male ratio in higher education is going to reach such crisis levels that even our media will be unable to ignore it, as they do currently.
I'd just like to note that math in early years is taught as rote memorization problems and doing things over and over again like memorization. Contrast this with higher level math which is highly creative...
I think these sort of anecdotes about genius mathematicians are rather disheartening. For many students, math is a struggle, even with the advantages of a good education. Hearing about how such-and-such a person derived the whole of number theory from an old Sesame Street book they found in the trash just makes me feel dumb in comparison.<p>If anything, the examples given suggest that mathematical geniuses will find a way to contribute whatever the obstacles in their way. But what about the majority of students who are turned off the subject because they don't have the same drive and natural ability? What's fragile isn't the abilities of savants, but the belief of the average person that math is something they can do, rather than the preserve of the super-intelligent.
>Tests can serve a profoundly useful purpose in providing feedback and diagnosing students’ learning needs. But as blunt labels for students’ abilities, they can be devastating.<p>This is so spot on. I've recently started taking college math courses for the first time, and I'm astounded by how little actual "teaching" goes on in these classes. My entire term grade for Precalculus was determined by 5 tests of 8 questions each, and the class consisted of a professor reading from a text book for an hour a week with zero feedback or help. I think experiences like this lead to a lot of people becoming completely frustrated and feeling worthless at math, while also outwardly validating that feeling with an unfair poor grade.
Very similar to what I wrote years ago: <a href="https://deconstructinggenius.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow">https://deconstructinggenius.wordpress.com</a>
> <i>Mathematical genius is fragile; society needs to stop destroying it</i><p>... but there are too many men in this field. Just love this marxist logic.