> Tao exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age, attending university-level mathematics courses at the age of 9. He is one of only two children in the history of the Johns Hopkins' Study of Exceptional Talent program to have achieved a score of 700 or greater on the SAT math section while just eight years old; Tao scored a 760
I think genetics have more to do with this level of achievement than encouragement from an engaged father. Tao has 2 brothers - why aren't they mathematical supergeniuses too? Either he was born with a brain that has extraordinary analytical ability, or he was born with an insane work ethic not commonly associated with young kids. But even then, are there reports of him having to work super hard to understand things? If you can do advanced algebra at age 5, I'd say your brain is something extraordinary. Whether the underlying reason for that extraordinary brain is due to genes or some other trigger, it likely was not mainly due to an "encouraging father", IMO.
Now, to torture the metaphor, how do I flip on the rest of my switches...
Ask again in 2122.
In the meantime, I guess, we all need to learn that our worth as a person is determined by who we are, not what we are.
The previous sentence from the one you quoted states that
“Tao also has two brothers, who are living in Australia. Both formerly represented the country at the International Mathematical Olympiad”
His (younger) brother, Nigel achieved two bronze medals (placing 132nd and 114th overall) at the age of 15 and 16 [0]. Quite good, specially at a younger age than most participants.
Terence [1] got a gold medal (13th place) right before completing 13 years of age. He achieved a similar feat (28th place) around his 12th birthday and a more humble performance (87th place, but still better than his brother's best) around his 11th birthday. At 11, better than 58% of his competition, some of the best 17 and 18 year olds at competitive math in the world.
He is cited as "the youngest bronze, silver, and gold medalist, respectively, in IMO history." [2]
These are entirely different levels.
[0] https://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=783
[1] https://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=1581
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Mathemat...
He was probably lucky to be the younger brother growing up.
But of course that doesn’t matter. One could equally hypothesize being the oldest allows for most attention from the parents, etc.
But then again, Judit Polgar, by far the strongest chess player among the famous 3 Polgar sisters, was the youngest…
In my opinion, this sort of “human peak” genius performance requires more than small differences in upbringing.
Trevor Tao is autistic savant with a double degree in maths and music. He is FIDE International Master in Chess.
Nigel Tao has IQ 180. I think he works with Go language development.
http://math.fau.edu/yiu/Oldwebsites/MPS2010/TerenceTao1984.p...
My favorite part is when he was asked, at age 8 minus epsilon, whether addition distributes over multiplication (after having established that multiplication distributing over addition is an example of a distributive law), and he said, "only for Boolean algebras."
(Disclosure: I was also a child prodigy, so much of this story resonated with me. I'm now a research software engineer at Google, working on lots of mathematically intensive topics in 2D graphics, but obviously nowhere nearly as accomplished as Prof Tao)
300 print "mr. fibonacci is leaving now,"
310 print "and wishes to see you again sometime in the future"
312 print
313 print
315 print "here goes his car!!!!!!!!"
320 print "(brmmmm-brmmmm-putt-putt-vraow-chatter-chatter bye mr. fibonacci!)"2) Is learning any topic easier for you than for an average person or are you so talented in just a few areas?
At least for me, this also comes with costs. Some of these costs are immediately observable to me (much lower levels of broad-insight / Gordian-Knot-slicing, and I am less patient with others). Other costs are only presumed…I have guesses about associated long-term health risks both direct and indirect.
Anyway, all this to say, I think it can be done artificially. Since these things take time to play out towards mastery, you better hope you can get it right. Just like in software, some things can be a Pareto improvement, but some things can be prematurely optimized, and some things really never needed to be built in the first place.
I agree about inputs. I have a list project I'm working on called "This I Believe". I'm trying to decode my deeply held beliefs so that I understand mself and can change those beliefs. The very first thing I put on it was "Better living through chemistry."
I can't seriously believe the alternative.