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Wow good on this guy. I thought it might have been a high-school student reading the title but he's a PHD candidate. Incredible. What an accomplishment at 18

Wow good on this guy. I thought it might have been a high-school student reading the title but he's a PHD candidate. Incredible. What an accomplishment at 18 to be lecturing a room of PHD holders.

gwern 8y ago
It is, but not as rare as you might think! I've been reading some of the old books/papers about SMPY from the 1970s, a talent search study which uses the SAT-M to screen for visuospatially-gifted middle schoolers; they then study them and try to accelerate their education with summer camps, advanced math classes, and grade-skipping and/or early enrollment in Johns Hopkins (where SMPY is based). SMPY was a big part of making acceleration for gifted children acceptable in America, when the conventional wisdom was that they should be forced into regular classes for their own good. What they often did early on was, around age 14, SMPYers would be admitted to Johns Hopkins to typically start taking math and computer science courses, at which they would often excel and be at the top of the class, expected to go on to post-graduate work around 19, and fit in so well that fellow students and their teachers often (when surveyed or asked) didn't realize they were so young. If you look in OP, that describes Tang remarkably well.
- fatjokes 8y ago
  > visuospatially-gifted This is such a great term. I never thought about it before or how it could relate to our definitions of intelligence and ability in science/tech. So many generic tests for intelligence that perhaps there should be more focus on this area.
  - gwern 8y ago
    Yes, that's one of the take-aways from SMPY. Focus on identifying visuospatial giftedness, as opposed to simply high scores overall, is especially good at predicting scientific accomplishment. (Hence, 'Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth'.) You might ask, why use only the SAT-M, why not the other subtest, the SAT-V verbal test, since it should be equally difficult? I was surprised to find out that there was in fact a parallel study, 'SVPY', which did just that, but it got canned early on for disappointing results, apparently.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  post-graduate work around 19 depends on the subject. Did computer science exist as a course in the 70's?
  - guelo 8y ago
    yes
  - gwern 8y ago
    It certainly did, as that is what many of the kids were enrolled in...
- tomaskafka 8y ago
  Thank you for this piece of history - mankind is only beginning to learn how to manage the talent.

Wow good on this guy. I thought it might have been a high-school student reading the title but he's a PHD candidate. Incredible. What an accomplishment at 18 to be lecturing a room of PHD holders.

gwern 8y ago

It is, but not as rare as you might think! I've been reading some of the old books/papers about SMPY from the 1970s, a talent search study which uses the SAT-M to screen for visuospatially-gifted middle schoolers; they then study them and try to accelerate their education with summer camps, advanced math classes, and grade-skipping and/or early enrollment in Johns Hopkins (where SMPY is based). SMPY was a big part of making acceleration for gifted children acceptable in America, when the conventional wisdom was that they should be forced into regular classes for their own good. What they often did early on was, around age 14, SMPYers would be admitted to Johns Hopkins to typically start taking math and computer science courses, at which they would often excel and be at the top of the class, expected to go on to post-graduate work around 19, and fit in so well that fellow students and their teachers often (when surveyed or asked) didn't realize they were so young. If you look in OP, that describes Tang remarkably well.

fatjokes 8y ago
> visuospatially-gifted This is such a great term. I never thought about it before or how it could relate to our definitions of intelligence and ability in science/tech. So many generic tests for intelligence that perhaps there should be more focus on this area.
- gwern 8y ago
  Yes, that's one of the take-aways from SMPY. Focus on identifying visuospatial giftedness, as opposed to simply high scores overall, is especially good at predicting scientific accomplishment. (Hence, 'Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth'.) You might ask, why use only the SAT-M, why not the other subtest, the SAT-V verbal test, since it should be equally difficult? I was surprised to find out that there was in fact a parallel study, 'SVPY', which did just that, but it got canned early on for disappointing results, apparently.
paulpauper 8y ago
post-graduate work around 19 depends on the subject. Did computer science exist as a course in the 70's?
- guelo 8y ago
  yes
- gwern 8y ago
  It certainly did, as that is what many of the kids were enrolled in...
tomaskafka 8y ago
Thank you for this piece of history - mankind is only beginning to learn how to manage the talent.