12 ms·

Curious if there are any young people with established once in a century kind of talent alive today ?

by schintan 6y ago

jacobedawson 6y ago
Terence Tao - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao
- cambalache 6y ago
  Peter Scholze -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholze And doubtless several more. By the way, not only are Scholze and Tao outstanding talents, but very nice and humble, as in ACTUAL nice and humble, and they (especially Tao) write in a crystal clear way so they are wonderful as expositors and academic writers. Makes one chuckle comparing that to so much unrestrained ego online.
  - opportune 6y ago
    Yes, my favorite thing about Tao is how well he explains concepts on his blog [0] and on mathoverflow[1]. He does not put on airs of being an unapproachable genius. I guess he knows he has nothing to prove [0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ [1] https://mathoverflow.net/users/766/terry-tao https://mathoverflow.net/users/766/terry-tao
    - QuesnayJr 6y ago
      He thinks in a very expository way, it seems. There's aother guy, Gromov, who is the opposite. He is famously mysterious (people sometimes joke about "speaking Gromovian").
    - saeranv 6y ago
      His mathoverflow responses are surprisingly intuitive and elegant. Intuition for visualizing/imagining high-dimensional geometry: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-for-higher-dimensional-thinking/26095#26095 https://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-... Intuition for convolution: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/5892/what-is-convolution-intuitively/5916#5916 https://mathoverflow.net/questions/5892/what-is-convolution-... This is much more satisfying way to think of these concepts. The idea of thinking of convolution as a 'fuzzy' optical phenomena, the idea of thinking of n-dimensional space as a probability distribution. It's interesting the way he grounds his intuition in practical applications. For convolution for example, a common application is to convolve a 2d image with a gaussian kernel to fuzz the image. I know that, but always still had a not-very intuitive, but very dry and technical understanding of convolution as a sort of dot product of two vectors representing the underlying image and the kernel. Terence Tao in contrast exploits the practical intuition of 'fuzziness' in this process to suggest thinking of convolution as a fuzzy (probablistic) addition of functions. It's a subtle step, but giving some sort of physical, or visual intuition for mathethematics like this is so helpful.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        Yep being a lowly engineer who loves math I always wanted to learn a more rigorous approach, but then again I am lazy, so for example I started with Rudin, but gave up as soon as I couldnt grasp something, same with other analysis books and lecture notes. Then comes Terry with his 2 jewels of books on Analysis, but I thought to myself, no way I am going to understand anything from arguably the best mathematician in the last decades. But not only the prose is clear and unpretentious the motivation of why analysis is "needed" is presented perfectly, the books are self-contained and the progression is very smooth,no pun intended. Highly, highly recommended.
- tempestn 6y ago
  I'm so curious what it must be like to have that kind of mind. Just did a quick Google and his IQ is around 230. I mean, it's hard enough to really understand what anyone else's subjective experience is like, but I think it's literally impossible to get a true sense of what it would be like to be that intelligent (for those of us who are nowhere close). With that great a difference it's got to really be a difference in kind, not just degree.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fersho311 6y ago
    I wonder if you constantly challenged yourself to see and feel from others perspectives, all the time. Perhaps one day you may understand what it’s like to have that kind of mind. At that point, would your IQ also be around 230?
    - tempestn 6y ago
      I think challenging yourself to see from other people's perspectives is probably a great thing to do. But no, it's not going to somehow increase your innate intelligence to super-genius level.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Owing to the way IQ is defined, nobody has an IQ over 200. IQ doesn’t measure absolute intelligence, but rather assumes it is a normal curve and maps that to human friendly numbers: mean 100, standard deviation 15 or 16 depending who you ask. The same thing has the curious side effect that if the number of people in comas at any given time is greater than 1, then coma patients must have an IQ > 0.
    - tempestn 6y ago
      OK, so if all IQs could be mapped accurately onto a normal curve with a SD of 15-16 you wouldn't expect anyone over 200. But standardized IQ tests can most definitely give results over 200, and do. And presumably someone who scores 250 on an IQ test is likely to be more intelligent^ than someone who scores 200 on the same test. ^in the sense that it measured by IQ tests, anyway. Point being it shows a real difference; deltas over 200 aren't meaningless.
hetspookjee 6y ago
As a previous commenter said Terence Tao is a living genius currently. But also, some people that (somewhat) recently rose to fame in the field of mathematics are: Andrew Wiles, for providing a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem. Grigori Perelman (and Richard Hamilton), solver and winner of the Millenium Prize Problem: Poincare's Conjecture.

Curious if there are any young people with established once in a century kind of talent alive today ?

jacobedawson 6y ago

Terence Tao - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

cambalache 6y ago
Peter Scholze -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholze And doubtless several more. By the way, not only are Scholze and Tao outstanding talents, but very nice and humble, as in ACTUAL nice and humble, and they (especially Tao) write in a crystal clear way so they are wonderful as expositors and academic writers. Makes one chuckle comparing that to so much unrestrained ego online.
- opportune 6y ago
  Yes, my favorite thing about Tao is how well he explains concepts on his blog [0] and on mathoverflow[1]. He does not put on airs of being an unapproachable genius. I guess he knows he has nothing to prove [0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ [1] https://mathoverflow.net/users/766/terry-tao https://mathoverflow.net/users/766/terry-tao
  - QuesnayJr 6y ago
    He thinks in a very expository way, it seems. There's aother guy, Gromov, who is the opposite. He is famously mysterious (people sometimes joke about "speaking Gromovian").
  - saeranv 6y ago
    His mathoverflow responses are surprisingly intuitive and elegant. Intuition for visualizing/imagining high-dimensional geometry: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-for-higher-dimensional-thinking/26095#26095 https://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-... Intuition for convolution: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/5892/what-is-convolution-intuitively/5916#5916 https://mathoverflow.net/questions/5892/what-is-convolution-... This is much more satisfying way to think of these concepts. The idea of thinking of convolution as a 'fuzzy' optical phenomena, the idea of thinking of n-dimensional space as a probability distribution. It's interesting the way he grounds his intuition in practical applications. For convolution for example, a common application is to convolve a 2d image with a gaussian kernel to fuzz the image. I know that, but always still had a not-very intuitive, but very dry and technical understanding of convolution as a sort of dot product of two vectors representing the underlying image and the kernel. Terence Tao in contrast exploits the practical intuition of 'fuzziness' in this process to suggest thinking of convolution as a fuzzy (probablistic) addition of functions. It's a subtle step, but giving some sort of physical, or visual intuition for mathethematics like this is so helpful.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Yep being a lowly engineer who loves math I always wanted to learn a more rigorous approach, but then again I am lazy, so for example I started with Rudin, but gave up as soon as I couldnt grasp something, same with other analysis books and lecture notes. Then comes Terry with his 2 jewels of books on Analysis, but I thought to myself, no way I am going to understand anything from arguably the best mathematician in the last decades. But not only the prose is clear and unpretentious the motivation of why analysis is "needed" is presented perfectly, the books are self-contained and the progression is very smooth,no pun intended. Highly, highly recommended.
tempestn 6y ago
I'm so curious what it must be like to have that kind of mind. Just did a quick Google and his IQ is around 230. I mean, it's hard enough to really understand what anyone else's subjective experience is like, but I think it's literally impossible to get a true sense of what it would be like to be that intelligent (for those of us who are nowhere close). With that great a difference it's got to really be a difference in kind, not just degree.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fersho311 6y ago
  I wonder if you constantly challenged yourself to see and feel from others perspectives, all the time. Perhaps one day you may understand what it’s like to have that kind of mind. At that point, would your IQ also be around 230?
  - tempestn 6y ago
    I think challenging yourself to see from other people's perspectives is probably a great thing to do. But no, it's not going to somehow increase your innate intelligence to super-genius level.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Owing to the way IQ is defined, nobody has an IQ over 200. IQ doesn’t measure absolute intelligence, but rather assumes it is a normal curve and maps that to human friendly numbers: mean 100, standard deviation 15 or 16 depending who you ask. The same thing has the curious side effect that if the number of people in comas at any given time is greater than 1, then coma patients must have an IQ > 0.
  - tempestn 6y ago
    OK, so if all IQs could be mapped accurately onto a normal curve with a SD of 15-16 you wouldn't expect anyone over 200. But standardized IQ tests can most definitely give results over 200, and do. And presumably someone who scores 250 on an IQ test is likely to be more intelligent^ than someone who scores 200 on the same test. ^in the sense that it measured by IQ tests, anyway. Point being it shows a real difference; deltas over 200 aren't meaningless.

hetspookjee 6y ago

As a previous commenter said Terence Tao is a living genius currently. But also, some people that (somewhat) recently rose to fame in the field of mathematics are: Andrew Wiles, for providing a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem. Grigori Perelman (and Richard Hamilton), solver and winner of the Millenium Prize Problem: Poincare's Conjecture.