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Are math smarts innate?
- tokenadult 15y agoThe submitted article reports a preliminary study that can't possibly answer the headline question because 1) the abilities were estimated in early childhood, not immediately after birth, so that they didn't only reflect "innate" influences on the children's development, and 2) the study didn't have a genetically sensitive design. But see http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20(2008).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... and http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20(2009).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... for scientific reasons to be open to the possibility that environmental interventions (e.g., education) might still make a big difference later in childhood, even if an ability is shown to be innate. I think Fields Medal winner Terence Tao (who previously was a gold medalist at the IMO) has some valuable things to say about the role of "genius" in learning mathematics. http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to...