5 ms·

This kid is such a stud. I had the honor of meeting him at a conference a few years ago when he was only 11 or 12. He answered questions about math like an inte

This kid is such a stud. I had the honor of meeting him at a conference a few years ago when he was only 11 or 12. He answered questions about math like an intelligent grad student, conveying his own ideas in fully grammatical sentences without ums or ahs. It was as if he were reading from a textbook on the subject that he had written. One of the presenters called him on stage and tried to tease him a bit, but he was utterly un-phased by it, and gave intelligent, straightforward replies.

palish 15y ago
Have you heard Knuth speak? He's full of "um's" and "ah's". (Neil is fantastic; I only brought it up because I'm someone who uses a lot of "um's" and "ah's", which tends to give people the impression that I'm dim. So it gave me hope to find out that even the great Knuth suffers from it too.)
- mahcuz 15y ago
  Isn't Knuth 150 years old though?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- bumbledraven 15y ago
  The point is that Neil's normal, extemporaneous speech achieves a degree of economy, accuracy and information-richness that most of us can only approach in writing, and then only after careful editing.
m_myers 15y ago
The blog post referenced by this article (http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/pi/ http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/pi/) is amazing. It's not just the math and not just the C# code; he throws in all sorts of offhand references to a paper here, a record-holder there, a plot point of Carl Sagan's Contact... the kinds of things that most people accumulate over many years. While this isn't high-level mathematics, if I'd read the post without seeing the Wolfram story, I'd have guessed the author to be a 30+ year old enthusiast.
- bumbledraven 15y ago
  Seriously. Now read this: http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/what-ive-been-working-on-lately/ http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/what-ive-been-work...

palish 15y ago

Have you heard Knuth speak? He's full of "um's" and "ah's". (Neil is fantastic; I only brought it up because I'm someone who uses a lot of "um's" and "ah's", which tends to give people the impression that I'm dim. So it gave me hope to find out that even the great Knuth suffers from it too.)

mahcuz 15y ago
Isn't Knuth 150 years old though?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
bumbledraven 15y ago
The point is that Neil's normal, extemporaneous speech achieves a degree of economy, accuracy and information-richness that most of us can only approach in writing, and then only after careful editing.

m_myers 15y ago

The blog post referenced by this article (http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/pi/ http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/pi/) is amazing. It's not just the math and not just the C# code; he throws in all sorts of offhand references to a paper here, a record-holder there, a plot point of Carl Sagan's Contact... the kinds of things that most people accumulate over many years. While this isn't high-level mathematics, if I'd read the post without seeing the Wolfram story, I'd have guessed the author to be a 30+ year old enthusiast.

bumbledraven 15y ago
Seriously. Now read this: http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/what-ive-been-working-on-lately/ http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/what-ive-been-work...