Genius

Arun likes Terence Tao's post on whether maths requires genius.

Terence Tao is a mathematics genius, but here are his thoughts on
Does one have to be a genius to do maths?

The brief answer is - No!

Personally, I feel that the huge quantities of energy that a lot of people spend in wondering where they and their colleagues stand in the genius and intelligence pecking order would be better spent elsewhere.

Terence Tao is a Field's Medal certified genius as well as a talented writer great at explaining advanced math in simple terms, but is he really the guy to know the answer here?

Tao taught himself arithmetic at age 2, scored a 760 on the math SAT at age 8, went to the International Math Olympiad at 10, scored a gold medal there at 13, and became a full professor at UCLA at 24. It's a bit like Lebron James telling us fantastic physical characteristics aren't needed for basketball in the NBA. Right, but I would believe it more if I heard it from somebody half a foot shorter, two ticks slower, and one third as strong.

Most people, of course, would find the idea of spending their day doing math a bizaare choice, but even math fans don't necessarily get good at it. I try to do a few problems every couple of days from some math or physics book, like my favorite elementary abstract algebra book but the fact is that I'm a very slow learner. I forget the theorems from two chapters back and the definitions from 5 chapters back. Worse, it takes me a long time to understand some elementary ideas like Lagrange's Theorem on group cosets.

UPDATE: And Lebron's last second catch and shoot three-pointer to win tonight sure looked like proof of genius to me - the gods do seem to pick whom they will smile upon.

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