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How many "pioneering mathematicians" are not one-percenters? If the answer is "99%", then there's no bias in favor of those who do well on the SAT. The article doesn't give that information.

A similar question can be asked of famous musicians.

How does Lady Gaga's success support, much less confirm, your pet theory? Did she have success in a STEM field? I see no mention of STEM in her Wikipedia biography. The article points out that while the original evaluation was based a math assessment, "[l]ater, researchers included the verbal portion and other assessments", so perhaps she was a one-percenter in verbal, not math.

From her bio, she put a lot of work into the arts. That would suggest a different possibility, which is that someone who has a good grasp of any subject would also excel in other favorite activities.

"How many "pioneering mathematicians" are not one-percenters? If the answer is "99%", then there's no bias in favor of those who do well on the SAT. The article doesn't give that information."

The article doesn't give that information, but unless you believe that being in the top 1% is actively harmful to becoming a pioneering mathematician, the odds ratios of they give for doctorates gives you a good idea, since no one will be a pioneering mathematician without earning a doctorate in math these days. Something like 25% of them have doctorates, compared to the general population which is more like ~1.7%, so simply going by proportion and ignoring the curves in https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101.... and the extreme tail behaviors of these things, at least 0.25*0.01 / 0.017 = 15% of pioneering mathematicians will have been 1%ers. (Take into account the tail, and it'll go up quite a bit.)

That's a good point, thank you.

> Meanwhile in East Europe (namely Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, probably other countries too but I don't know anything about them) competitiveness between children is crazy high in some circles and that's why a lot of the best engineers come from that area.

Competitiveness is worth nothing, if you compete to just get the best grades for the exam. Most of the exams have close to no value in real life and do not force you to think by yourself but to rehash hundred times what you have seen before. The opposite of creative thought.

I did not say competitiveness in school. I agree with you that competitiveness for grades is useless. I'm talking about general mentality.

EDIT: I notice that I did write "between children". I shouldnt have.

> Most of the exams have close to no value in real life and do not force you to think by yourself but to rehash hundred times what you have seen before. The opposite of creative thought.

True, but to some extent rigor and discipline are required to achieve, creative or otherwise. And discipline can be learned. I'm not supporting the hyper competitive nature of some schooling systems, but at least some can benefit from learning how to survive (or thrive) in competitive systems.

I'd put Stand-Up Comedians and Auto-Mechanics in there as well. Though not 'traditionally' smart, Comedians are in a cut throat environment to see the world in a different and funny light. Mechanics, the ones not on meth or in the bottle, also need to use as many senses as possible to diagnose and cheaply fix very complicated machines with unknown histories. I have found that even the ok-to-good ones (and there are a LOT of bad comedians and mechanics) are very logical people and can easily grok any Calculus, it's just that their other personality traits (ADD, tactile needs, love of attention and 'the laugh') and circumstances move them towards their chosen fields.

I've heard a few comedians say they developed their humour as a shield to deflect attention away from failings in some other part of their life, often academic struggles.

I once had a manager who said he played football with a Proat one point. He said this of the game, "he wasn't the strongest on the field, he wasn't the fastest or the tallest, but man - he knew exactly where to be when the rest of us looked like we were just guessing."

That's why in my theory (and experience) mathematicians and afghans are by far the best football players. Ha!

In all our university football tournaments mathematicians beat the hell out of all other faculties. Not on the big field, but in the hall, with 3-5 players. They expected where the ball would flow, and how it should flow best.

Afghans? This happened with street ball, a super small field like basketball, with 2 players + goal keeper. The Afghan teams I know in the homeless soccer worldchampionships became top 3 of the world a couple of times already. They are small, not athletic. They have athletically no chance against Nigeria or Ghana, who just push them around. Or the traditional European teams. Or technically against Brazil, who are masters to play alone, but together with a partner they struggle. But they are fast, and they play like mathematicians, they know exactly how his partner would react, and vice versa. They love to play, even if on the big field they would have no chance, athletically. Chile, Mexico and Afghans are the best actually. Maybe because they are small, but mostly I think because they train a lot on the streets, for fun by themselves and know how to play together.

I see the arts as an intersect of science (explaining our own world) and engineering (building new worlds). It's building a world with the goal to touch humans emotionally by referencing our own one. Being good at both is what makes a good artist - see also Renaissance artists like Da Vinci or the best filmmakers like Kubrick and Kurosawa.

While I'm all for the logical/rational ideal of extracting the most amount of potential from people, but competition needs to be treated with care.

How do you propose competitiveness be constructively harnessed? If you are proposing selective schooling etc. there is a danger of creating social segregation which can reduce social mobility and as a result social cohesion. There is also a social benefit to both the talented and less-talented from interfacing - the talented can learn humility while the others can gain inspiration for example.

I believe that simply removing the "stigma" on this topic is already a good step in the right direction.

The trouble with competition is that it creates an order of magnitude more losers than it does winners. Yet it is the foundational element of nearly all school systems in the world. Students don't just get accepted to every school they apply to; they have to compete to "get in." The basis of that competition is grades.

If you want to fix competition in education you must first do something about grades and how they influence outcomes rather than learning.

> If you are proposing selective schooling etc. there is a danger of creating social segregation which can reduce social mobility and as a result social cohesion.

In Romania we have elite high-schools where admissions is based on exams (mostly math). This means that the pupils a class will be of somewhat similar intelligence, and makes things easier for teachers. The best pupils are encouraged to participate in olympiads, and the worst usually transfer to lower-rated institutions. I think this system works quite well (apart from the fact that the very lowly rated high-schools are completely useless).

> If you are proposing selective schooling etc. there is a danger of creating social segregation which can reduce social mobility and as a result social cohesion

I get the abstract reason why one might think this in a vacuum, OTOH, we have real societies with selective schooling in place -- is there any evidence from experience to support that in net this hurts social mobility and/or cohesion?

One of the best things a "gifted" child can learn is the value of those different than themselves, and how to work with others to not only reach their own capabilities but encourage the capabilities of others who may not be "gifted."

I personally feel that a balance of 'normal' life as a child along with a rigorous and expansive set of opportunities for that child to explore their gifts would be healthiest and most productive for the gifted and the societies they inhabit.

> > In Europe, support for research and educational programmes for gifted children has ebbed, as the focus has moved more towards inclusion.

Actually, that is the one part of the article I was rather skeptical about. Certainly in Germany there's an abundance of programs designed especially to nurture gifted pupils. They range from extra-curricular activities in school to summer academies and "early studying", where pupils take university classes one day a week instead of going to school.

Yes, we also have a lot of inclusion efforts, and that's a Good Thing, but we definitely don't neglect the other side of the intellectual spectrum.

From the OP: " clear is how much the precociously gifted outweigh the rest of society in their influence."

But ... all the students they followed had been through their program. Doesn't that equally prove that its clear how much those going through their program outweigh the rest in their influence? Isn't this just some kind of confirmation bias?

https://www.gwern.net/iq

>Meanwhile in East Europe (namely Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, probably other countries too but I don't know anything about them) competitiveness between children is crazy high in some circles and that's why a lot of the best engineers come from that area.

I see this claim often and when pressed it looks like there's a lot of social pressure to "learn the test," and the people those cultures produce are vastly uncreative, difficult to work with, and often very dishonest (openly cheat for example), but test well in their cultures.

There's a big difference between talent and schooling. The latter can be gamed, and often is.