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Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

We really need to break the stigma on this. If these kids had loved basketball (and grew to 7 feet tall in middle school) nobody would blame the parents for letting them play more basketball! Same goes for young chess prodigies!

Yet if a kid gets addicted to math and loves all the math you can throw at them people start to panic and tell you to “slow down!” If your kid is accelerating in math and feels alienated from their peers, do what one of the families in the article did: find them a tutor such as a math major from a local college. Having someone to talk shop to with is essential for a kid, whether it’s basketball, chess, or math.

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> nobody would blame the parents for letting them play more basketball!

Actually even now, without miracle child growth, there are claims that kids are playing too much basketball:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/05/23/acl-tears-p...

yes! a thousand times yes!

thing is: the barrier to entry is much higher and it's much harder to find peers and a supportive environment. it's much simpler to practice with a ball, be it soccer or baseball, than it is finding a decent place to train maths or other sciency stuff. you need a coach very early on while these more accessible sports only need a ball and some space.

to be clear: I'm 100% with you, brains loving to do "weird" brainy stuff need to be appreciated as much as we appreciate talent in dribbling some ball into some net.

Your analogy is a little biased in that most professional basketball players careers are over by the time they hit their mid-thirties. If they want to go pro then they need to be playing at a high standard in their teens.

Whereas someone talented at math would be productive much longer than that.

What is your point? That because athletic ability degrades faster kids should be pushed into sports as soon as possible so they can reap potential benefits, but since math is mental thing and mental acuity declines slower kids should be kept away from mentally demanding things so they can reap the potential benefits at a later date?

Wouldn't both kids be better off if they could just do what they liked? Just because there is more money involved with sports and coaches and teams have noticed that they can get more bang for their buck when they focus recruiting as young as possible shouldn't make any difference if a kid is into chess or math or any other science.

G. H. Hardy wrote: "Mathematics is a young man's game." Of course, you can continue to be a mathematician later, but for top performance, especially in terms of novelty, you have to start early.

Euler started strong early and peaked later

    During his Berlin years (1741–1766, aged 34-59), Euler was at the peak of his productivity.

    He wrote 380 works, 275 of which were published.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler

Admittedly some of that was playing a Swiss Charles Dodgson to 15 and 10 year old girls.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_to_a_German_Princess

Individual examples do not contradict the general statement. Galois was dead at an age when I wasn't even at university. Abel a bit later (so avoid groups if you want to have a long life), same with Ramanujan (which incidentally may be a factor in Hardy's comment). And so on, just as singular at the first glance. As a mathematician, however, I continue to argue Hardy's point, both for the present and for the past as a general and observable phenomenon.

And the number of books as a measure of quality, really? I think that view is skewed by today's “publish and perish” environment (nothing against Euler).

There's no suggestion that Euler is anything but an individual example however it is explicitly stated that number of works was a measure of productivity not quality.

If you want to split the difference on the age of mathenaticians I happened by chance to be in Adelaide in 1985 when this was snapped: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao#/media/File:Paul_E...

Not all Groupies die young, https://mathematical-research-institute.sydney.edu.au/news/p... is still grinding along having created and steadily expanded on a system from 1980 through to today that is still actively used to beat quantum cryptographic cipher candidates.

> it is explicitly stated that number of works was a measure of productivity not quality.

I have noticed that. But my entire posting, to which you replied, had the subtext of excellence - in this case, the comparison of professional basketball and mathematics. And in the latter at least, quality and originality plays first fiddle. In this respect, I would be reluctant to shift the discussion to other qualities such as “productivity”. For me, this is not the relevant measure in this context and, as I said, I also view it critically as a criterion for whatever.

As for Tao, I knew the picture and the story. Yes, an old and a young one. So what? It's not countering my or Hardy's point. These are statements from experience about a whole profession.

> But my entire posting, to which you replied

Do you assume that I accepted terms of discussion that you set? How odd.

> had the subtext of excellence

Is this a peak value or an integral?

> In this respect, I would be reluctant to shift the discussion

Goodo, you do you. Catch you later. Maybe.

Mathematician very famously have their top achievement restricted to those under 40

Good way to rob your child of their childhood... Kids need less schooling, not more, especially with the state of education (worldwide, it's bad everywhere).

edit: the author discovered his children like math and he's a banker with a math degree from MIT, talk about being oblivious to the effects of nurture.

I think we agree to disagree.

how is allowing a kid to do what they have fun with (maths in this case) "robbing them of their childhood??

If it involved tears and pressure for performance and obligation, yes, that's questionable. but a brain that wants to brain around for fun and giggles with other brains? greatest childhood ever.

Kids don't brain around for fun, if you put them in that extremely competitive environment they will compete. Kids have fun playing with their friends. Take it from Terry Tao, who has been through all of this and also has a fields medal: <https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifte...>.

>[..] any short-term advantage one might gain in working excessively towards such benchmarks may be outweighed by the time and energy that such a goal takes away from other aspects of a child’s social, emotional, academic, physical, or intellectual development.

I'm more radical than him in my viewpoint. Academia and industry is infested with broken people with robbed childhoods. Heed my warning and don't let it happen to your children.

Eh. Kids definitely do brain around for fun. More so if they have other kids (or parentd for that matter) who also like to "brain around".

I do agree that we need to be careful not to focus on things a kid is good at so much that we neglect other areas that they may not so naturally excel in.

It's not excellence, it's the plurality of experiences.

I agree with that. Kids being pushed to do things they are not good at too much would be just as bad. And I guess that happens too.

A couple points from my experience:

- Kids absolutely do brain around for fun. It’s one of the main things they do.

- Terence Tao is by far the most extreme example of studying advanced math as a child. A kid can work through higher concepts without being Tao.

Obviously if a parent is pressuring a child, or seeking specific outcomes like grades or graduating early that is a different story.

I think you might just be having trouble wrapping your head around the concept that someone might enjoy working through some math concepts as much as other recreational activities.

There are a lot of fun math materials out there, especially if you don’t have to follow the dry (and quite frankly slow) school curriculum/materials.

It's not about "more" or "less", it's "the right schooling".

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