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Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

(www.quantamagazine.org)
669 points sonabinu | 1 comments | 21 Nov 24 01:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.329s | source
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gsabo ◴[21 Nov 24 05:19 UTC] No.42201370[source]▶
I agree with the sentiment of this. I think our obsession with innate mathematical skill and genius is so detrimental to the growth mindset that you need to have in order to learn things.

I've been working a lot on my math skills lately (as an adult). A mindset I've had in the past is that "if it's hard, then that means you've hit your ceiling and you're wasting your time." But really, the opposite is true. If it's easy, then it means you already know this material, and you're wasting your time.

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junto ◴[21 Nov 24 06:25 UTC] No.42201667[source]▶
> I agree with the sentiment of this. I think our obsession with innate ~~mathematical~~ skill and genius is so detrimental to the growth mindset that you need to have in order to learn things.

I strongly believe that the average human being can be exceptional in any niche topic given enough time, dedication and focus.

The author of the book has picked out mathematics because that was what he was interested in. The reality is that this rule applies to everything.

The belief that some people have an innate skill that they are born with is deeply unhelpful. Whilst some people (mostly spectrum) do seem have an innate talent, I would argue that it is more an inbuilt ability to hyper focus on a topic, whether that topic be mathematics, Star Trek, dinosaurs or legacy console games from the 1980’s.

I think we do our children a disservice by convincing them that some of their peers are just “born with it”, because it discourages them from continuing to try.

What we should be teaching children is HOW to learn. At the moment it’s a by-product of learning about some topic. If we look at the old adage “feed a man a fish”, the same is true of learning.

“Teach someone mathematics and they will learn mathematics. Teach someone to learn and they will learn anything”.

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sdeframond ◴[21 Nov 24 12:45 UTC] No.42203813[source]▶
> I strongly believe that the average human being can be exceptional in any niche topic given enough time, dedication and focus.

I respectfully, but strongly, disagree. There's a reason most NBA players are over 2 meters tall, and one does not become taller with time, dedication nor focus.

It might be different for intellectual skills but I am not that sure.

Almost anyone can become decent at almost anything though. Which is good already!

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1. samatman ◴[21 Nov 24 16:20 UTC] No.42205855[source]▶
Simpson's Paradox[0] is the reason people are so easily seduced by the tempting, but dead wrong, illusion that humans are in any sense equal in their innate capacity for anything.

Because it turns out that, in the NBA, height does not correspond with ability! This of course makes sense, because all the players are filtered by being NBA professional basketballers. A shorter player simply has more exceptional ability in another dimension, be that dodging reflex, ability to visualize and then hit a ball trajectory from the three point line, and so on. Conversely, a very tall player is inherently useful for blocking, and doesn't have to be as objectively good at basketball in order to be a valuable teammate.

Despite this lack of correlation, when you look at an NBA team you see a bunch of very tall fellows indeed. Simpson's Paradox.

We see the same thing in intellectual pursuits. "I'm not nearly as smart as the smartest programmer I know, but I get promoted at work so I must be doing something right. Therefore anyone could do this, they just have to work hard like I did". Nope. You've already been selected into "professional programmer", this logic doesn't work.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox