An evolutionary asset of the human brain is its adaptability. About 4 weeks after your parents enjoyed a few moments of sexual passion, a neural plate began to form at one end of the fetus that would become you. (A 35-second time-lapse video showing the conversion of a stem cell into a neuron is accessible …
Many people believe that the ability to do mathematics is limited to a few people gifted with a special “math gene.” While it’s true that some people learn mathematics much more easily than others, mathematics up to freshman college level is within the grasp of almost all college students–provided they are prepared to work at …
Mathematics is Difficult–Is it Worth the Effort? Read More »
Each of us is little more than a brain receiving information through our senses from an external world. Between us and the stimuli that reach our receptors is a large abyss that must be bridged by a process that “makes sense” of the incoming data. From birth we are gifted with a growing cognitive capacity …
In 1993, psychologist Anders Ericsson challenged the concept of innate talent, asserting: Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique …
Are We a Community of Intellectual Equals? –Sturgeon’s Law Read More »
Recently, the egalitarian movement has attempted to diminish the concept of “talent” or “giftedness” by promoting the idea that we are all essentially equal in most, if not all, respects. This is an attractive proposition in its potential to mollify the feelings of inferiority that many suffer when they see the achievements of others paraded …
In November 2011, 68-year-old physicist Paul Frampton was feeling lonely and despondent. Years of chasing top-dog status among Nobel laureates in elementary particle physics had left him without a family, and languishing in the emptiness of a life devoid of relationships. Since his divorce 3 years earlier from Anne-Marie, his only connections to the outer …
What is an Example of a Hi-Q Person who is not Wise? Read More »
On December 14, 2021, Ted Kaczynski a.k.a., the Unabomber, was transferred from his cell in a maximum security federal prison in Colorado to the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s FMC Butner medical center in North Carolina after serving almost a quarter century behind bars. After pleading guilty to planting home-made bombs that killed three people and …
In my previous post, I presented the famous Monty Hall Dilemma that sparked a maelstrom of controversy in 1990 and beyond. In that post, I presented three of the emotional responses from Ph.D.’s who declared Marilyn’s answer was wrong. There were many more vitriolic responses from mathematicians (see Intelligence, IQ & Perception pp. 220-224) However, …
In spite of our confidence in our intuition, we are often fooled by the gap between our senses and reality. This was evident in the counterintuitive birthday problem that we posted a few days ago. Another of these famous counterintuitive problems, known as the Monty Hall Dilemma, has created a lot of controversy and sometimes …
Sometimes the intuitive sense is so compelling that we have trouble accepting truth–even in the face of absolute proof. The celebrated coincident birthday problem is an excellent example of counterintuitive problem that creates cognitive dissonance. Coincident Birthday Problem: What is the probability that in a randomly chosen group of 24 people, there are at least …
