I think the issue is that it's just harder to fit in. I remember being way ahead in some classes in middle school, and I actually ending up drawing the ire of some teachers when I had answers to every question (let alone corrected them). I eventually learned to disengage and just look out the window. But if you develop that attitude, you never learn how to cram in knowledge for tests, which actually increases the odds of failing some "less interesting" classes down the line.

Another problem that I've seen with a lot of really clever folks is that if you're told your entire childhood you're smarter than others, but you see these "others" sometimes get more successful, it's really easy to fall into profound cynicism. You never try anything and just undermine others on the internet.

Ultimately, stories like this are an exception, not a rule, even for kids who are truly brilliant. And yeah, it's easy to underestimate the role the parents play, mostly in creating the right opportunities and instilling the right way of thinking about the world. A child doesn't learn to play piano at the age of eight unless there's a piano in the home and a family member or a paid tutor to show them the ropes. Even for stuff like math, it's a parent's choice to buy the right books versus just giving the kid a smartphone.

While Terence is -without a doubt- born with prodigious abilities, I think credit should also be given to his parents Billy and Grace who seem to have managed to simultaneously nurture these special abilities while still letting Terence have a happy (?) childhood. This is not easy to do.

As I've gone through life, I've found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old.

Interviewer: Yes—something that had and still has the feeling of a hobby, a curiosity.

M: At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you're not old enough yet to be overly in by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you thinkyou “should” be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It's certainly been true in my case. I'm doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.

- Learned Greek starting age three.

- Was studying Plato at age six.

- Studied Latin starting at age eight.

And more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Biography

I guess it helps that he had Jeremy Bentham hanging around his house from an early age.

I definitely empathize with "his preference for using an analytic, highly logical problem-solving strategy" (I'm not a genius ofc). It's often more immediately clear for me than visual/spatial manipulation.

In the Dune books, they banned computers so they bred super mentally capable humans.

> 320 print "(brmmmm-brmmmm-putt-putt-vraow-chatter-chatter bye mr. fibonacci!)"

Was still a few years away from reassembly.

I think people need to be trained to be more confident in what they know, and if we gave them that kind of thing we could maybe train them to become so.

Then realized, I mistook him for his Autistic brother Trevor. Trevor too is a mathematician.

Like others called out their parents must be great too. It is not easy.

So he was able to attend classes out of his own year. What country is this? USA? Is that normal in the USA? I think here in the UK this isn't possible.

He currently attends a normal school and I feel this a such a waste.

(not my kid).

No, I don’t mean it is hard to feed a kid and educate him a bit. That’s like at least 70% of the parents can do. What is remarkable is that they not only found Terence’s interests and nurtured on it, consistently without any major error. God you have no idea how hard it is. So many constellations have to be on the right places. And it’s definitely way more than luck.

For a starter, as a parent of a five years old kid, I always feel I failed and will fail my kiddo. I’m so unsatisfied with my own lives that my mind has to be focused on improving myself other than devoting time for anyone else, including my wife and my son. I know my son has some potential, just like pretty much every kid out there, but I didn’t, and won’t take the time to learn early education and use the knowledge to nurture him properly. I know he has some shortcomings that could use some guidance, but I don’t want to spend months, years to figure that out. I’m swarmed by my own thoughts and needs. That’s why I always tell my friends, don’t get a kid if you are not contend with life —- you won’t have the capacity.

And then there is the question of what to do even if I have enough time. Kids aren’t robots. They don’t automatically do things you want them to do, which is understandable. But when you have to fight for simple things in life, or fight with wife if you don’t always agree on certain things, God it’s such a mess that struggling to live like a normal human being is not a trivial task.

Anyway, I’m really glad that his parents brought out the best of him, and his brother’s too. They should be recognized for that.

I realize and acknowledge both sets had talents and the spent thier time doing something with it to produce something extraordinary but we seem to tend to overlook the massive head start they also had. Why so?

(Totally understandable if you feel like downvoting but I would ask you to articulate and share the cord it struck with you if you down vote)

That means in a generation there are ~ 10k such people in the world. Think about connecting them or nurturing them with AI companions.

Funny remark.

More than three years after this episode took place, Terence, still a little boy, happily played hide and seek with his two younger brothers when the Tao family visited the Clements household. He is a happy, well-mannered lad who obviously loves and respects his parents and his two brothers. He gets on well with others, too. Mr John Fidge, his Year 11 Mathematics teacher at Blackwood High School for the first two terms of 1983, told me that after he had been attending the Year 11 Mathematics classes for about a fortnight he was accepted as just another member of the class. He is always willing to volunteer answers to questions asked by his teachers and was regarded as a friendly, humble, but very bright boy by his classmates.

That strains credulity. Those familiar with common Chinese parenting strategies know how involved and directly instructed they can be at times. How much of that has been downplayed (And for what purpose)?

I don’t mean to undermine any of Tao’s achievements. They are unassailable. But I genuinely want to know a true account of what it took to get him there.

...

A child prodigy,[18] Terence Tao skipped five grades.[19][20] Tao exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age, attending university-level mathematics courses at the age of 9. He is one of only three children in the history of the Johns Hopkins Study of Exceptional Talent program to have achieved a score of 700 or greater on the SAT math section while just eight years old; Tao scored a 760.[21] Julian Stanley, Director of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, stated that Tao had the greatest mathematical reasoning ability he had found in years of intensive searching.[7][22]

Saved you a click...

His biggest talent though, I believe it's something more rare. He can get people excited about mathematics, make people dream and imagine.

Long-term retention is is hard when encountering new symbols. He seemed quite comfortable at that age absorbing the new stuff and manipulating it. Where does that comfort come from? Is there a way to test that explicitly? Finally, there is the ability to take the new and use it well. What about creating new shorthand? Being able to divine hidden patterns and articulate them?

Ramunujam seems to have had this.