What, again? He turned it down in 2006. Tao got one then. Note he improved from 19 to 40 in 1 year. Peter Shor, inventor of Shor's algorithm for factorization on a quantum computer, was part of the 1977 team that finished first. He got a silver.

So why do you still think 50%+ are drawing dead to lack of innate cognitive ability at birth?

Virtually every kid exhibits this in some context or another.

And since virtually every kid can have a positive reaction to a solved problem, it's a question of aiming them properly-something that is or isn't done after birth, so something that is or isn't done after you'd agree a majority of them were already drawing dead.

The concept that I was thinking of would be "curiosity." Other sorts of emotional discomfort such as fear of a beating, as Bruce astutely pointed out, would also work.

A couple of reasons:

Because the brain is fairly complicated and it doesn't take much to screw it up prenatally. We are fragile. Mommy eats too much or not enough broccoli, daddy accidentally knocks her down the stairs, mommy's pussy is too tight for Junior's noggin, etc.

I am also not nearly as optimistic about the possible cognitive development of 12-year-olds as DS is. I don't think that there is the possibility of balancing the number of beatings Bruce needs with the number of hugs Masque needs to make sure that they both grow optimally. Practically, I think that no matter what we do, we leave some kid behind. That doesn't mean a specific 50% are drawing dead, but that we can't get above 50%.

And if the problems they are motivated to solve aren't academic in nature they are going to not gain the academic skills necessary to get a 700 on the math section of the SAT in the early 1980s.

You mentioned your jock that you tutored. I am sure that you have some recognition (I am assuming it is a skill sport) that his brain is involved. It shouldn't (theoretically) be particularly difficult to have him get whatever needs baseball (or whatever sport, I wasn't actually interested in the story) filled in a different way.

You aren't even wrong.

The statement "drawing dead at birth" was quite explicit. It's impressive that you've now managed to backtrack on your position to now disregard both "drawing dead" and "at birth".

How is saying that a noggin can be too far outside of spec AT BIRTH (specifically for being capable of getting a 700 on the math portion of the SAT) due to stuff that happens PRIOR TO BIRTH backtracking?!?

Have mommy drink well water during or prior to pregnancy in West Virginia and you are looking at nearly 100% probability that kiddo is drawing dead AT BIRTH even if we snatch him from her snatch and whisk him off to my super secret childhood development lab.

Now add in all of the other factors that can cause structural or organic issues that would take longer than 12 years to make up for and you have some number (50% seems a reasonable GUESS) who aren't going to get there by 12 even if placed in my super secret facilities.

I'm pretty sure you have to be smarter to get a physics Phd than to get 760 in the math SAT. And that some Harvard Law School grads can't get a 760.

You are screwing up your own place in history. You were talking about an actual feeling of discomfort that some kids have, that goes beyond mere curiosity.

You were talking about a BS in physics. Very, very few Harvard Law school grads cannot get a 760.

Maybe "really curious"?

Are you trying to say that what I described isn't what curiosity feels like to everyone else?

Yes. You hit upon something and may not even know it. There are some people who actually feel physical discomfort or at least anxiety when a solvable question goes unanswered.

List of unsolved problems:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/UnsolvedProblems.html

From above link:

Unsolved Problems

There are many unsolved problems in mathematics. Some prominent outstanding unsolved problems (as well as some which are not necessarily so well known) include

1. The Goldbach conjecture.

2. The Riemann hypothesis.

3. The conjecture that there exists a Hadamard matrix for every positive multiple of 4.

4. The twin prime conjecture (i.e., the conjecture that there are an infinite number of twin primes).

5. Determination of whether NP-problems are actually P-problems.

6. The Collatz problem.

7. Proof that the 196-algorithm does not terminate when applied to the number 196.

8. Proof that 10 is a solitary number.

9. Finding a formula for the probability that two elements chosen at random generate the symmetric group S_n.

10. Solving the happy end problem for arbitrary n.

11. Finding an Euler brick whose space diagonal is also an integer.

12. Proving which numbers can be represented as a sum of three or four (positive or negative) cubic numbers.

13. Lehmer's Mahler measure problem and Lehmer's totient problem on the existence of composite numbers n such that phi(n)|(n-1), where phi(n) is the totient function.

14. Determining if the Euler-Mascheroni constant is irrational.

15. Deriving an analytic form for the square site percolation threshold.

16. Determining if any odd perfect numbers exist.

The Clay Mathematics Institute (http://www.claymath.org/millennium/) of Cambridge, Massachusetts (CMI) has named seven "Millennium Prize Problems," selected by focusing on important classic questions in mathematics that have resisted solution over the years. A $7 million prize fund has been established for the solution to these problems, with $1 million allocated to each. The problems consist of the Riemann hypothesis, Poincaré conjecture, Hodge conjecture, Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture, solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, formulation of Yang-Mills theory, and determination of whether NP-problems are actually P-problems.

In 1900, David Hilbert proposed a list of 23 outstanding problems in mathematics (Hilbert's problems), a number of which have now been solved, but some of which remain open. In 1912, Landau proposed four simply stated problems, now known as Landau's problems, which continue to defy attack even today. One hundred years after Hilbert, Smale (2000) proposed a list of 18 outstanding problems.

K. S. Brown, D. Eppstein, S. Finch, and C. Kimberling maintain webpages of unsolved problems in mathematics. Classic texts on unsolved problems in various areas of mathematics are Croft et al. (1991), in geometry, and Guy (2004), in number theory.

***************************************

Anyone emotionally distraught (anxiety or physical discomfort) that the above problems remain unsolved? Are they even solvable? Can you prove any are unsolvable? If you could prove some are unsolvable, would you celebrate by drinking some Beer?

This is going to far because there are thousands of unanswered solvable questions for everybody....but I will say the hardest I've ever worked is when I suddenly realize that i don't understand something that i thought i did.

I was talking about eight year old kids. And Bruce Z.

It seems odd to me that the square site percolation threshold is cherry-picked. The bond percolation threshold of the Kagome lattice is the Holy Grail in this field, though finding the percolation threshold for either model would be an advancement of the theory.

And I would snap take a Harvard Law Grad against a random physics BS in the math SAT both with 0 prep. Would take HL against physics Phds if I get back 1.5 for a tie. Would do it straight up for less than 2:1.

Let's do it. (To take some of the luck out of it both contestants would have to have graduated within a few years of each other. Also I need to specify that the HL grad not be my cousin David A. Sklansky)

By the way what price would you lay if you had the HL grad and I took a random Harvard Physics BS in the Law School Admission test?

Sure, you git a good way to find random PhDs and HL grads and force them to take SATs?

Prob around 1.5 again, but I would have to look closer at the LSAT. I've only glanced at a it and can't remember how much language skills are needed. The more needed the more I like my side obv.

What's the man woman ratio in both categories? In any case the only way you can have the best of it is if I overestimate physics majors from mediocre schools. I know too many lawyers to be wrong from the opposite end.

No idea of the male female ratio or the relevance of that. Yes, you are not only way way overestimating average physics majors, you are also way underestimating the math skills of Harvard Law Students (not sure why lawyers from mediocre schools even matter or if you've actually know a ton of lawyers from elite schools). The valedictorian of my high school 2 years above me got 5s on both calculus AP tests, the mechanics calculus based physics one and got a 4 on the calculus based electricity/magnetism one despite not my HS not offering the class. He majored in econ and went to the best law school in our home state which is a tier below HL. At HL those accomplishments would be totally routine. So I'm sure a ton of them already got perfect math scores on the SAT.

You don't think HL female students would score lower than men on the math SAT? Above 700 women are much rarer than men. If Harvard went out of their way to correct that they would be accused of discrimination.

No, the math sat is too easy for there to be a large spread. And of course people smart enough to get into HL are much rarer than people who can miss 0 questions on the math sat so I don't think Harvard has to do anything.

Without special preparation I believe only about one in 300 gets zero wrong. You think fewer than that are as smart as the average HL graduate?

Also that one in 300 turns into about one in 4000 for girls, I believe. My guess is that these statistics, if true, translate into at least a thirty point difference in the average math SAT scores of HL males and females. Maybe enough to turn your bet into minus EV.

Well yeah.....completely made up stats, if true, can turn many bets from positive to negative EV. The data i can find shows actual test takers are ~twice as likely to get perfect math scores and girls ~10x more than what you think. We can't know anything about "special preparation" which makes your claim hard to flat out disprove, but your numbers look way off especially with regards to the gender split, which is real but nowhere near as large as you think.

http://mjperry.blogspot.com.tr/2010/...ge-gender.html

I think they dumbed down the SAT big time from when I took it. And I read multiple times that the 800 gender ratio was 13 to one. But that was back then. The average math score for MIT undergrads was about 710. So maybe now you would have the best of the bet. Certainly I overestimated the smartness of Physics majors. They can't be that smart as this forum proves.