Timeline for Specializing early
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 31, 2021 at 4:32 | review | Close votes | |||
| Sep 1, 2021 at 12:59 | |||||
| Apr 11, 2019 at 0:45 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 11, 2019 at 8:14 | |||||
| Mar 2, 2010 at 16:34 | comment | added | Igor Belegradek | Thomas, when I said "you" I of course did not mean you personally; sorry if this was unclear. A four hour session can be done in math camp or math circle format, but I doubt that anyone is able to learn what group theory is about without solving hundreds of exercises. | |
| Mar 2, 2010 at 15:54 | comment | added | Thomas Sauvaget | Igor, there's a misunderstanding about the word panorama then: I mean something informal, for example group theory could be presented in a 4-hour session mixing intuitive ideas, key examples, re-phrased theorems, computer programming and open problems. (By the way, I'm asking about specific curriculae as a teacher, I myself finished grad-school long ago.) | |
| Mar 2, 2010 at 14:23 | comment | added | Igor Belegradek | Incidentally, Thomas, you idea of 1-week panorama of math is very naive, I think. In a typical upper level undergrad course (say on group theory) students spend 3-5 hours per 1 hour in the class solving challenging exercises. Say you are extremely bright and only need 2 hours. A 12 week course is 36 lectures, so your time commitment is over 100 hours, i.e 10 days minimum, just to get a basic idea what group theory is about. It probably takes several times as much to start doing research in group theory coming from high school. | |
| Mar 2, 2010 at 13:49 | comment | added | Igor Belegradek | Thomas, a common solution is to home school; then you have all the freedom to take the classes you want. Quite a few bright kids take this route. | |
| Mar 2, 2010 at 7:30 | comment | added | Thomas Sauvaget | Igor: precisely, it's on top of the high-school classes, which can then be quite heavy and cumbersome (commuting to college...). This is the reason why I thought a different kind of curriculum is needed, but apparently most people here disagree ;-) | |
| Mar 2, 2010 at 5:28 | comment | added | Igor Belegradek | Thomas, nothing stops a bright high school kid from sitting in courses at a nearby college. You just have to convince the instructor that you can handle the load, and usually you will be let in. And if you are really good, someone will gladly supervise your research. This is what happened to Siemens winners. Having said that, if you are serious about becoming a research mathematician, sooner or later you will need to study basic math subjects. | |
| Mar 2, 2010 at 3:55 | answer | added | Alfonso Gracia-Saz | timeline score: 11 | |
| Mar 1, 2010 at 6:09 | vote | accept | Thomas Sauvaget | ||
| Feb 28, 2010 at 9:12 | comment | added | Thomas Sauvaget | @Pete: since this is perhaps turning into a too lenghty discussion for MO I've put up a blog post where this will be easier thomas1111.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/… Basically I meant that at age 18 all the folks you mention were not less intelligent than at age 25, just less knowledgeable and experienced, and that with earlier and more focussed training they would have performed just as well. | |
| Feb 28, 2010 at 7:48 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @TS: You say that intellectual power is near its height at ages 16-20. Could you a) explain what you mean by "intellectual power" and b) provide some evidence for this? A little googling shows: (i) Youngest world chess champion: Kasparov (22); (ii) youngest Fields Medalist: Serre (27), youngest Nobel Prize winner: Bragg (25) [shared with his father!]. Kasparov retained the championship for many years and, based on his ratings, was significantly stronger in his late 20s and early 30s than in his early 20s. | |
| Feb 28, 2010 at 4:14 | comment | added | maks | I like your idea. Not the whole of it, but at least the spirit. I feel that our education system focuses more on breadth than depth. Implementing a program like yours could be a reasonable counterbalance. But maybe not in high-school, and maybe not in the States, where inequities between people are already huge (I feel your program would only increase those). | |
| Feb 27, 2010 at 17:52 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | Thanks for spelling out your assumptions. I vehemently disagree with them, and with your conclusions. Far from ensuring progress, I think this would be disastrous for future researchers, and even worse for the vast majority of students who do not become researchers. | |
| Feb 27, 2010 at 14:47 | history | edited | Jacques Carette | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
fix typo
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| Feb 27, 2010 at 14:22 | comment | added | Thomas Sauvaget | Of course the aim is not to deprive them of these connections forever, but just during the first few years to help them actually do something. Once they are mature in some area, of course they would be curious about other things. To me it is a bit of a pity that these years 16 to 20, when intellectual power is already near its height, are spent by most people learning lots of basic well-known material. | |
| Feb 27, 2010 at 13:20 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Thomas Sauvaget | ||
| Feb 27, 2010 at 13:09 | answer | added | Akhil Mathew | timeline score: 7 | |
| Feb 27, 2010 at 12:51 | answer | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | timeline score: 25 | |
| Feb 27, 2010 at 12:24 | comment | added | Boris Bukh | I do not know about such programs, but really hope they do not exist. Mathematics is big and beautiful, with lots of connections between its remotest branches. Why be cruel to the children and deprive them of that? | |
| Feb 27, 2010 at 11:16 | history | asked | Thomas Sauvaget | CC BY-SA 2.5 |