Great question! I am just finishing a book on genius that is the culmination of several years of research on the greatest geniuses since Archimedes. This is an excerpt from that book that may help to answer your question. (There is a full chapter on Erdos, that looks specifically at mathematical research and the changing …
Do you think the era of the “lone genius” mathematician is officially over? Read More »
Many highly intelligent people are capable of performing practical tasks, but there is a large sector of this group whose interests in life center mainly about ideas and concepts. In my study of genius, I have found both types. Physicist Richard Feynman was fascinated by radios shortly after their invention and during his early teenage …
Yes, geniuses see the world through a different lens from the rest of us. They tend to be more rational than most of the population and slower to reach certainty on any issue, retaining a high level of tolerance for ambiguity. As an alternative to feeling frustration over the limited rationality of the masses, they …
We judge genius, not by IQ, but by the scope and originality of their accomplishments. My favorite quote defining genius comes from Arthur Schopenhauer: Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. As Schopenhauer observed, genius is not about perfecting a skill and bringing it …
I’m in the middle of writing a book on the personalities of genius, so I’ll answer this question using an excerpt from the chapter on Einstein in that book. Most of the anecdotes pertaining to Einstein’s absent-mindedness derive from his ability to focus so intently on a particular problem that he became entirely unaware of …
Actually, the most common error in understanding scientific or statistical information is conceptual rather than arithmetic. It’s the confusion between correlation and causation. Here is a real-life example in which educators (who should know better) made a colossal blunder. A few years ago, a school board discovered that there was a strong correlation between the …
There are many great mathematical concepts that are relevant to life, but it’s often difficult to help people understand why they are relevant. However, I have found that most people agree on the relevance of money, so I will provide one example that gets the attention of most people, and that is exponential growth. Einstein …
Yogi Berra 1925–2015 First, some Brief Historical Reflections The concept of “genius” has evolved throughout the history of human inquiry. In the ancient world, intellectual brilliance was associated with the prominent philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as mathematicians such as Thales and Archimedes. This trend to associate genius with philosophy and science …
A substantial level of subject knowledge is almost always necessary to make breakthroughs in a particular academic pursuit. However, there is a danger in being immersed in the current theories and ideas of a scientific community, that resemble the problems the emerge in groupthink. Discussions in a groupthink context are found to “homogenize” the ideas …
This is a particularly pertinent question in the current political climate when our society is strongly polarized toward the extremes. Why is Modern Society so Polarized? Polarization has been fostered by the media’s use of analytics to determine their demographic and distort information to please that select group. For example, FOX news caters to those …
