/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3819339]

In the last few weeks, I came up with the idea of tensors and of the solid angle.

In the past, I came up with an idea on gravity which turns out to all be contained within general relativity.

When I was 4, I understood operations enough to question the order of operations, for which no teacher could give a straight answer. At this age, my arithmetic allowed me to calculate 2^n up to 8,192 faster than I could speak, then having to slow down to calculate... When I was 6, I came up with the idea of moments. I understood the balance between a 3kg boy, 1m from the centre of a see-saw, and a 1kg boy 3 metres from the centre on the other side of the see-saw. We were not taught about moments until A-level, aged 17. At the same time, age<7, I knew that when calculating the average of consecutive numbers e.g. 65, 67, 69, 71, it is equal to the centre number, or the average of the median two numbers. I still see people adding all the numbers then dividing. In secondary school, I summed all the numbers from 1 to 100 in about 15 seconds, using what's described as (n/2)(n+1). I then came up with summing consecutive numbers not starting from zero that is described using an = a1 + (n-1)d. I don't know how profound this is... but it's shocking getting taught something you worked out when you were a small child... and your peers alongside you making notes of the formulae...

These are a few examples I've just thought of. I'm sure I've got loads more... Anyone else got any similar experiences?

[Anonymous No.3819367]

[Anonymous No.3819364]

>inb4 hur hur op thinks he's so smart
I'm genuinely interested how much of people's education they've worked out themselves. I think it's possible that a portion of the population will almost never work out the solution to problems in front of them if they haven't been shown or taught the solution by someone else, kinda like programmable automata.

If everyone has experiences where they work things out, only to be taught them later, I'd love to hear about it... it could be a problem with education, or at least show me that I'm not a unique snowflake.

[Anonymous No.3819373]

Worthless.

Not because you haven't applied your power of intellect to further society or create new technology, but because you're stuck remaking the wheel.

Why aren't you off contemplating the Universe like Einstein did? Or Euler. Or Tesla. Or Newton.

Even if it's just for your own sense of discovery.

[Anonymous No.3819374]

[Anonymous No.3819379]

>Able to discuss their intelligence without making themself look like a pretentious tool
>Posting on /sci/

Pick one.

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819396]

>>3819373

Probably because I've never been encouraged. Poor, stupid family, as a result always had stupid friends, went to the worst secondary school in the city, I had poor attendance, never did homework, never participated etc. I'm at a top university now though, 3rd year MEng, so hopefully will give the world something new some day. Steps I'm taking: No more stupid friends, learning about QED, Maxwell's equations and other things beyond my course, hopefully recuperate my damaged mind...

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819402]

>>3819379
The latter.

Realise I can't talk about this without sounding pretentious. Why'd you think I saved this questioning for /sci/?

[Anonymous No.3819409]

>>3819402

>Serious Discussion
>No trolling
>Able to overlook your level of pretentiousness

Pick any two.

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819410]

>>3819409
lol

[Anonymous No.3819413]

>>3819396
>wah wah nobody encouraged me

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819419]

No-one's answered... How many people find out these kinds of things for themself?

[Anonymous No.3819421]

>>3819339

See, OP, lately I have been curious about how other people's memories work...given any date since being a teenager (incl weekday :P ) I can tell you at least roughly what I was doing; I can describe many particular days beginning-to-end; I know how I met / my first interaction with most of my friends...I can memorize lists under 7 after one pass...but it's just blase to me, until I have been gradually realizing that other people's memory doesn't work that way.

When you are thinking about what you discovered for yourself, keep in mind that for many of these "discovieres," there was probably at least some external stimuli which you saw which pointed you in the right direction, or you saw the whole thing and just didn't realize it at the time. I learned that lesson the hard way in elementary school when I was all proud of a song I'd written and came to realize it was just a note-for-note copy of a melody we'd heard at church the week before.

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819426]

>>3819413
>got encouraged
>wastes his life
>participating in forum discussion
>only to troll

[Anonymous No.3819431]

Well, due to years of poor treatment from my peers, I've worked hard to forget anything behind 15 years old. So I can't remember much, but I do remember this.

I remember once being in a car, at around age 8, before this is taught, and working out the relationship between speed, distance, and time. I remember pondering what speed was, and that it had to do with the amount of distance you covered, over the amount of time, or V = ∆d/∆t. I've always been one to question what I have been taught, and only weed out truths from unbiased observations.

Erm, when I learned about series in 10th grade, I was able to figure out the sum of basic things like ∑k from 1 to n, k^2, and got stuck on k^3 without having to use proof by induction. I also worked out (knowing what derivatives were) that to find the local maxima and minima of a function f(x) you take the derivative of it then take the zeroes.

Other than that, I'm mostly just good at taking in things, not thinking of them on my own.

[Anonymous No.3819449]

>>3819396
As an oldfag MEng, Stephen R. Covey's advice has served me well:
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

[Anonymous No.3819454]

>>3819339

No, you're nothing special. I figured this kind of shit out by myself also.

It doesn't even make you particularly smart, just means you wasted time thinking about it which you should have been using to socialize.

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819457]

>>3819421
That's a really interesting mind. There's been a few programs on savants that perform similar mental feats... I think I remember one black guy in US who was hit on the head, after which he stored days of the week and weather on each date.

I can't imagine coming into contact with the formula for summing arithmetic series, or the rules of moments etc... At the time, I believed everyone thought the same way as me, and despite every now and again getting labelled a genius or smart kid, I felt stupid most of the time.
Memories are cool, I'm reading a book called Robot Brains for Concious Machines. You ever thought you might be a robot?

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819514]

>>3819454
Social skills and mathematical skills don't seem to have much of a relation... Feynman was a social guy, Dirac wasn't. So what? I was pretty social, and didn't spend my time thinking about these solutions really. I don't think my ideas were prefrontal cortex thoughts and deep logical investigation... more like spontaneous ideas which I thought nothing of...

>>3819431
That's another example. I kind of came up with the idea change in position is velocity, change in velocity is acceleration, and postulated that there could be a change in acceleration and higher... I was taught this stuff at A-level and then found out that what I thought of did exist (da/dt = jerk).

It only takes 1 more of these ideas, for which no one's yet thought off, and I will finally be adding something. Didn't take maths though, so it's probably unlikely I'll get one.

[Anonymous No.3819566]

>>3819373
don't be retarded, reinventing things that took people years of work is great. in fact, it's a sign that shows that someone has lots of potential for making novel discoveries.

OP has the advantage, of course, of being exposed to the aftermath of those inventions, whether he is aware of it or not

i'm pretty sure a lot of people here have had similar experiences, like learning about limits/calculus (non rigorously) in geometry class, etc.

[Anonymous No.3819592]

>>3819566
Spending a lifetime reinventing things doesn't seem that productive to society... but I guess it would keep the individual's mind busy.

[Anonymous No.3819602]

>>3819592
true, but it's a way to train the mind to prepare for new ones

it's basically equivalent to working on hard textbook problems, only more insightful

[Anonymous No.3819621]

>>3819419
Short Answer: More than you think, if we restrict our focus to children who are curious, contemplative, capable, and confident at the same time. The real problem is that people who inherently have the potential to bring these qualities together are often brought up in an environment where they never have a chance to explore anything at all.

It's fine to allow your independent discoveries to modestly boost your confidence and remind you of your capabilities in a very balanced way. But the fact that you have chosen to sit and publicly admire yourself for making these discoveries does not make you look very good.

I wonder if your behavior stems from some kind of belief in a fairy tale about our society claiming that anyone smart or innovative is given a cookie for that reason alone. No, even ideally, society only tends to reward those people who do ALL of the following:

1. Give a damn.
2. Ask questions for the sake of your own curiosity.
3. Dive into original approaches arising from your own creativity while also making good use of what you already know.
4. Encounter a question to which no one in the world knows the answer.
5. Combining #1, #2, and #3, provide some public contribution to the resolution of the problem in #4, whether it is a partial or complete solution.

So what you should now do is work on unsolved problems. You will find them to be too difficult when you first jump in. Then you realize there is more foundation that you must lay, by studying the literature. Only when you can combine the knack for innovation you claim to possess with a solid understanding of the literature will you be able to solve an unsolved problem.

I do hope you can make our world better. Good luck.

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819702]

>>3819621

I've got 1 and 2. I haven't really encountered many unsolved problems... maybe Navier-Stokes proofs...

Your 5 step process... is it tried and tested? You ever solved anything?

[op !5RRtZawAKg No.3819729]

>>3819621
Wanna add, I don't publically admire myself, don't ever expect a cookie
>See: never encouraged
>See: Spend 5 years trying to be dumb
>See: Always felt dumb
>See: Realise I can't talk about this without sounding pretentious

If I assume everyone comes up with solutions to things all the time, it's a strange situation I'm in never hearing people talk about finding these solutions.

[Anonymous No.3819745]

>>3819374

[Anonymous No.3819786]

When I was 1, I was reading and understanding Shakespeare.

When I was 6, I proved the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, the fundamental theorem of algebra, and that there were infinitely many primes.

When I was 13, I proved the fundamental theorem of calculus.

By the time I was 14, I had written a 3000 page tome on mathematics - on closer inspection, it appears I had rediscovered all the science and mathematics of Newton and Gauss and Euler combined.

[Anonymous No.3819800]

I could do newtonian physics when I was 10/11. My cousins always had physics homework, even though I never had any formal teachings yet. I also started to learn calculus when I was 14.

[Anonymous No.3819809]

>>3819800
I proved calculus when I was 12-13.

[Anonymous No.3819814]

>>3819809
Thats cool dawg.

[William S Burroughs No.3819818]

>>3819800
Only an adult can hope to comprehend the Algebra of Need.

[Anonymous No.3819850]

>>3819800
Feynman also had a headstart on mechanics and calculus. Perhaps cool prospects lie ahead.

[Anonymous No.3819874]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBW4S9xcTOk

were you like this kid ?

[Anonymous No.3819887]

>>3819786
terrance tao is that you?

[Anonymous No.3820271]

Hurr, durr.

Yeah, I figured out similar shit when I was a kid. Big deal.
Learned quite a bit of calc I when I was 14. Seriously, it's not a big deal god damnit, I'm sure that there are people many times smarter who learned it while they were 17-18.
I learned some very basic QM this year but decided to continue later. And I'm still a highschoolfag.

It's not about potential, it's about how you use it.