A packed house for a math lecture? Must be Terence Tao

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/13/news/math.php

A mathematical genius, but not your typical eccentric absent-minded professor, rather a highly engaging memsmerizing and gregarious young chap, who draws crowds and groupies like Paris Hilton does! Would love to meet him.

He is an Australian citizen by birth, of Hong Kong-ese origin.

Married to a NASA rocket scientist!

[Make sure you click on the NY Times link below!]

Age 2: could read (was secretly learning from Sesame Street)
Age 2: used toy blocks to show 5-year olds how to count and read
Age 7.5: took HS math classes
Age 8: SAT Math: 760 (one of only 2 ever to score > 700 at age 8)
Age 8: Solved all 8 problems orally given to him by an expert on gifted children (click link 2 see if you can solve them orally, or even written!: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/science/20070313_PROF_GRAPHIC.html )
Age 9: took college math/physics classes
Age 10: Bronze at International Mathematical Olympiad (youngest participant ever)
Age 11: Silver at International Mathematical Olympiad
Age 12/13: Gold at International Mathematical Olympiad (youngest gold-medalist ever)
Age 12: could have graduated from undergrad has his parents pushed him
Age 14: starts full-time undergrad
Age 16: B.S.
Age 17: M.S.
Age 17: Fullbright Scholarship (to study in US)
Age 20: Ph.D. (Princeton)
Age 21: Assistant Professor at UCLA
Age 24 Full Professor at UCLA
Age 28: Solved a famous problem relating to prime numbers
Age 31: Fields Medal (considered Nobel Prize of math)
Age 31: MacArthur Fellowship - award of $500,000 (nickanmed "Genius Grant")

Here is what New Scientist says about him:

Quote :

"Such is Tao’s reputation that mathematicians now compete to interest him in their problems, and he is becoming a kind of Mr Fix-it for frustrated researchers. “If you're stuck on a problem, then one way out is to interest Terence Tao.” "

Article from link above:

Quote :

"LOS ANGELES: Four hundred people packed into an auditorium at UCLA in January to listen to a public lecture on prime numbers, one of the rare occasions that the topic has drawn a bstanding-room-only audience. Another 35 people watched on a video screen in a classroom next door. Eighty people were turned away. The speaker, Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the university, promised "a whirlwind tour, the equivalent to going through Paris and just seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe." His words were polite, unassuming and tinged with the accent of Australia, his homeland. Even though prime numbers have been studied for 2,000 years, "there's still a lot that needs to be done," Tao said. "And it's still a very exciting field." After Tao finished his one-hour talk, which was broadcast live on the Internet, several students came down to the front and asked for his autograph. Tao has drawn attention and curiosity throughout his life for his prodigious abilities. By age 2, he had learned to read. At 9, he attended college math classes. At 20, he finished his PhD. Now 31, he has grown from prodigy to one of the world's top mathematicians, tackling an unusually broad range of problems, including ones involving prime numbers and the compression of images. Last summer, he won a Fields Medal, often considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics, and a MacArthur Fellowship, the "genius" award that comes with $500,000 and no strings attached. "He's wonderful," said Charles Fefferman of Princeton University, himself a former child prodigy and a Fields Medalist. "He's as good as they come. There are a few in a generation, and he's one of the few." Colleagues have teasingly called Tao a rock star and the "Mozart of Math." Two museums in Australia have requested his photograph for their permanent exhibits and he was a finalist for the 2007 Australian of the Year award. "You start getting famous for being famous," Tao said. "The Paris Hilton effect." Not that any of that has noticeably affected him. His campus office is adorned with a poster of "Ranma ½," a Japanese comic book. As he walks the halls of the math building, he might be wearing an Adidas sweatshirt, blue jeans and scruffy sneakers, looking much like one of his graduate students. He said he did not know how he would spend the MacArthur money, though he mentioned the mortgage on the house that he and his wife, Laura, an engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, bought last year. After a childhood in Adelaide, Australia, and graduate school at Princeton, Tao has settled into sunny Southern California. "I love it a lot," he said. But not necessarily for what the area offers. "It's sort of the absence of things I like," he said. No snow to shovel, for instance. A deluge of media attention following his Fields Medal last summer has slowed to a trickle, and Tao said he was happy that his fame might be fleeting so he could again concentrate on math. One area of his research — compressed sensing — could have real- world use. Digital cameras use millions of sensors to record an image, and then a computer chip compresses the data. "Compressed sensing is a different strategy," Tao said. "You also compress the data, but you try to do it in a very dumb way, one that doesn't require much computer power at the sensor end.""

3/24/2007 1:34:43 PM

Quote :

"Tao's best known mathematical work involves prime numbers — positive whole numbers that can be divided evenly only by themselves and 1. The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13 (1 is excluded). As numbers get larger, prime numbers become sparser, but the Greek mathematician Euclid proved around 300 B.C. that there is nonetheless an infinite amount of primes. Euclid also believed there was an infinite number of "twin primes" — pairs of prime numbers separated by two, like 3 and 5 or 11 and 13 — but he was unable to prove his conjecture. Nor has anyone else in the succeeding centuries. A larger unknown question is whether hidden patterns exist in the sequence of prime numbers or whether they appear randomly. In 2004, Tao, along with Ben Green, a mathematician now at the University of Cambridge in England, solved a problem related to the Twin Prime Conjecture by looking at prime number progressions — series of numbers equally spaced. (For example, 3, 7 and 11 constitute a progression of prime numbers with a spacing of four; the next number in the sequence, 15, is not prime.) Tao and Green proved that it is always possible to find, somewhere in the infinity of integers, a progression of prime numbers of any spacing and any length. "Terry has a style that very few have," Fefferman said. "When he solves the problem, you think to yourself, 'This is so obvious' and 'Why didn't I see it? Why didn't the 100 distinguished people who thought about this before not think of it?'" Tao's proficiency with numbers appeared at a very young age. "I always liked numbers," he said. At age 2, Tao used toy blocks to show older children how to count. He was quick with language and used the blocks to spell words like "dog" and "cat." "He probably was quietly learning these things from watching 'Sesame Street,'" said his father, Billy Tao, a pediatrician who immigrated to Australia from Hong Kong in 1972. "We basically used 'Sesame Street' as a babysitter." The blocks had been bought as toys, not learning tools. "You expect them to throw them around," said Billy Tao. Terry's parents placed him in a private school when he was 3½. They pulled him out six weeks later because he was not ready to spend that much time in a classroom, and the teacher was not ready to teach someone as advanced as him. At age 5, he was enrolled in a public school, and his parents, administrators and teachers set up an individualized program for him. He proceeded through each subject at his own pace, quickly accelerating through several grades in math and science while remaining closer to his age group in other subjects. In English classes, for instance, he became flustered when he had to write essays. "I never really got the hang of that," he said. "These very vague, undefined questions. I always liked situations where there were very clear rules of what to do." Assigned to write a story about what was going on at home, Terry went from room to room and made detailed lists of the contents. When he was 7½, he began attending math classes at the local high school. His father also arranged for math professors to mentor him. A couple of years later, Tao was taking university-level math and physics classes. He excelled in international math competitions. His parents decided not to push him into college full time, so he split his time between high school and Flinders University, a university in Adelaide. He finally enrolled as a full- time student at Flinders when he was 14, two years after he would have graduated had his parents pushed him only according to his academic abilities. Terry completed his undergraduate degree in two years, earned a master's degree a year after that, then moved to Princeton for his doctoral studies. While he said he never felt out of place in a class of much older students, Princeton was where he finally felt he fit among a group of peers. He was still younger, but he was not necessarily the brightest student all the time. His attitude toward math also matured. Until Princeton, math had been competitions, problem sets, exams. "That's more like a sprint," he said. As a child, Tao recalled, "I remember having this vague idea that what mathematicians did was that some authority, someone gave them problems to solve and they just sort of solved them." In the real academic world, "math research is more like a marathon," he said. As a parent and a professor, Tao now has to think about how to teach math in addition to learning it. An evening snack provided him an opportunity to question his son, who is 4 years old: If there are 10 cookies, how many does each of the five people in the living room get? William asked his father to tell him. "I don't know how many," Tao replied. "You tell me." With a little more prodding, William divided the cookies into five stacks of two each. Tao said a future project would be to try to teach more non-mathematicians how to think mathematically — a skill that would be useful in everyday tasks like comparing mortgages. "I believe you can teach this to almost anybody," he said. But for now, his research is where his focus is. "In many ways, my work is my hobby," he said. "I always wanted to learn another language, but that's not going to happen for a while. Those things can wait." "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_tao

His CV: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html

3/24/2007 1:36:14 PM

Quote :

"He is an Australian citizen by birth, of Hong Kong-ese origin."

That explains everything.

3/24/2007 1:54:35 PM

Little Man Tao

3/24/2007 2:08:59 PM

Little Man Tao

3/24/2007 2:08:59 PM

^^^"Tao" didn't give it away?

They should figure out what makes people geniuses then breed a super race of them.

[Edited on March 24, 2007 at 2:09 PM. Reason : dsf]

3/24/2007 2:09:28 PM

Make sure you click the link below to see if you can do those 8 problems that he did all correctly at the age of 8 orally:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/science/20070313_PROF_GRAPHIC.html

3/24/2007 2:11:41 PM

^^It did, but I pointing out that he is of "Hong Kong-ese origin" only strengthens my case.

^I got six of them right.

3/24/2007 2:15:08 PM

That shit is easy

3/24/2007 2:15:52 PM

For an 8 year old?

3/24/2007 2:17:37 PM

I assert that to be the case

3/24/2007 2:19:31 PM

I got all 8 right in my head, and correctly predicted the two that were impossible. I wonder how long he had to reply.

[Edited on March 24, 2007 at 3:01 PM. Reason : Not sure why I'm bragging about performing as well as a smart 8-year-old.]

3/24/2007 2:59:48 PM

yea they were pretty easy

definitely not taking anything away from the man.

3/24/2007 3:32:15 PM

i wonder if he gets any ass

3/24/2007 3:34:11 PM

i'd let him have me

3/24/2007 3:37:55 PM

^ my heart dropped to the floor when i clicked your name. hahaah

3/24/2007 4:29:41 PM

eheh, i'm getting quite the click rate too

3/24/2007 4:52:05 PM

He should by a car from TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAO! Tao Suzuki of Fuquay-Varina!

3/24/2007 6:23:50 PM

He could even buy one!

3/24/2007 6:39:04 PM

he's no william sidis

3/24/2007 6:39:48 PM

Quote :

"Make sure you click the link below to see if you can do those 8 problems that he did all correctly at the age of 8 orally: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/science/20070313_PROF_GRAPHIC.html"

I could have done those when I was 8.

3/24/2007 7:11:19 PM

I wouldn't have understood the terminology when I was 8, and didn't know of and wasn't able to derive the pythagorean theorem when I was 8.

3/24/2007 7:34:25 PM

thats because youre a moron

3/24/2007 7:41:24 PM

Thanks Terence, you've just increased the stereotype 10 fold.

3/24/2007 8:10:27 PM

^^ And you have limpy nuts?

3/24/2007 8:15:55 PM

The bad driving stereotype.

Age 16: Back into three mailboxes in neighborhood.
Age 17: Takes up 3 parking spots and movie theater
Age 19: Drives wrong way up exit ramp.
Age 20: Solves prime number problem, drifts across four lanes of interstate traffic.
Age 22: Causes 12-car pile up by driving slow in the left hand lane.
Age 23: Plows Toyota Camry through front of Denny's

3/24/2007 8:50:05 PM

if i could have had my phd by the time i was 20... it would have been alot easier to get

stupid bars...

3/24/2007 10:10:14 PM

I got 7/8 I read the freakin clock one wrong

[Edited on March 24, 2007 at 11:05 PM. Reason : in my head as well fuck writing that shit down...lol]

3/24/2007 11:04:59 PM

Quote :

"Age 12: could have graduated from undergrad has his parents pushed him Age 14: starts full-time undergrad"

how do you graduate 2 years before you started?
and i doubt his parents weren't doing a lot of pushing...

3/25/2007 3:39:32 AM

^ read the article, or my timeline.

he started taking college math and physics courses at the age of 9.

he could have started college full time at like age 10, but if you read the article, you will see the father saying they didn't push him, and let him stay in HS but continue taking college courses in the evening.

so from the age of 9 to 14, he was mainly in HS, but taking some college courses. had he been pushed, he could have started full time undergrad at like 10, and graduated at 12.

but, he didn't even start full time undergrad till 14.

that's what they meant that he could have graduated (not started) college at 12, just based on his ability.

p.s. and there is a big difference between pushing and supporting/encouraging.

they let him do whatever he wanted. but they surely supported and encouraged him in his endeavours. they could have pushed him to start full time undergrad and graduate 4 YEARS before he did it on his own, but they didn't do that.

[Edited on March 25, 2007 at 4:07 PM. Reason : ]

3/25/2007 4:03:42 PM

He ain't got shit on William James Sidis

3/25/2007 4:34:11 PM

6/5/2007 9:06:51 PM

that is so fucking awesome

6/5/2007 9:11:14 PM

5/8 ain't too bad for a Poli Sci Alum

6/6/2007 4:49:45 PM

So what's he done that's actually affected anyone's life?

6/6/2007 5:09:52 PM

He learnt to read... which you obviously haven't.

Quote :

"One area of his research — compressed sensing — could have real- world use. Digital cameras use millions of sensors to record an image, and then a computer chip compresses the data. "Compressed sensing is a different strategy," Tao said. "You also compress the data, but you try to do it in a very dumb way, one that doesn't require much computer power at the sensor end."""

And btw, what have you done that's helped anybody on this planet?

This is today's culture among young people... anti-intellectual, anti-studying, anti-excelling in studies.

You can see it everywhere, in schools (starting in primary), in universities, in popular culture. One dreaded label ("nerd"), and that's it.

Same thing going on in chit chat, about the spelling bee kid, about the chick who finished college in a year. And now about this amazing person.


EDIT:

What has he done that has affected someone life? He got married and made someone happy, he had a son and is making him happy. He is a FUCKING PROFESSOR in a university, and is TEACHING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE.

WHAT MORE THE FUCK YOU WANT HIM TO DO?

And WHY DOES A "NERD" HAVE TO DO SOMETHING FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD TO BE ADMIRED AS A GREAT INDIVIDUAL?


[Edited on June 6, 2007 at 5:16 PM. Reason : This is fucking stupid.]

6/6/2007 5:14:15 PM

woah, calm down, ho

6/6/2007 5:19:56 PM

Haha, calling today's youth culture anti-intellectual, when we're more obsessed with grades, accelerated schools, and academic competitions than ever.

I'm a nerd. Nerds will never be popular or sexy outside of academia. It's not a big deal, nor an affront to education or intellectualism; academia will always be differentiated from normal society. It's not any different now than it was forty years ago.

Jesus.

6/6/2007 6:20:13 PM

^ If you compare the primary educational standards of today with those of a century ago ( or say Hong Kong now)
you will find all the evidence you need to conclude that the rise of ignorance is real and increasing.

Or you could just notice the general apathy and attention to all things entertainment.

6/6/2007 6:30:35 PM

a century ago, the stupid kids and the kids from familes that didn't value education dropped out of school before they hit double digits in age. Nowadays they are forced to go until they are much older, and teachers are forced to dumb down the curriculum so they can get rid of them. Just because you see them lingering around for longer in the school system doesn't mean the smart ones surrounding them are also dumber. If you think our society is getting dumber as a whole just because you have more technology at your disposal for a base to judge other people's intellect, then you need to take a step back and re-evaluate your position in life.

6/6/2007 6:39:35 PM

^^^^^Wow, calm down. I'm not anti-intellectual, I just need more applicable results than test scores and prime number expertise to think of him as a superhero.

6/6/2007 7:15:24 PM

I'll agree that keeping the stupid kids in school is a large part of the problem. I think school
should be more of a privilege and less of a requirement, this could be done in making the higher highschool grades competitive. That is if you don't do well then you don't go on. Similar systems help other countries excel in K-12 education.

probably the focus of the intellectual energy is different now then it was 100+ years ago. I mean
history, literature, that sort of thing had more emphasis and math/science had less, simply because
there was less of it to master. Of course nowadays the totality of knowledge is staggering in any subfield of math or science. So perhaps I misinterpret soceity as begin more literate/informed/ thinking merely because the intellectual energy was more focused on a few subjects which we no longer spend as much time on, instead we put more energy to math and science...

That said, I don't think that really explains the state of US-education. I blame public schools and
the teacher-union moderated mediocrity which continues to steal the future of so-many poor children who cannot afford to choose a fate different then the public school. Sure we are free to homeschool
etc... but its hardly a decent option if you don't have the resources to keep one parent home to teach. Vouchers could help this situation, but again the NEA stands in the way of giving us that freedom.

So to conclude this tangential rant (sorry 0EPII1 to vomit all over your thread)

Keeping the stupid kids in school with the kids actually interested in learning can have an
overall negative effect on the bright kids. There is not much point in studying when the
reward is being labeled a "nerd" of "geek" or whatever the popular term is these days.

If you don't think that the general populace is dumber than it should be then I don't know what
to say to you. If you think that it is just an illusion of technological introspection, why?

Please don't misunderstand me to say that the smart folks among us are less smart then the ancients. I tend to think that the academics have about the same ability as always. I mean to discuss the general average population, not the exception to the rule. (if you're still reading this
probably you are such an exception or really bored.)

6/7/2007 1:30:45 AM

He couldn't lick Euler's taint.

6/7/2007 1:36:37 AM

average or not, he's still mean

6/7/2007 8:23:30 PM

Quote :

"(sorry 0EPII1 to vomit all over your thread)"

Hey don't apologize.

If this thread can help people think about such issues, that's a good thing.

It just breaks my heart to see good bright kids labeled with horrible names by all the "cool" kids because the bright ones are interested in learning.

So many people on TWW have said that bright black kids who won awards at HS grauation were booed by all the other black kids. And while the problems is not so severe among Whites, it definitely is there.

I keep in touch with today's young as I am a teacher, and so is my mother, and my fiancee. So, I get to experience and hear all sorts of things.

And really, it is just horrible and disgusting the way kids behave these days. I really worry about the state of the world two generations from now.

As someone said, these asshole kids would have not gone to school a hundred years and done some kind of trade or whatever, and so, the kids who wanted to learn were spared the bullshit and the names from them. But now, they stay in school, and make everybody's lives horrible, including the students', the teachers', and the admin staff's.

The blame is on the parents.

I see it all the time. These parents are not fit to be parents. They don't spend any time at all with their kids, don't talk to them, don't encourage them to study, replace natural concern and affection with gifts of money, electronics, trips, etc, and think they are being proper parents.

I think a license should be give out for parenting, because these people are going to destroy the world soon.

Quote :

"average or not, he's still mean "

6/7/2007 8:33:15 PM

they only call you a nerd when you're young. later in life they call you "boss".

6/7/2007 9:48:47 PM

thought it was going to be about this guy:

6/8/2007 9:59:19 AM

Quote :

"I'll agree that keeping the stupid kids in school is a large part of the problem...."

I agree in general with what you're saying. However...

I think the single largest problem in American education is the underlying belief that every single child should go to college. The path to a high school diploma is geared to those continuing on to college. Vocational and technical classes are being scaled back and eliminated. I cringe everytime I hear politicians talk about making college more affordable, or more accessable, or providing more funding, or easing college loan requirements, etc--most of these promises are just naked pleas to a young voting demographic.

Not ever child should go to college, nor does every child want to attend college. Our educational focus needs to be on expanding and diversifying primary education to address the fact that not everyone wants to go to college. A solid, applicable primary education is key--with the proper groundwork laid from a young age, a child can really do whatever he wants, whether that be college, or a technical field, or construction, or whatever.

6/8/2007 10:32:55 AM

Not only are our high schools geared towards teaching everyone to go to college, but we also teach people to look down upon people that take up technical trades. A first class pipefitter or electrician has the potential to make a lot more money each year than someone with a humanities degree, and I know several first-class linemen that make equivalent take-home money as their engineering counterparts at the same company. Those people also didn't waste tens of thousands of dollars on an education to get to that point either, but society teaches us to look at those people as uneducated.

I think a big part of this stems from the fact that we require high school teachers to have a bachelor's degree in order to teach at a public school, and teachers tend to value themselves and their college education way too highly. To them, a blue collar worker in a technical field only has that job because he was too uneducated to attend a four-year university. Very few of them will ever admit to their students that trade skills are a great career option if you apply yourself to them and can enjoy them.

[Edited on June 8, 2007 at 5:35 PM. Reason : and we wonder why Hispanics are taking over our blue-collar labor force]

6/8/2007 5:34:28 PM

Quote :

"Age 16: Back into three mailboxes in neighborhood. Age 17: Takes up 3 parking spots and movie theater Age 19: Drives wrong way up exit ramp. Age 20: Solves prime number problem, drifts across four lanes of interstate traffic. Age 22: Causes 12-car pile up by driving slow in the left hand lane. Age 23: Plows Toyota Camry through front of Denny's"

GG. Hahahaha

Quote :

"I think the single largest problem in American education is the underlying belief that every single child should go to college."

Indeed. Different Paths need to be set. Taking the same classes a year or two later is not a different path.

6/9/2007 1:23:29 PM