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March 25, 2011

I Hate Him Already

Just how smart is too smart? This is just about as close as you can get:

A 12-year-old child prodigy has astounded university professors after grppling with some of the most advanced concepts in mathematics.

Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170 - higher than Albert Einstein - and is now so far advanced in his Indiana university studies that professors are lining him up for a PHD research role.

The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week, is now tutoring fellow college classmates after hours.

This scary and embarassing. Just how much does a 12 year old know, no matter how smart he is? And do I want him telling me how he thinks the universe was formed by cobbing together a formula?

Jake was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, a mild form of autism, from an early age.

His parents were worried when he didn't talk until the age of two, suspecting he was educationally abnormal.

It was only as he began to grow up that they realised just how special his gift was.
He would fill up note pads of paper with drawings of complex geometrical shapes and calculations, before picking up felt tip pens and writing equations on windows.

By the age of three he was solving 5,000-piece puzzles and he even studied a state road map, reciting every highway and license plate prefix from memory.

By the age of eight he had left high school and was attending Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis advanced astrophysics classes.

There are those who maintain that an IQ test measures nothing more than your ability to take an IQ test. But still, this is one smart kid.

10 comments:

tha malcontent said...

Smart Kid.

Anonymous said...

Let's see him program my DVD/VCR.

T. F. Stern said...

Wow, hope he has good people around to help him enjoy life in a balanced way instead of "leeching" off his abilities.

sig94 said...

Mal - Stephen Hawking better watch his six.

sig94 said...

Nickie - this kid may be a bitter clinger to an old #2.

sig94 said...

TFS - and those abilities appear to be profound.

Heck, he's only 12, we'll see what happens with this young fella. Maybe he'll hit puberty and turn stupid like I did. Abandoned my promising studies in nuclear physics and became a stud instead. I was dashed, dashed I tell you when I found out that 3D was years away. I had the socks and the mask down pat.

Kid said...

Jacob, Don't stop man! Figure out how to defeat these evil liberals. TIA.

PS - I believe that last 'k' needs to be k squared, cubed, and put on the grill for a few minute until golden brown.

fwiw

Doom said...

I would be careful about considering his condition enviable. For a sci-fi example which explored that to a degree, consider Data from Star Trek: Next Generation. I have dabbled with stoicism, not my cup of tea. But this is so far beyond that even. His mind works fine but his life will be scripted by others, like a blind man in some ways. Just... a thought.

sig94 said...

Doom - Right now, yes, his life is definitely scripted by others. But so were we all at his age. Anyone who is head and shoulders above everyone else to the extent that he is - is not to be envied, pitied perhaps and eventually feared by some, but not envied.

God has saw fit to bestow upon him a gift that few, perhaps one in a generation or two, possess.
He will struggle with this gift as he matures and realizes how difficult it can be to deal with with us lesser beings, particularly as he seeks a peer or a bride.

There is a man in my office who is almost 7 feet tall. Nice guy, but I wouldn't want to be that tall.

Doom said...

The first trick he will have to learn, if he is able, is that intelligence, like height, does not confer superiority. My guess is his handlers are not the best at leading him there, academe that is. But, yes, amazing. I am only a bit jealous as calc is messy and it would have been nice to get an easier handle on that. Then again, I think self teaching, if motivated or disinterested in the rest of life, might actually be easier. Schools, engineering schools, mean to try and make you hate the topic.