(I’m unique, therefore, statistically, I don’t exist)

It is not an either/or situation: Clearly hard work is necessary, and trying out different approaches is necessary. But you occasionally meet someone whose ability to attack from a variety of unexpected angles blows you away. This is not something that hard work, alone, can provide.

Aside from Feynman, I also knew a rather more obscure individual. I recall posing a question to him, concerning the existence and nature of a function f(x), that would satisfy f(f(x)) = exp(x). He immediately seized on this question and started thinking out loud; in 15 minutes he got further with it than I had in a day. The next day, I asked for a review of his first 15-minute presentation, which he covered in 5 minutes; and then proceeded to think out loud for another 15-minutes. The third day, I asked for a review of the first two days, which he covered in 5 minutes and then proceeded to go on for another 15 minutes. I gave up trying to follow him, at this point.

In this particular case, I knew that this individual actually had less mathematical background, at that time, than I did, and had never thought about the problem before. In fact, the steps that he took initially were not so different from what I was thinking about, but he took them much faster and kept going and going. He was clearly out-classing me on this topic.

In my interactions with Feynman, it was like that all the time; except that the range and variety of steps that he would consider were wilder. Actually, it wasn’t discouraging, it was liberating: It was as if he were giving “permission to play”.

I have met other great physicists, but not anyone who practically sparkled with ideas like that.

Thanks to a suggestion from a friend (who later became my wife), I turned to linguistics, then cognitive science, in which I’m now about a year away from a PhD (and there’ve been all kinds of crummy grades on the transcript along the way).

And, not that I want to contribute to the cult, but why is von Neumann not mentioned anywhere in the comments? He gets my vote as smartest man of the XXth century (he certainly made significant contributions to more fields than anyone else!).

so if you want to achieve something,just do it. if you want to be a genius, sorry, that’s been opted out when you were born.

I was one of those people who would label themselves as “bad at math.” In highschool, I failed grade 11 applied math (that’s Canadian jargon for dumbed-down math), and spent most of my time doing drugs and drinking.

Long story short: 2 years after graduating, I decided to apply for University for Literature & Creative Writing.

For some strange reason, some six months prior to this I had picked up a copy of Feynman, I really don’t know why… and was pleasantly surprised to find out that not only was this stuff interesting, but I “kinda got it”.

I picked up a book on precalculus to understand the math a bit better. And at first it was pretty tough, my brain having never dealt with math… I could smell the rubber burning.

Anyway, I decided I like this stuff enough to apply for physics. The school told me I needed grade 12 academic math (duh). I told them I had graduated from highschool two years ago and didn’t take it, but that I’d been learning it on my own… they would have none of it (duh #2).

Two months before entering university, I signed up for summer school grade 12 functions, the prerequisite for 1st year university math classes, and passed with a 98%. In university, as my two options I signed up for linear algebra and calculus, both of which I passed with B+ (I got A’s on most of my later tests, but for the first half of the classes I was pretty lost, having never taken a real math class before, so the early tests brought down my average a bit).

Anyway, I re-applied for a double major in creative writing and physics, which I should start next year.

So yea, it’s equally bad to label someone as “bad at math” early on, because I feel like I’ve wasted the first 19 years on my life thinking I was not good enough for something that I love. This semester I’m takning integral calc, and I picked up a copy of Hardy’s “course of pure mathematics,” and enjoying both, which is not bad for a druggie who failed grade 11 applied math.

Another interesting article that you can be interested in reading is this one: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm (The Bipolar Lisp Programmer). I talks about the same kind of psychological problem that we are talking about here, and it’s an interesting read, even for non-programmers.

Best regards,

Hernán