Eight-year-old physics genius enters university

Korea Herald ^ | 2005-11-05 | Hwang Si-young

[operation clinton cleanup]

I would never trust anyone who taught stastics! :)

[Bon mots]

Had a stastics class where the instructor tried to prove that 2+2=5...

You know... there are three kinds of lies:

1. Lies
2. Damned lies
3. Statistics

But seriously, university level stats are nothing to joke about... they can be confusing, and leading people into confusing territory is a good way to lie to them. Statistics do not really lie...

[RightWhale]

You cannot really hold a genius back.

Sure you can. Happens every day. Ask anybody who has joined Mensa, even the ones who have experienced great success.

[sine_nomine]

Yes that happened to me.

[sparkomatic]

I had a discreet mathematics professor that proved to us that he was god. I forget how he did it; I remember being unimpressed and stuck to the notion that there is only one God and he wasn't it.

BTW, I don't mean to imply that the professor was discreet, only that the math was discreet and that he was the professor of such.

[dalereed]

"Statistics do not really lie"

They do when you choose which ones you use and disregard any that disprove your lie.

[Atlas Sneezed]

"Once we took Yoo-geun to a zoo. There he was looking at animals for four and a half hours straight. It was when he was three or four years old."

---

This had me scratching my head. Isn't looking at animals for several hours exactly what children are expected to do at the zoo?

[kenth]

Yeah, but you should've seen the way he was looking at them.



No, I don't know what that means.

[ConvienentCharade]

Poor Kid will probably burn out at 14.

[billybudd]

Yoo-geun's dream is to make flying cars, based on the superstring theory

What the heck does building flying cars have to do with superstring theory? Sounds like some reporterspeak gee-wiz retardification.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

If this is out of North Korea...how do we know that this is nothing but a CON job?

[rock58seg]

You were in the wrong class. It's accounting where you learn 2+2= 5.

[Melas]

Golf is a poor example. Golf doesn't define who we are, but intelligence really does. Who we are is all tied up in how we think. Very few people are able to socialize well with intellectual inferiors. It's extremely frustating for everyone involved. That's why people tend to seek out like minded individuals socially.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Math is "discrete". People are "discreet". ;^)

[Altair333]

Remeber that annoying "Sasha" kid prodigy who did game shows in the 80s? Wonder what became of him- anyone recall his last name?

[JohnBovenmyer]

If this is out of North Korea...

>>freshman at the Physics Department of Inha University in Incheon, west of Seoul...

South Korea

[Netheron]

I was a math/physics geek when I was a kid. Took Calculus at 13 and university Mathematics throughout High-School.

The hardest thing to teach a child genius, and the thing that they most need to know, is that excellence in one field does not translate into excellence in another. The same mental skills that you are using in your area of expertise will not necessarily translate to other skills which will be necessary as an adult.

Unfortunately, the best way to teach them this is to drive them hard at their area of aptitude. The expectations have to be high enough that they occasionally stumble and their imperfections are made obvious. At that point, it is much easier to point out the values of emotional control, social skills, time management, etc.

In addition, they need to be put in continuous contact with well balanced adults who have 'been there' when they were kids. Having someone like that in their life will give them a proper sense of perspective on life. They can also begin to pick up their emotional habits through osmosis.

Frankly the trouble isn't getting along with the other kids, that's overrated. The difficulty is finding good adult role models who have the right perspective on their gifts but who can guide them to be well-balanced adults.

Someone also needs to inform this kid that while Non-Newtonian propulsion MAY be made possible by super-string theory, there is a rather large engineering hurdle to cross as well? Someone should find a good commercial use for Electroweak theory first.

[skr]

Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

[tet68]

Flying car bump!

[sourcery]

I'd prefer that young Song work on AI and nanotechnology. Both are clearly the keys to get to the "next level."

Ref: Staring Into The Singularity