[strken]

Great, I'll get on the phone to the local special school and let them know their non-verbal autistic students with IQs in the 50 to 60 range are to be enrolled in manifold theory next semester, and if they can't do it then badosu says it's all their fault because anybody can learn maths.

[badosu]

You are being disingenuous. Of course people with disabilities or severely deficient in cognition have innate difficulties that might hamper or completely preclude the development of mathematical skills.

The main point is that the educational environment most people have to deal with: public school in most countries, focused on rote memorization of formulas for passing tests, is the main factor on the incredibly inefficient and adversarial perception of most students and adults.

If you are able to understand something as "basic" as higher order effects in economics and societies, accrued from an understanding of rates of change from calculus, you are of course extremely privileged. On the other hand you are not some gifted unicorn with a special brain, you are just lucky (exceptions exist, but even they have to be somewhat lucky).

[Edit: grammar, ambiguity]

[strken]

I'll defer to the research[0], but I believe mathematical attainment is correlated primarily with IQ and mostly only correlated with maths anxiety, wealth, etc. to the extent that those things are proxies for IQ.

It's cruel to tell students that everyone can learn maths. Neither "everyone" nor "maths" is strictly true, you know it's not true, and most of the students also know it's not true. If you just told them "everyone in the class can improve" then it would be correct and uplifting!

Terrence Tao is a gifted unicorn with a special brain and this makes him lucky, as does his excellent education. Everything is luck when you look at it from enough of a distance.

[0] For example, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11532492/

[badosu]

I am fine with the research results, it's important to note that it does not control for pedagogical variance. [Edit: I'd like refer to the last 2 paragraphs on the Discussion section to point out other issues in the paper the author acknowledges]

One speculation I'd be fine to make would be that high IQ could be associated with survival bias, e.g. someone who is already quite adept at identifying patterns might be able to derive meaning from structures without requiring the motivation that compounds over time for others "less gifted". But I am happy to accept it's just a very convenient speculation.

Sure, Terence Tao might be a gifted unicorn with a special brain, he had of course the circumstance and means to have his potential thoroughly leveraged. Maybe someone "gifted" that is forced to memorize the quadratic formula to pass a test gets bored (but not gifted or motivated enough to complete the square on their own).

Edit: I agree with the rigor on "everyone" and "maths" (not everyone, not all maths), I hoped we had shared context on this basic assumption (which I expected to be a frivolous pedantism, I stand corrected nevertheless). I also appreciate the point about cruelty (which, in the schooling context, I believe goes beyond just our specific topic) but this textbox is too small to contain my wonderful argument.

[remarkEon]

>it does not control for pedagogical variance

This it total gibberish. No one cares about this sort of academic correction for observed outcomes. "Hmm some kids are continuously scoring better on math exams. Our pedagogy must be wrong! We must teach better." In reality math teachers who are good are extremely rare because people who are good at math tend to not be teachers.

[badosu]

I mean, we have good evidence that "New Math" pedagogical approach in the 70s was very ineffective compared to traditional learning by example, memorizing multiplication tables at younger ages. Would you say that is "gibberish" as well?

> In reality math teachers who are good are extremely rare because people who are good at math tend to not be teachers.

It's hard to take your argument seriously when your own sentence corroborates what I'm trying to convey.