I thought that I was gifted, but in retrospect, maybe I wasn't. I couldn't play any games well; not the physical ones, not computer games, not card or board games. The other kids would get them fast, while I was always dumbfounded and it took me a long time to grasp the rules. Once, it became popular to play Warcraft in my circle of friends and, try hard as I may, I was the rag they mopped the floor with :-) . But math, physics and computer sciences were another story, because growing up I didn't have anything more interesting to do than reading and solving exercises from old soviet textbooks. So, I think I wasn't gifted, or just gifted by serendipity.
You might have certain targeted deficiencies that make processing those things well difficult. Like I have a hard time finding things in visual space, so I'm not good at jigsaw puzzles. I have slower reaction times & processing speeds also which makes me not as good at video games as I should be combined with the visual space deficiencies. When a shit ton of stuff is happening on screen I lose my place, while others might be able to manage it.
But I also show an ability to think and learn deeply and score very well on symbolic and verbal intelligence, I also connect the dots very well and show a lot of skip thinking behavior. I call my brain a high torque, low RPM engine.
Also you might not like anything that is 'competitive', so your brain shuts down in avoidance / disinterest. Or you might think deeply about everything, so it always takes you a while at first, but once you grasp it you grasp it at a deep level unlike others.
Things improve with practice though, at least they did for me. I largely sucked at action video games as a kid, I also didn’t have interest probably because I wasn’t good. I took to learning musical instruments and now in my 40s I accidentally found Im pretty good at videogames, much much better than when I was young. Coincidentally I got better at sports as well.
This reminds me of how a lot of top video game speedrunners (e.g. Portal) are professional musicians because they are very good with accurate timings lol
There's also some anecdata floating around in the -- what would you call it, the "competitive speed typing" community? Or "people who play TypeRacer a lot". Some seemingly significant correlation between skill in typing and piano. Or at least the appearance of skilled typists having some interest or experience in piano. This could probably be generalized to being good at fingering or timing, or maybe even further, to having effective mindsets or attitudes regarding performance of skills (like the need for a presumptive confidence of sorts), or being aware of good practice methods.
I accept your hypothesis, but allow me to suggest an alternative hypothesis for you to consider (and maybe reject after consideration).
I am in my late 40s. Modern videogames are a great deal easier than games I played as a child. I tried playing a few games from my mispent youth recently, and was absolutely amazed at just how much harder they were.
Hmm, this rings some bells for some people I know. Did you learn about those deficiencies and proficiencies in a systematic way or through experience? Any resources you'd suggest for thinking more deeply about these things?
Gifted/high IQ/whatever is not a blanket pass to excel. We'll suck at a lot of things, we're subject to plenty of the same mental illnesses and struggles, etc.
Gifted education is intended to address the needs of the students beyond what can be provided in a standard classroom. That's not just more worksheets or harder textbooks; it should also cover students who are able to coast through the advanced classes and make sure they know that they, like every other human, won't have everything easy. A lot of school programs have missed the mark and a lot will, but education is a process of improvement. Many of the teachers today are doing better for the kids because of the lessons learned from our teachers.
Special education (including gifted education) isn't legally mandated in schools to make the students prove they're eligible for the label. If you got value out of the program, it was meant for you.
Why do you think that after “no child left behind” the situation is better for talented kids? IMO the situation is much much worse. Many gifted programs are being eliminated and all classes are being slowed down to accommodate the bottom 33%. Even slightly above average kids are going to feel like 2 standard deviation genius doing basic school work because compared to the curriculum they are.
> Even slightly above average kids are going to feel like 2 standard deviation genius doing basic school work because compared to the curriculum they are.
They'll be treated like geniuses too. I used to get treated like one because of my incredible ability to plug numbers into formulas and write down the answers that came out in a piece of paper. I simply did not understand how people could possibly have any problem with it. I found it so dull I ended up in a computers course where I learned to automate that kind of human computer nonsense away forever.
They treated me like a genius for working out some basic math, and the truth is I suck at math. I actually like math, but I suck at it. I used to get away with never needing to do homework as a kid. As a result I never developed the discipline necessary to hone math skills. Now I want to learn something interesting like queueing theory but I barely understand the papers and articles because I'm missing numerous prerequisites.
Your post seems contradictory in that you could plug numbers into formulas and get answers. Isn’t that a fundamental skill? Is there an implied value in understanding the formula and how to apply it via math to obtain a correct answer?
The question then is how did you develop the ability.
Symbolic manipulation and intuitive understanding doesn't seem to be very correlated to me. I've met people who are very good at manipulating symbols, but they aren't very good at understanding less formal things like strategy games well, they tend to invent way too rigid rules for themselves and lose since they are bad at adapting.
So maybe you are very smart with symbols, but less so with intuitive understanding? There is nothing wrong with that, makes it easier to decide what to work on, focus on your strengths and let others cover for your weaknesses.
So when I was in the gifted program, they got real concerned about how I didn't know my times tables and was super slow at a few of them. This was the 1970s, and before I knew binary, so 7s and 8s caused me issues. So I'd figure out 8x8 by going from 6x6=36 (real easy to memorize) and then adding +6+6 to mentally fill out the 8x6 block and then adding +8+8 to fill it out to a 8x8 block (I'm visual/geometrical).
I was the first kid in school to pass the AHSME to get invited to take the AIME though. Being before the internet, and being stuck on an island in Alaska, didn't get me enough exposure to higher math through my own self-direction to get anywhere on the AIME. If you don't live anywhere near a University library and/or don't know you can use it, that'll set you behind (at least back then, these days there's YouTube and sci-hub and friends).
I still think I would have hit a wall anyway with Math, even with perfect exposure, because I'm visual and higher Math seems to require being very good with symbols and memory as well.
I suspect lots of people still underestimate me because my memory is ass, and we associate memory with intelligence so much (e.g. Jeopardy).
I used to believe that I was good at math because my memory was shit. So I had to actually understand everything, because I couldn't rely on memorizing it.
But some random facts were easy to memorize, for example that the chessboard has 64 fields. I had problems with 6×9 and 7×8 though, always confused about which one was 54 and which one was 56.
I can't tell you what 6x9 is. But I can tell you what 9x6 is. I always turn that one around. My mind immediately jumps to a visual 60 coz 10x6 is super easy of course and subtracting 6 from it is easily 54.
Similarly 8x7 I can't tell you but 7x8=56 in my brain feels like a little "rhyme" I just need to repeat and I have the answer.
That's also how I remember (somewhat) arbitrary passwords. If it "flows" well almost like a rhyme and can be typed fluently I'll remember. Actual arbitrary ones don't work as well.
Yeah, after a while I also learned that 9x6 = 10x6 - 6 = 54.
And then I just remembered that 7x8 is "that other difficult number", because by that time I already remembered that 54 and 56 are the two most difficult numbers in the multiplication table. :)
Btw, same here, 9x6 and 7x8 feels much more natural than the other way round.
So, fun fact from calculus (though you can easily prove this with basic algebra as I do below):
- You want to compare two products: in this case 6x9 and 7x8.
- And in each product, if you add the two numbers together, you get the same result. In this case, 6+9 = 7+8.
Then the product will be larger for the pair of numbers that are closer together. So 7x8 > 6x9. That might help you remember which is 56 and which is 54.
You typically see this in a word problem where you are given a fixed amount of fence and you have to enclose the largest rectangular area. The answer is to use a square area (two sides being equal). If the problem has constraints that prevent the sides from being equal, then you pick the length and width to be as close to each other as possible.
In case you want to transfer the geometric intuition to an algebraic proof: If the sum of the two side lengths is 2m, then the two side lengths can be written as (m+n) and (m-n) for some positive n. If you multiply the two, you get (m+n)(m-n) = m²-n². To maximize the product, you need n to be as close to 0 as possible - i.e. for both sides to be as close to each other as possible.
Oh! So that’s why my teachers made us memorize row by row: For me 54 and 56 are in an entirely different category (resp the 6 and 8 categories), didn’t even realize they landed in the same dozen when learning my tables!
Roguelikes like Nethack/Slashem/Dungeon Crawl Stone Stoup and strategy/RPG games such as Liberal Crime Squad or Battle for Wesnoth would be easier for you.
