IQ (moved subtopic)

Oh I'm well aware of the 42 thing lol I thought it was a slightly back-handed compliment to keep you out of the 145+ club 😀

I'm lower than rickroll? Oof. 😀

I, for one, would like Sklansky to tell us what he thinks his own IQ is.

in that case i think we're just learning friendship power rankings 😀

Ikr, that dumbass didn't even get my joke. If I were you, I'd file a grievance.

in all seriousness though, at the risk of doing a chezlaw impersonation, it's obviously pretty high and i would be very surprised if he were never formally tested

Meh, I think Sklansky has done a pretty good job of persuading the gullible that he is some sort of savant. At least when it comes to topics I know a little bit about, like maths, he's nowhere near as good as he thinks he is.

What logical flaw did I make re Bear Bryant?

My point was that Luciom's comment, as written, could be interpreted as extending to outright fraud. I wasn't equating poker with investing with Madoff.

I don't remember the other thing you mentioned.

I think that there is a decent chance that DS has taken a dozen or more IQ tests.

Forum shopping.

I think he said there weren’t 5 HS students in NY state who could beat him on a Putnam, which he hasn’t ever taken. But based on talking to him about logic 101 type stuff….yeah no way that’s remotely possible.

The guy barely understands the concept of series convergence, he admitted himself he only knows how to sum geometric series. I very much doubt he understands e.g. the epsilon-delta definition of a limit. He isn't beating too many HS students who are decent at maths on a basic calc test, lol Putnam. Saying stuff like that is exactly what makes him sound like a total clown.

None of the things I mentioned were pure logic errors. The Madoff analogy was poor because it gave Luciom the out where he could claim not to be talking about illegal stuff. The better analogy would be something like selling psychic readings. But I really can't elaborate any further. It wouldn't be fair to the others.

Will you let others elaborate?

The thing with a Putnam is you could not know that and still do really well if you’re gifted. But that level of talent would be pretty apparent to a trained mathematician.

I've not seen Putnam questions, I always thought there was a lot of stuff like using creative tricks to find the sum of a series, or a difficult integral, or non-linear Diophantine equation and modular arithmetic type stuff, no?

Yeah. Clever tricks combinatorial reasoning, symmetry arguments. And Meta test talking strategy. Like you know no question should ever talk much more than a couple hours so if you’re doing a computation that will take you 4 days to finish, you’re not doing it right.

I never said that. The only thing I ever said was that my 17 year old self could beat 98% of math Phds in the time it would take me to get a perfect score on the math aptitude section of the SAT or GRE. (about 20 minutes for the 90 question test.) How that would extrapolate to skill in college math is a matter of conjecture.

I think that you missed the point that my reference to Madoff was not an analogy to anything (which may be my fault).

I don't understand what this means, but you obviously have no obligation to elaborate on anything that you don't want to elaborate on.

Like I said, he can do geometric series, and he managed to find the sum of n/2^n using a trick he gave some cute name but which essentially came down to rewriting it as a double sum, both of which are geometric series. He's not calculating zeta(2) any time soon.

Apologies, it was Jersey

The chances of there not being 5 High School seniors in Jersey that could get a 5 or better on a Putnam is 0%. The chances for you getting a 0 are probably grater than 75%.

You laugh, but an enormous number of marks have fallen for his shtick. Just pompously assert how brilliant you are over and over again and low-info people will fall for it, which explains a lot about the success of Donald Trump.

guys, i don't think it's fair to view cognitive abilities in retirement vs what the person was capable of in their prime - this is not to say anyone here has gone full biden, but my parents are same age as him and not half as sharp as they used to be and the difference is quite stark

it's also very hard to base much off posting style, you gotta remember for a very long time he was king of the castle here so that's obviously going to influence posting style whereas we all had to learn how to post in effective manners, he never did - he was the owner of the site, the one who wrote the books we all read, his qualifications were apparent from day one whereas we all had to learn to build up that reputation over time posting anonymously with our goofy usernames

and hate him or love him, you do need to recognize that he was a major pioneer of what we all now take for granted and that speaks volumes about what he was doing back in the day

at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, this reminds me how none of the scientists went to bat for einstein to be part of the manhattan project despite that it was his letter to the president urging them to start the program which is why it began because by that time at 60 he was considered an over the hill loon largely because he never got onboard with quantum theory but then later his name grew to become synonymous with genius despite that his peers a generation below him refused to work with him because they thought he lost his touch

and besides, he very presciently pointed out me>roc so obviously still got plenty left in the tank 😀