Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] from prodigy to genius?

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Mike Miller wrote:

> Of course it is true that most Nobelists were not famously brilliant as
> kids, but most of them, I'll bet, were really smart kids.

Right.  You can't get lucky enough to win a Nobel without being
smart enough to have gotten into the right place at the right time.  
And the smarter you are, the better.  But I'm not sure that the
difference is as large between (say) 3 standard deviations above the
mean and 5 as it is between 1 and 3.  In the state of Missouri,
there should be about 6000 individuals with in IQ that is 3 or more
standard deviations above the mean, and about 6 million such people
world wide...  Scritch, scratch, okay: I compute the raw odds of any
such really bright person winning a Nobel in non-Literature or Peace
at about 1/10,000.  The odds are much lower if you don't go into the
right science (mathematicians are immune, for example), and rather
better if you choose Econ.

> By the way, one more thing about Mullis -- he was very slow to publish his
> result and someone else had to write it up for him.  He was more into
> video games.  He was also into surfing, doing acid, and sexually
> propositioning every female reporter who interviewed him -- a very
> eccentric guy!

A bit too eccentric, I'm afraid.  He was (/is?) an HIV causes AIDS 
doubter based on one of those "possible but not very likely" chains 
of reasoning that can be used to attempt to refute almost anything.

jking


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