Curse of the Gifted: Personal Account

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x 6 = 9." Basic algebraic problem-solving says you subtract the 6 from both sides, then divide by 3. So "3...

 Intelligence in Animals, Humans and Machines

To build software that is deemed intelligent, it’s helpful to begin with a definition of intelligence. Intelligence can be simply defined as a set of properties of the mind. These properties include the ability to plan, solve problems, and in general, reason. A simpler definition could be that intelligence is the ability to make the right decision given a set of inputs and a variety of possible actions. Using this simple definition of intelligence (making the right decision), we can apply ...

 Spelling is the Problem

Now let me get to a lower level still in this question. And that is, all the time you hear the question, "why can't Johnny read?" And the answer is, because of the spelling. The Phoenicians, 2000, more, 3000, 4000 years ago, somewhere around there, were able to figure out from their language a scheme of describing the sounds with symbols. It was very simple. Each sound had a corresponding symbol, and each symbol, a corresponding sound. So that when you could see what the symbols' sounds w...