'Smartest' TSRian?

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You can be smart enough to solve Fermat's Last Theorem, but if you can't cross a road without getting run over then you're not smart at all.

Disagree.
Anyone who has such great and rare abilities -- whatever their shortcomings -- surely is at least a little smart?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 61

Fullofsurprises

Original post by placenta medicae talpae

Is this sarcastic or something?
Do you know how much de Fermat and his last theorem were -- and still are -- talked about?

I was attempting an amusing witticism, which wasn't quite well crafted enough.

Reply 62

placenta medicae talpae

Original post by Fullofsurprises

I was attempting an amusing witticism, which wasn't quite well crafted enough.

Ooops, my mistake :colondollar:

Reply 63

Plantagenet Crown

Eier-von-satan is pretty brainy

Reply 64

username878045

Original post by Robbie242

Shut up, I got As in Maths Fmaths as well as in Economics and History for AS-level, I read the Economist fairly often and research historical events, and build my own opinions on past, present and future topics/issues in the world.

You're just full off butthurt I can sense it. Probably because you can't solve equations AND do this stuff together :rolleyes:

Butthurt mathematicians negged that person. :colone:

But she has a point; while the people mentioned on this thread for their superior subject knowledge are clearly intelligent, you can't reasonably say that they are more intelligent than other people. You'd have to see how they respond to various discussions outside their subject as well.

Everyone except me

LordofTheFlies

...

LOTF is amazing at maths

Felix Felicis

...

Felix is an amazing all rounder! :smile:

Reply 67

Fullofsurprises

Original post by placenta medicae talpae

Ooops, my mistake :colondollar:

That's OK! I don't really know what the fuss about Fermat's theorem is all about, but I'm glad it keeps mathematicians obsessively busy and tidily out of the way of regular people. << this is intended as a joke.

Reply 68

Kvothe the Arcane

Original post by SophiaKeuning

I love how people are bringing up the maths geniuses. Very telling. For some reason, I never think of maths when asked this question. Maybe it's because many of the people from my school who aced maths were diabolical at languages and essay based subjects, and never seemed to have anything interesting to say. I thought people would nominate the tsrian who writes the cleverest posts in actual discussion. Like that River dude and a few others I can't remember.. ('Cause I'm thick).

Personally, I think that intelligence has to do with approaching unknown problems/situations and applying previous knowledge t hat may not be exactly related to solve the problem.
Maths genii regularly have to do this for things like STEP which is probably why they're nominated. Me, on the other hand, I guess I'm fairly intelligent?

Reply 69

Arieisit

You haven't met me before :sexface:

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Reply 70

Arieisit

Original post by Felix Felicis

If you're good at something, you will tell people. If you're great at something, people will tell you. :wink:

Exactly!

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Reply 71

Razzamoly

Me!!!

...In another universe...maybe.

OT: The smartest person I've seen so far would be ukdragon, saviour of most people doing SQA maths :smile:

Since I don't frequent the A-Level forums, I'm not sure about anyone else.

Reply 72

Holby_fanatic

L'Evil Fish.

My Pysgod is a freaking genius!

Reply 73

username474976

Probably the_alba from what I've read about her university results.

Reply 74

roh

Original post by cambio wechsel

There are of course different ways of being smart and some people are witty while others impress on the maths forum.

The guy who is intelligent in the way I would like to be is nulli tertius. He is actually formidable.

Agreed, I feel like I've crafted almost an essay on some poltical point and it gets dismantled.

Also, his on paper academic achievements seem pretty incredible, from what I can tell he's got about 4 degrees from a range of top unis around thw world.

Reply 75

DavidYorkshireFTW

Mocking_Bird is stupidly good at Biology, but that's all I can judge as I don't really go on any other forums. :smile:

Reply 76

userna-me*

I got 100 UMS in C1. Come at me.

Reply 77

Admiral Bubbles

That Studentigcse lad has insane UMS scores

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Reply 78

Felix Felicis

Spoiler

Seriously, I don't get this. Everyone has their own ways of defining intelligence, I see absolutely no reason as to why one definition should be superior to another as this is largely a subjective thing. Why should who is the best debater have any more credence than who is the best mathematician as who is the more intelligent seeing as there is no objective definition.

I personally define intelligence as the ability to adapt quickly and effectively to new situations, to have the ability to use what you have in an ingenious way to adapt to your situation. Not who's the wittiest, not who's the best debater, not who has the highest maths UMS. But if you look, you can see that most of the people who have been defined as the 'smartest' TSRian will have this ability. The best debaters on here/ in real life are always able to adapt quickly to their situation, get their points across coherently and succinctly, debate their own points, refute their opponent's points, etc all spontaneously. The wittiest members on here e.g. cambio wechsel can just look at the title/ content of a thread and always think of something witty to say very quickly.

The same thing applies to maths. I immediately went to maths because it's "my" subject but I've seen the things some people on here can do and it is mind-blowing. No, I don't mean "hurr durr I have da highest UMZ", no, A level maths just consists of learning some material, doing a load of past papers and then sitting an exam where you have likely seen the format of the questions before a thousand times except with different numbers. No, that requires no ingenuity (usually) whatsoever (maybe for the lower modules anyway, I can't speak for the higher up modules like M4/5). Some of the maths problems that have been posted on TSR though recently (for example on The proof is trivial) that have often left me and many users scratching their heads, they require an extortionate amount of ingenuity to solve, often only requiring only A level knowledge but applying it in such an ingenious, such a creative way, the solutions are 'beautiful' (hence why it's consistent to my definition of intelligence above imo). How can you just dismiss that and not acknowledge that as at least one form of intelligence?

Edit: on the topic of who is the 'smartest' TSRian overall though, I agree, just looking at a single aspect is nonsensical and a whole variety of things would need to be taken into account e.g. how much they excel in their academic subject, world-awareness, consistently making brilliant, useful posts, etc.