My Very Smart Daughter

I think Achel was about 4 or 5 years old when I noticed her 'smart' trick to select the right answer for a question.

I was watching her one day, she was answering questions in one of the page of her workbook that her mum bought somewhere. It was an objective question. She read the question properly, and the way she pick the answer was by the method of 'elimination'. She picked out the answers which was totally unrelated to the question. She picked three that are off and circle the remaining. Surprisingly she seems to be not bothered to check if the answer that she circled was the right answer or not for she was so sure that when the three wrong answers are eliminated, the correct answer must be the one left. Remember, ordinary people answer question in such way that they seek the 'correct' answer from all the possible answers.

This technique is used a lot here in UK, by a group of people that called themselves The Eggheads. This group are the quizmasters who have already won millions in a big time quiz competitions. All they do was to eliminate the answers that are off, and figure out the correct answer from the remaining options.

Not may people have the skill to do that. But the skill being mastered by a little kid, is certainly baffles me.

I never get the answer for this question...

How Random is Random?

If there are 100 idiots in a room and you are asked to Randomly pick one idiot. How random is your pick out of just 100 idiots?

Help me, somebody. I have been thinking about this for the past quarter of a decade now and I still have'nt got a clue.

Crappy Genius

I was watching TV the other night. It happened to be a documentary about geniuses around the world. And there was one in Malaysia. His name is Adi Putra. I said to my self 'whaaa' when my home country was mentioned. What do you know... there is genius in country after all.

So I watch with so much curiosity. Never heard them before you see.

But, sad to tell, I was pretty dissapointed with this so called genius from Malaysia. For one thing, he is not showing any typical sign of being 'genius', let alone being a prodigy. While all geniuses think of problems of unspoken complexity and beyond current knowledge, this boy was using old age mathematical technique to solve mathematics. Err... sorry, not mathematics... calculation. The interviewer asked him what he foresee that is going to happen in the future. He said he knows that everybody will eventually be dead. Daaaaaa.... Even my dog can answer that simple. No obvious abnormal brain activity in this boy. Genius of prodigy somehow exhibit weird behavior such as obsession in something, liking in something off his or her age, ability to communicate something beyond our thinking, love mathematics but no solving mathematics. Rather analyzing the mathematics.

I got a little further. I dig the story behind this kid's life. In my opinion, he is just an ordinary kid, taught some mathematical tricks and get publicized. There is no Art, Physics, Chess, Chemistry, Biology, Literature, Astronomy... none of these are related to him. Geniuses, though not taught or shown, are able to find these knowledge. This Adi Putra certainly has none.

I know how a prodigy are because I have felt it before.

Hm, world... anything can happen.