Age & Improvement

[Polama]

He wasn't a professional mathematician though and knew when to bring one in to help him. I think people confuse this with him not being capable of doing the maths that got people to help him with, this wasn't the case it was just to be an expert in that area of mathematics he couldn't equally be an expert in theoretical physics due to there only being so many hours in a day.

My understanding is that as a young man he felt he could solve physical problems conceptually (special relativity), but reached an impasse he ended up needing help with (the complex mathematics of general relativity), and become a much more studious mathematician afterwards in his work towards a Unified Theory, having seen that these levels of problems did seem to require a deeper mathematical approach. He was certainly a competent mathematician at a minimum.

[Boidhre]

He wasn't a professional mathematician though and knew when to bring one in to help him. I think people confuse this with him not being capable of doing the maths that got people to help him with, this wasn't the case it was just to be an expert in that area of mathematics he couldn't equally be an expert in theoretical physics due to there only being so many hours in a day.

My understanding is that as a young man he felt he could solve physical problems conceptually (special relativity), but reached an impasse he ended up needing help with (the complex mathematics of general relativity), and become a much more studious mathematician afterwards in his work towards a Unified Theory, having seen that these levels of problems did seem to require a deeper mathematical approach. He was certainly a competent mathematician at a minimum.

I wasn't suggesting otherwise. What I've heard about him was that he could have easily become a professional mathematician, he just was more drawn to theoretical physics. It wasn't lack of ability but simple lack of expertise and the fastest way to remedy this kind of thing if you've got a good aptitude for mathematics is to bring in a mathematician familiar with the area to work with on certain sections.

[Bantari]

I think you people are mixing three different things in here:

1. It is obvious that if you aim at the very top the starting age does matter. All things being equal (dedication, effort, talent, teacher, etc) the extra 10 or so years of head start can have a tremendous influence. Thus - very few, if any, of the toppest pros started learning late.

2. For somebody wanting to just reach a low-level pro, I think it is possible to start late, but you have to work really hard. Not sure if there are examples of that out there, but I would not be surprised if there were. What age did Catalin start, for example? Or Alex? And can all his years playing in Europe as an ama be called 'starting'?

3. In our case of bumbling-along amateurs trying to get an extra rank on KGS - age is much less important, and starting age even less so. Why? Because the other factors (dedication, effort, talent, teacher, etc) are a much more limiting factor to our development.

As I said before - age limits two things:
- speed of learning and
- maximum potential

Since we never reach our maximum potential by far, the fact that it is lower does not matter all that much. The lower speed of learning means that you have to work that much harder. When you reach a level where you have to work that hard just to stay there, you start to deteriorate with age unless you put more and more effort. And even then it will catch up with you in time.

Just my 2c.

PS>
And what is this talk about Einstein? He was a Go pro too?!?

[HermanHiddema]

We all know the pictures of old Einstein. But E=Mc^2 was derived when he was 26. There are many similar examples.

And of course, Hendrik Lorentz's work was hugely influential to Einstein's development of relativity (The changes in size we perceive in a very fast moving object are described as Lorentz contractions because he formalized that before Einstein.) From Wikipedia, it appears he first published on 'local time' at age 39, published the lorentz transformations at 52, and reformulated general relativity in a coordinate free way at 63. There are many similar examples of great contributions at young ages, but there are also many examples of great contributions later in life.

In the context of the discussion, this is rather irrelevant. The issue is not age at which things were achieved, but starting age. In go, there are similar examples. E.g. both Cho Hun Hyun and Cho Chikun won the Samsung Cup in their late forties. Fujisawa Hideyuki even won the Oza several times in his late sixties. But all of these players started young.

[HermanHiddema]

What age did Catalin start, for example?

16.

Or Alex?

6.

[billywoods]

I still wonder why so many people in this thread seem to think this is true. An unwillingness to accept that they have limitations?

You're surely not ascribing hailthorn's being stuck at 6k to early-twenties dementia? Getting stuck at 4-5d, or if he was in his seventies, yes, maybe. But what I said was simply that I was limited by many other factors far more than my age. My age isn't what's holding me back from getting stronger right now - what's holding me back is that I play a casual game maybe once a fortnight, and instead sit here drinking green tea and posting on L19, working, in the pub, or spending my time on some other hobby or oversleeping.

The truth of the matter is that there are no examples of people making professional when starting in their twenties, no matter how much time they put in it.

Of course there are no examples of people who start in their 20s and make it. There are no examples of people who start in their 20s and then put in the requisite tens of thousands of hours with regular professional tuition studying like their future depended on it. 0 out of 0 is not an interesting statistic. That's my point: you can't statistically isolate the age factor. It's dwarfed by several other factors, like lack of time and interest and dedication.

[Bantari]

What age did Catalin start, for example?

16.

Or Alex?

6.

Start at what? Pro training? Or playing along with Go stones?

[HermanHiddema]

What age did Catalin start, for example?

16.

Or Alex?

6.

Start at what? Pro training? Or playing along with Go stones?

Playing.

[Bantari]

Start at what? Pro training? Or playing along with Go stones?

Playing.

Well, that means nothing much then, unless there is more. Playing and seriously training towards prohood might be two different things. I started at 14 or so (so before Catalin) and look at us now... I think its the time you start seriously training, like with teacher and stuff, that should matter here.

I think for most top pros we are not really interested in when they learned the rules of Go but when they started receiving proper training.

Same goes for violinists, if this is even related. The fact that you pick up a violin and start making noise at 6, but do not get a teacher until you are 27 - does not mean the same as training properly with a good teacher many hours a day since you were 6.

So... do you know when Catalin and Alex actually started proper training, whatever this means?

[jts]

G. H. Hardy, wrote in his 1940 memoir, A Mathematician’s Apology, “No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man’s game.”

We all know the pictures of old Einstein. But E=Mc^2 was derived when he was 26. There are many similar examples.

Do mathematicians gets stupid once they hit their 30's? No. But their most insightful, innovative days are behind them.

There is no reason to believe go is any different. And, all the real-world evidence says it isn't. Strong pros may stay strong into their 30's and well beyond, but they don't become strong in their 30's.

This is a bad week to be chucking around tired cliches like this, since Zhang Yitang just made waves for making progress on the twin primes conjecture. He must be at least 50, right?

[Polama]

In the context of the discussion, this is rather irrelevant. The issue is not age at which things were achieved, but starting age.

I chose Lorentz because of his connection to Einstein's work, but a quick search pulls up Alexandre Vandermonde as a mathematician who did important work and apparently started studying math at 35.

As I said before - age limits two things:
- speed of learning and
- maximum potential

I learned Chess in those hazy years before you can reliably pick out memories, probably 4. I played a reasonable amount and cared about improving to defeat my mother. I learned Go at the age of 25. A year and a half later I'm a better Go player than I am a chess player.

I met a very young mid-dan player once. But his father was a high dan amateur Korean player. How many of us taught the game by an expert and play exclusively with experts from our start?

Of course there are no examples of people who start in their 20s and make it. There are no examples of people who start in their 20s and then put in the requisite tens of thousands of hours with regular professional tuition studying like their future depended on it. 0 out of 0 is not an interesting statistic. That's my point: you can't statistically isolate the age factor. It's dwarfed by several other factors, like lack of time and interest and dedication.

That's my point as well. We have no theory of the brain sufficient to say "yes, you need to start as a young child to really excel". We've got no way to control people's lives enough to test this idea. We've got no good statistical way of approaching the question, because the confounding factors are huge. An 8 year old dedicating 10 years to becoming a go professional would fail in time to go to college with his peers. A 20 year old would be 30 with no degree, career experience or savings. The opportunity costs are so drastically different as to be sufficient to explain the difference on their own.

It could very well be true. My skepticism arises though, because 1) this is the sort of idea people love to believe (should I put long, hard hours into mastering the piano? Oh, I'm too old to be the best anyways, I'll just have fun.) 2) this is the sort of idea people love to tell each other (You're too old to be the a great piano player instead of 'you're just not that good at it') 3) This is the sort of idea that reinforces itself. If people believe only children can be great at Go, the great teachers aren't going to want to help the 15 year olds starting out. If you're told you can't do something enough, it becomes very hard to actually accomplish it.

[hyperpape]

http://senseis.xmp.net/?CatalinTaranu -- there are a couple of players who started in their late teens and made mid-range professional. I know of no 9 dan who started that late.

I think Catalin was rather obsessive soon after he started, and he made quick progress.

[Uberdude]

There's also [sl=KimSungRae]Kim Sung Rae[/sl] who, unusually for a native Korean, became pro in his 30s, though he had played as an amateur on-and-off since childhood.

[often]

Liang Wei Tang 9d once told me that being a competitive professional is better for a young person not because of "go strength", but the stamina to play many matches in one day (or days) for tournaments. He cited that as the main reason for older pros to bow out and start teaching unless they were at the very top.

[lemmata]

http://senseis.xmp.net/?CatalinTaranu -- there are a couple of players who started in their late teens and made mid-range professional. I know of no 9 dan who started that late.

I think Catalin was rather obsessive soon after he started, and he made quick progress.

Of the world title winners, Seo Bongsoo probably started the latest (~age 13). Lee Changho/Lee Sedol/Cho Hunhyun were already pros by the age that Seo started learning go. He had other problems, too: No money, no teacher, no books. It is said that he first got his hands on a copy Xuanxuan Qijing only after turning pro and remarked "What a wonderful book!" He didn't even have access to the classics. Then again, I get the feeling that he was a genius...although the prevailing narrative is that he was not.

I don't know of "normal" people who learned go later than that and won titles.

What about Sakai Hideyuki? He was a doctor (completed medical school and all) before turning pro although he was Fujisawa Shuko's student long before that. He may have started early for all I know, but he must have taken a huge break from go while he was in med school and while he was working.