What would be the best environment, diet, and hobbies to raise a mathematician? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
The best environment to raise anyone in is a healthy, loving, caring, and stimulating one. Children have interests and inclinations, and the best thing we can do is help them find what these are, and gently push them to learn and explore them. We should also expose them to as many interesting things as we can, to improve the chances that they find something they truly enjoy and love.
Mathematics is a fine thing to expose a child to, in various ways, at different ages. Some will quickly develop a keen interest in it. Others won’t. And that's ok. If your goal is to “raise a mathematician” and your child doesn’t seem interested, you won’t raise a mathematician. Or maybe you will if your child discovers math in college. That isn't exactly up to you. You can expand their horizons, but you can’t set their path.
If you have a child that’s genuinely interested in mathematics, or if you wonder if they are and wish to give it a shot, there’s plenty of books, websites, and activities to help with that. Which one is suitable for them depends on too many things, and I can’t write down a full list that would cover every scenario. Consider books by Martin Gardner, the wWebsite AoPS, any Math Circles in your area, or games like Set, Tangram, and Castle Logix,. Should a teacher or tutor who know what they’re doing, and of course, if you live in San Francisco, and you’re certain your child truly loves math, Proof School.
Kids who love math hardly ever love only math and are often led to discover math through other activities. Try physics, playing a musical instrument, programming, astronomy, language games, robotics, sports stats, science fiction, or anything you have access to that a child may get hooked on. If love or curiosity of math comes out of it, excellent; if not, that's okay as well.
The best diet to raise anyone with is a healthy, balanced nutrition that’s mostly real food, and has plenty of plants. I’m not aware of any diet that would promote a child becoming a mathematician, and I seriously doubt there is one.
I would cautiously venture that there’s little to no commonality between the childhood or adult eating habits of world-class mathematicians likeMaryam Mirzakhani, Ngô Bảo Châu,Vaughn Jones,Alexander Grothendieck, andRobert Aumann.
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