I was never particularly good at math. At least not once I got past algebra and geometry. So it is difficult for me to imagine a mind that is “brilliant” at it. In fact brilliant minds in and of themselves are rather mysterious to those of us that fall somewhere in the middle of the bell shaped curve. What then must it actually be like to have this “natural” facility at something? How is the brain wired differently in order to attain it? And why are particular brains always the exception to the rule here?
What makes it all that way?
This is basically one of those [more or less] true stories in which the way most of us will struggle to grasp “higher mathematics”, Nathan struggles to grasp everything else. The parts that we have more or less pinned down. On the other hand, there are any number of us with considerably less than brilliant minds that will succumb to disciplines like mathematics. And precisely because unlike so many other aspects of our lives, here we can live in the world of either/or.
Nathan is also prone to be really honest with others. To a fault you might say. Others can’t figure out why he doesn’t seem to give a shit about their feelings. In turn, he takes almost everything you say literally. In other words, he often doesn’t get the parts where you are only being ironic…or when you are only joking around.
Even as a young child Nathan was…different. In fact up to a point he reminds you a lot of Temple Grandin. He liked “patterns”.
And the relationship with his mom is rather fascinating to “figure out”. He seemed considerably closer to his dad [before he died]. Was that because he “loved” him more, or because his father knew how to more effectively “fit into” Nathan’s unique frame of mind. And how to make him laugh. Something he almost never does around anyone else. Or was it more that his father made an effort to communicate with him through numbers and mathematics.
And mom just didn’t.
One thing to note. At the IMO, almost all of the participants [students] are boys. Only the rare girl pops up from time to time. Is this just a reflection of casting…or is this the way it actually is. And if this reflects reality…why? What part is nature and what part is nurture?
IMDb
This movie is mainly based on Daniel Lightwing, a real life mathematician.
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%2BY
trailer: youtu.be/taaqf_3El0A
X + Y [A BRILLIANT YOUNG MIND] 2014
Directed by Morgan Matthews
[b]Nathan [voiceover]: I find any communication of a non-mathematical nature very difficult. Because I don’t talk much, people think I don’t have anything to say, or that I’m stupid. And that’s not true. I have lots of things to say. I’m just afraid to say them. I know that I’m strange in lots of ways. I think I see the world in a different way to other people. I’ve always been like that.
…
Psychologist [holding up a toy dinosaur]: Would you like to play with it?
[Nathan shakes his head]
Psychologist: Are you scared it will eat you?
Nathan: No.
Psychologist: Is it because it’s a toy?
Nathan: No, it’s because stegosauruses aren’t carnivores.
…
Psychologist [to Nathan’s parents]: So, it’s positive. Nathan is certainly on the spectrum. Traits of autism combined with synaesthesia, sensitive to a change in light and pattern. These can be gifts, of course, but they do come with some big challenges, socially and emotionally, which will stay with Nathan all of his life. But there is no question that he’s a unique young man.
…
Michael [Nathan’s father]: You know, sometimes it might seem like we don’t always understand what it’s like to be you. It’s like you’ve got these special powers, like a wizard. And we’re just Muggles that don’t understand how you do it. It’s like a different language to us. But even though we don’t always understand each other, Nath, it doesn’t mean that any of us ever stops loving each other. Does that make sense?
[Nathan turns away]
Michael: Nathan, look at me. But you shouldn’t be afraid.[/b]
That’s when the minivan slams into them. And just like that his dad is dead. And his dad seems to be the only one he has ever been able to…love? Not at all like the more estranged relationship with his mom. Whatever that actually is.
[b]Julie [Mom, looking down at Nathan scribbling a bunch of strange figures in a notebook]: Gosh. That looks complicated. That’s not schoolwork then? Wait, why don’t you try and explain it to me? I might be able to help you.
Nathan: You can’t.
Julie: Why not?
Nathan: You’re not clever enough.
…
Headmaster: Mr. Humphreys just joined our maths department. He was a bit of a maths whizz when he was young, Nathan. He competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Julie: Olympiad?
Headmaster: Olympiad, yes. The IMO.
[he turns to Nathan]
Headmaster: Did you know you could win medals for maths, Nathan? Just like sport…
[he points to his head]
Headmaster: …only for people who are really, really strong up here instead.
…
Nathan: Why don’t you walk properly?
Martin: That’s very direct of you. I’ve got multiple sclerosis. What about you? Why are you weird?
Nathan: I’ve got special powers.
Martin: Can you fly?
Nathan: No.
Martin: Can you turn things to ice?
Nathan: No.
Martin: Are you really good at maths?
Nathan: Yes.
Martin: Yeah. Fair play. Well, listen, I should tell you, I’m not a very good teacher. I barely encourage myself to get out of bed, let alone inspire some kid with special powers who wants to spend all his spare time doing maths. So as long as we’re clear.
[he holds out his hand]
Nathan: What’s that for?
Martin: It’s to give it a shake. It’s my hand, isn’t it? It’s what men do when they agree.
Nathan: I don’t like doing that.
Martin: Yeah, well, we all have to do things we don’t like doing, but we fucking do them, don’t we? So give it here.
Nathan: What does “fucking” mean?
Martin: All in good time, son.
…
Nathan [reading from a book]: “The International Mathematical Olympiad is the most prestigious mathematical competition for high school students. It represents a great opportunity to see how they measure up against students from the rest of the world. China hold the record for 11 IMOs in which they have secured gold medals for all six members of their team.”
…
Nathan [reading]: The hardest problem ever at the IMO was question five in 1996. 'Let A, B, C, D, E, F be a convex hexagon such that AB is parallel to DE. BC is parallel to EF and CD is parallel to FA. Let RA, RC, RE denote the circum radii of triangles FAB, BCD, DEF respectively. And let P denote the perimeter of the hexagon. Prove that RA plus RC plus RE is greater than or equal to P over 2.
…
Nathan: Why did things go wrong for you, at the Olympiad?
Martin: There’s lots of reasons, really. My “thing” was kicking off around that time. My ailment. My MS. Cutting me down in the prime of my life. I just sort of lost it.
Nathan: I can’t lose it.
Martin: Nathan, you haven’t gotta prove anything, all right? What’s important is that you enjoy doing it, maths, and you do, don’t you? So whether you get on the team or not, you’re gonna do amazing things in the future.
Nathan: You haven’t.
Martin: Well, thanks a lot. You charming little bastard.
…
Isaac: Hey. How do you do?
Nathan: How do I do what?
Isaac: I mean, what’s your name?
…
Richard [on the bus to the airport]: Now, you are 16 of the cleverest young brains in this country. Now, outside you might be considered nerds or geeks or whatever the insult du jour might be. But here, you are among kindred spirits. Now, assuming you’re capable of basic arithmetic, you’ll know that there are six places available yet more than six of you. Which means that this, to a large extent, is about whittling you down. Now, we will be training with four other national teams in Taiwan. And after some delicate diplomatic negotiation, I can confirm that the Chinese will be one of them.
…
Nathan [on the plane]: 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610…
Rebecca [in a seat behind him]: …987, 1,597, 2,584. I like the Fibonacci sequence, too. Invaluable for music compositions. So you’re new. Fresh meat. How’s that going?
…
Rebecca: Most of these weirdos just wanna show off about how much maths junk they know.
[Nathan looks at her funny]
Rebecca: What?
Nathan: Nothing. It’s just I’m usually the weird one. They do all seem good at maths, though.
Rebecca: Yeah. Here you are neither weird nor the best mathematician, I’m afraid. You are painstakingly average.
…
Richard [looking into a classoom]: The Taiwanese. Currently below us in the rankings, but they’re our hosts, so we should be gracious. Now, here’s the real competition. The Chinese.
Student: Guys, check out the board. Is she messing around with the Goldbach Conjecture?
Richard: Maybe it’s what they do for fun.
Isaac: I love cracking unprovable theorems in my free time.
Luke: No one has proven that it’s unprovable.
…
Nathan [on the phone]: Everything’s different here and everyone’s cleverer than me.
Martin: Look, Nathan, it’s your first night away and… And first nights away are always really, really shit. I mean, it’s only a fortnight, innit?
Nathan: That’s 14 days.
Martin: And what’s 14?
Nathan: A positive integer.
Martin: Positive integer. So think positively. Which is the square root of?
Nathan: 196.
Martin: Whose prime factorisation is?
Nathan: Two squared by seven squared.
…
Isaac: Luke, I don’t care. Civilizations have used 10, not l2, digits to count for millennia.
Luke; Yes, for purely primitive reasons, and the fact that we have ten digits on our hands. My argument is that if we use base 12 it is an infinitely superior system, and more logical. It takes 12 months for the Earth to orbit the sun, there are 12 hours a night and 12 hours a day, and each of those hours there are 12 five-minute increments.
Isaac: And what do you think, Nathan? You a member of the dozenalist society?
…
Richard: Muirhead’s inequality and Schur’s inequality? It’s interesting stuff, Nathan, but you do over-complicate everything. Things can be much simpler than they initially appear. Did Mr. Humphreys not tell you that? Mind you, he never did quite live up to his potential, that one.
Nathan: It’s because his illness was getting worse.
Richard: His Illness? Is he still using that excuse? Stephen Hawking has done all right on far worse. No, I’m afraid it wasn’t Mr. Humphreys’ body that failed him, it was his character. He just couldn’t stay with it.
…
Counselor: …to be clear, these are not anti-depressants, Mr. Humphreys.
Martin: I mean, that’s good because I’m not depressed.
Counselor: You know, maybe you wanna change your mind about going to one of those groups I mentioned?
Martin: What, sit in a circle and listen to how crap everybody else’s life is?
Counselor: You know, sharing your issues might help.
Martin: Sharing my issues? Like how I hate wobbling about like a twat, how I’ve started to lose control of my bladder and how won’t be long before I lose control of my arse and start to shit myself. So, be careful, 'cause I could go at any second. And then, to top it all off…My dick doesn’t work.
…
Julie: Has he rung you again?
Martin: Nathan? No. Well, yeah. Now, look, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, calling me. It’s just he doesn’t think sometimes, does he?
Julie: Well, no, he does think a lot. Just mainly about maths. Which is fine, you know. He just thinks I’m a bit of an idiot because I failed at maths at school.
…
Zhang Mei [to Nathan]: The Chinese approach to maths. Look. This is called The Nine Chapters of Mathematical Art. This took more than 1,000 years to write. In China, mathematics is more than numbers. Um, it is like art.
…
Richard [to the class]: So…20 random cards are placed in a row all face-down. A move consists of turning a face-down card face-up and turning over the card immediately to the right. Show that no matter what the choice of cards to turn this sequence of moves must terminate. Nathan, hiding in the back won’t help you. Would you like to come up and show us?
…
Nathan [at the chalkboard…very very hesitantly…at first]: Okay, so we need to… We need to look at the cards not as cards, but as… As numbers. We can call face-down cards… One. Face-up cards… Zero. And initially it would be a sequence of ones as the cards are all face down. But after a while it would look something like that. And, as we can see, that is a binary number. And a move that consists of turning a face-down card face up and the card immediately to the right of it could be that a one followed by a one, will turn into a zero followed by a zero. That would be like that. Or it could be a one followed by a zero turning into a zero followed by a one. In either case, we can see that the number in binary is strictly decreasing.
Richard: And that means?
Nathan: Which means that the sequence must terminate.
Richard: Because?
Nathan: Because you can’t keep taking away from a positive integer without it turning negative.
Richard: No, you can’t. You definitely can’t. Good work.
…
Isaac: Its all about adaptability, Nathan. Sometimes you have to change your shape…to fit in.
…
Nathan: In China, do boys like me get bullied?
Zhang Mei: “Bullied”?
Nathan: You know, like when people treat you badly because you’re clever.
Zhang Mei: Why would they do that?
Nathan: I wish England was more like China.[/b]
Better England then, say, I don’t know, America?
[b]Luke [after cutting himself]: How did your mum and dad explain it to you? When they found out. I presume you’ve been diagnosed. Mine said it made me unique. “No one wants to be ordinary,” they said. It’s all right being weird as long as you’re gifted. But if you’re not gifted, then…that just leaves weird. Doesn’t it?
Nathan: You are gifted, Luke.
Luke: I don’t even enjoy it. Maths. Isn’t that stupid? What’s the point?
…
Richard [to Nathan]: When I speak to people of a non-mathematical nature, they always struggle with the notion that mathematics can be beautiful. But if beauty is truth and truth is beauty, well, then surely mathematics is the most beautiful thing of all. No? There is rare beauty in your work, Nathan. But you are unpredictable and inconsistent. Which worries me. You need to focus if you’re gonna win a medal. And don’t be distracted by your Chinese guest.[/b]
Here it begins to remind you somewhat of Searching For Bobby Fisher.
[b]Julie: Sounds to me like you quite like her.
Nathan: Of course I like her.
Julie: Yeah, no, I mean, like: More than you normally like things. You know, like more than…Ice cream. Or… Or maths.
Nathan: I don’t like anything more than I like maths.
Julie: Nathan, darling, I wish you’d just called me. Let me know that you’re okay, you know?
Nathan: Why?
Julie: Well, because, darling…I like you…more than I like ice cream.
…
Richard: Are you sure you’re not too rusty for all this?
Martin: I can manage a bit of shepherding. Been Nathan’s teacher for seven years, I wanna see this through. He’s a very sensitive kid.
Richard: Yeah, yeah, I suppose children are like animals. You get attached to them after a while.
…
Nathan: Zhang Mei said that she liked me.
Julie: Right. That’s a…That’s a good thing, isn’t it? And do you… Do you think that you might have those kind of feelings, too?
Nathan: I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work it out. But…I found a formula. I just can’t understand it.
Julie: Well, as far as I know, Nathan, no one ever has.
Nathan: I know that when…when I’m around her, my brain works differently. And my body feels strange and I don’t know what it means or why it matters.
Julie: Why it matters? It matters because…well, when…when somebody loves you, it means that they see something in you that they think is worth something. So it sort of…it adds value to you.[/b]