Reply to Math competitions for Mathematically Gifted kid (7 year old)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You cannot Kumon your way into being a top competitor in Mathcounts.  All of the kids at the top nationally have a talent for math.  Most of them probably love math as well.  [/quote]

I kind of think you can. If by kumon we mean math tutoring from kindergarten on. Kumon in the early years and then advanced coursework outside class and then tutoring on the actual contest math questions. Yes that exists.

My DS has an IQ in the gifted range. If there are 3 million in his grade year so do 60,000 others his age. My kid even has a Quantitative Reasoning score in the 99.9th percentile. So do thousands of other kids in his year group.  That is not what makes a difference. So I do think it’s the practice that makes a difference.

I think kids in the above average range but literally hundreds of hours studying contest math would outperform any kid who hasn’t been tutored. [/quote]

Are you familiar at all with math contests, and has your child ever competed?  Kids who are above average but not gifted will not do well at contests, no matter how much they've prepared.  At the elementary level, kids who are naturally brilliant mop the floors with the kids who are bright and well-practiced.  Those brilliant kids are the ones who then choose to invest the time in middle and high school.  I participated on state level teams and in some national competitions in high school.  There wasn't a single kid on the state ARML team who wasn't both absolutely brilliant in math and highly interested in learning math.

It's very similar to elite sports or music.  You can invest in all of the practice and coaching in the world.  It will make you proficient, but there is a limit to how far that can take you without the natural aptitude.   You can't coach an above average gymnast onto the olympic team.  An above average violinist can practice hours every day and will never play at Carnegie Hall.  Likewise, an above average mathematician will not be able to crack the Mathcounts top 50, no matter how much the kid practices and is coached.  [/quote]

This isn’t my experience at all. For example in mathcounts there are schools in the country that have become power houses. Which is evidence that the right coaches and training make a huge difference. The math kangaroo contest and AMC have like the same types of questions on it every year. If you practice the certain types of tricks over and over you will do pretty well with an above average IQ. Go over to the AOPS forum and you can see for yourself how the kids talk about the types of problems. [/quote]

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