Sky Choi is a very smart little boy:
It’s Friday at Florida International University, which means a few things for Sky Choi: physics lab, Calculus II — and a trip to the game room.
For this 12-year-old, the youngest student ever to attend FIU, college is a long-awaited challenge and a daily adventure.
”We have fun here,” he said as he prepared to start a work sheet on pistons, gases, and pressure with his lab partners.
Welcome to the world of Sky, who is taking a full course load of physics, calculus, and Chinese language classes at the university — and still finds time to play pool and table tennis in the game room at the West Miami-Dade campus.
A home-schooler who has a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do and is fluent in Korean, he is dual enrolled and officially finishing high school at the end of this semester.
The kid does charity work, too:
And he devotes about two weekends a month to a charity he started called The List Kids, which supports children who are refugees from Iraq. His mom represents refugees through The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, which aids those who are endangered because they helped the United States.
(HT to reader)
{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }
You know what I did when I was 12?
I finally learned what masturbation was.
What generally happens to these child prodigies when they get older? Do they adjust well and go on to rule the world, or do they go crazy and destroy themselves….
There must be some website about this, but I wasn’t homeschooled, and I didn’t go to college til I was 17, so I can’t find it.
Any ideas?
Oh yeah, and good for him. I was still a few years from learning to jerk off at that point. I was pretty close to beating super mario brothers though, at least with the cheats from nintendo power…
Just FYI, but the man with the highest verified IQ score (210) is Kim Ung-Yong. Pretty smart guy by all accounts, but he didn’t blaze a trail by any stretch of the imagination. You need more than IQ to do that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-Yong
I think Napoleon’s estimated IQ was only about 120. Btw, he was a horrible chess player and use to cheat a lot during games, even against his mother.
Fantastic. Korean American children everywhere are going to have this story throw in their face and have their egos kicked in the testicles by their overbearing Korean moms who will demand mimicry of this new example of messianic exemplary KM student scholarship.
One corollary. Sky’s mom is white. Yes, Sky half Korean on his dad’s side.
5. “One corollary. Sky’s mom is white….”
Excellent point.
The real corollary is that the kid’s mom gets him to relax a bit. Their Thursdays playing Go aren’t all work, it non-geek social time. The kid as a chance to absorb what he’s learning and actually find a way – and a reason – to enjoy life.
I feel sorry for kids in Korea who don’t get that.
FIU? Pfft. If he cut down on those pingpong sessions he may have made it to a more respectable school.
Wow–I think the better question is: who deserves the BMOC on campus more? Sky Choi (Sky is totally a girls’ Korean English name, but I’m guessing he’s translating his Korean name) or Isiah Thomas?
One is a teen with the brains of a 50-year-old; the other is an old man with the smarts of a pre-teen.
# 6,
Yeah, I saw the picture and I thought for a second that I was looking at Sonagi…
Hey lupin,
I wouldn’t be so quick to judge Korean mothers. Sho Yano, that other kid prodigy, credits “much” of his success to his Korean mom.
Baloney, I say. It’s obviously because of his love for reading the bible.
as if USC was a respectable school.
I like this kid, but I like Sho Yano better. Too bad he’s carrying a Japanese blood line. Watch out for Sho Yano.
FYI wjk,
TheKorean went to Cal…
#2. I saw a documentary a few years back about a guy in California who’d done a mathematics degree at university and graduated when he was 13-14 or so. He was fed up with mathematics by he graduated and was too young to get a job so he went back to school and finished the normal High School courses (except he helped out the math teachers).
He said he enjoyed it better being back at school as a normal kid. I think he had ended up as a real estate broker or something like that by the time of the documentary (guess then he was in his 20s).
How come I’ve never get to hear young geniuses actually putting their hot brains to find real solutions to the world? These geniuses are simply great at imitating already documented solutions from past. IMO, real geniuses are these invent new ideas and solutions.
Yeah, but can he dance the Fandango?
@Nix: Unlike the rest of us making such discoveries, we were not doing so in an environment so rich with college chicks.
Hard work brings rewards.
Don’t be a jerk.
When you’re 12, your college choices tend to be narrowed down to the schools that are within easy driving distance of home, so your mom can drop you off.
Mom in this case is a partner at Holland & Knight, and therefore presumably rooted in the community. She can’t pick up and move off to some “better” school’s locale just because you think it would look better on her mommy resume.
I was clearly joking.
theKorean,
Since you call yourself the “The” Korea, I’m assuming you think you’re representing all the Koreans? Hopefully the rest of the Korean people are not judgemental and ignorant as you are. Did you even read the article before spewing off ignorance?
MOst universities in the US have academic requirements which a 12 old kid can’t possibly fulfill, unless he attends 4 years of high school, no matter how smart he is. Thus, they will not enroll this kid. FIU is the only university willing to make an exception for this kid. You SHOULD be ashamed of yourself, “The” Korean.
thekorean,
You seem to be a marked man around these parts. Better be careful.
Oh yeah, the recent post on KJI by Mr. Joo was out of this world awesome. Thank you for that.
It was pretty incredible, wasn’t it? I loved every bit of it as well.
For those who’ve pondered why young prodigies such as this boy don’t often end up doing great things in later life, there is an explanation. While the ability to recall large and sometimes complex pieces of information is an exceptional ability, it’s sometimes confused with genius, yet these qualities are different from each other. Genius describes the creation of original thought, and an individual with exceptional genius may not necessarily possess a memory of the same magnitude. Simply storing large quantities of information in one’s head may be enviable, but computers do that as well. It’s rather the creation of original thought, which may stem from all that information, which is truly envied.
Once, when talking with a group of middle- and high-school teachers about a similar prodigy, I was told that it was actually not as difficult to train young minds to perform in that fashion as was commonly thought. In fact, they claimed they’d seen similar (although, of course, far less impressive) examples many times at their careers, at schools all over Kyeonggi-do. Home-schooled kids (such as Sky Choi, or the young prodigy we were discussing) stand a possibility of even more concentrated training, they said, because there exists an even less obstructed opportunity to focus on skills development.
@16
http://paulhoffman.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/neuroscience-majors-have-more-sex-than-math-majors/
I dunno man, the odds seem pretty stacked against him, especially considering the cruel game girls play when they label someone as “cute” and give him lots of attention, but completely write the person off sexually.
He’s in for the cockblock of his life.
A number of genes that determine intelligence are located on the X sex chromosome. Draw your own conclusion.
You wax hot and cold. Yesterday you likened me to pix of hot chicks drinking beer and today you think I’m some plump frau. FYI, both my arms put together are about as wide as one of hers.
I just enlarged that photo. Actually both my arms put together still aren’t as large as one of hers.
That might explain dad’s choice of a BBW.
Sonagi, what’s BBW?
i thought it was a BMW at first but no it stands for big beautiful women (i googled it)
sonagi knows a lot of porn classification of describing women – last time it was MILF
this brings me to another stereotype. every asian man i know married to a white woman has married someone who looks like that woman in the photo. sort of like head mistress of a primary school type – big mama academic. is that a fetish too?
Hmnn, I see. Well I knew what MILF was — of all places, it was at church and the pastor’s own grown up son who informed me what it stood for.
That’s too simple. Genius is a combination of a number of things, creativity just being one of them.
Anyway, this Sky Choi better not be one of those idiots who pronounces his name “choy” (rhymes with toy), the way that so many K-A Chois do.
Come to think of it, I hate the way Chos pronounce and romanize their name. It should be Jo.
Good point, abcdefg. I’d agree that genius represents a combination of attributes. In fact, it’s my sloppy analysis which betrays my own lack of genius. Still, it’s a relatively short list of critical factors, and I’d say that creativity ranks primary among them. Without creativity, there is no original thought, and instead one is left with a well-developed knowledge of prior thought.
In the case of genius, intelligence and creativity combine to produce original thought, and memory only aids in that production. Yet intelligence absent creativity, or, indeed, pure creativity alone, are not adequate to suitably define genius. Would you add any other factors?
There’s research that shows that people tend to date/mate with those who meet this remarkable property: proximity.
Only 5% of America’s population is Asian, but where does the average Asian American live? Probably in an area where there are many Asians. Seen this way, I’d say the average Asian guy or gal has plenty enough choice or opportunity to date within his/her line.
I’m a post-white-washed sort of fellow. I have no real preferences for race, but I probably lean a little (to the left) toward non-Korean.
Woops, wrong window.
well, give us some examples who you consider to be a genius. it seems to be a word that has considerable flexibility in definition
Nix, you forget. Women love virgins. Something immortal about being a guy’s first ya know.
TheKorean,
Your just mad because they made you (and everyone else who went to Cerritos HS) worship at the altar of Paras Mehta.
“In the case of genius, intelligence and creativity combine to produce original thought, and memory only aids in that production. Yet intelligence absent creativity, or, indeed, pure creativity alone, are not adequate to suitably define genius. Would you add any other factors?”
Genius is an extreme fitness with respect to a number of mental capacities…. To put it crudely, “creativity” is one. It’s the ability to synthesize information in ways that others simply cannot. So it’s a social sort of differential. Then I’m always rather envious of the scope of those guys who can take mass amounts of information — any language, say — and master and build a command of it in a short time, ie, the ability to process information at an extraordinary rate. Then, finally, I believe a genius is a person who is born with the right intuition — he is pointed in the right direction, so to speak, he is primed to see Nature’s solutions (and not create them, mind you) and act in a way that is “correct” in the sense of useful. It’s an orientation with a high degree of utility, something greater than merely “talented.”
WK,
I seriously had to Google his name. He seems impressive, but I have never heard of him — he was waaay before my time. Plus, even if they did talk about him at CHS, it’s likely that my English wasn’t good enough to understand it around then.
I consider “The Korean” a genus.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
He’s the Indian kid with glasses and all those shiny gold metals that Cerritos HS hangs a picture of in their office lobby. I think they still have that picture. I was a freshman when he was a senior, but I didn’t go to Cerritos HS.
Hey! Did you go to Cerritos HS when Han Ye-seul was attending?
WK,
I take the 5th — I already made myself too identifiable.
JH,
Actually, the technical name of my genus is “DaKoreanus Megatronius Maximus”.
In all seriousness, thank you very much, but I really am not. If I were a genius, I would have done better in school!
I agree that genius is hallmarked by the utility of ideas produced. I was thinking of that, but unable to articulate it. That, too, is an important aspect of genius.
Sorry, but what do you mean by ‘he is primed to see Nature’s solutions (and not create them, mind you)’?
Technically speaking, I suppose “The Korean” is neither a genus nor even a species but simply a variety.
Still, what do I know? I’m certainly no genius.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
# 41,
If you were a genius… you would have gone to Whitney!
J/K!
My cousin went to Whitney and now she presses pants for a living!
# 25,
Drinking and posting comments don’t mix well… so there you have it.
#3,
Well, the differences between a score of 130 and 140 is tiny (just a few correct answers separate one from the other), and most probably tinier between a score of 180 and 210 (furthermore, scores above a certain score are essentially guesses). In other words, a person’s IQ score can vary greatly.
For example, I routinely score above 145, but I once scored 165. I’ve also gotten scores as low as 120 because I wasn’t feeling well when I took the test.
What was your very first score?
Just curious, why is the very first score of particular interest? You mean from childhood?
All hail the oft semi-genius, and one-time real genius, but not so much when ill, self-congratulatory Someguy. We are not worthy to step on his shadow. For example, I often take IQ tests, so I’m a knob. lol
dumbguy, those internet IQ tests aren’t right, LOL.
“How come I’ve never get to hear young geniuses actually putting their hot brains to find real solutions to the world?”
Ruth Elke Lawrence-Naimark (Hebrew: רות אלקה לורנס-נאימרק, born 2 August 1971) is an Associate Professor of mathematics at the Einstein Institute of Mathematics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a researcher in knot theory and algebraic topology. Outside academia, she is best known for being a child prodigy in mathematics.
13 graduated Oxford Uni in maths, at 14 physics, at 17 doctorate in math.
This Sky kid seems to be a bit of a slacker.
Pyotr:
someguy offered us an implied data set in two dimensions: grades stretch from 145 to 165, and the numbers are stretched over time. In other words, a basic line graph with time on the x-axis. He also tried to introduce a third element, health, but since he targeted that at a single data point (120), he implied that we should treat that data point as an outlier on the otherwise valid data set.
So, my question, which was purely rhetorical and which someguy does not have to answer, was simply whether the line-of-best-fit on his graph slopes upward or is level. If it’s level, then it doesn’t matter what his first score was – his IQ is the average of the scores. If it slopes upward, then his increasingly higher IQ scores are plausibly the result of him just getting better at taking the test. If that’s the case, then if he wants to compare his IQ to the scores of other people who have not taken the test many times, it’s more realistic to use his first score as a comparator. (NB, a downward sloping data set would be hard to imagine, but is not theoretically impossible).
The above two paragraphs were all implied by my question, as someguy knows full well, since, regardless of the quantification, he’s pretty smart.
Linkd:
Thanks, got it.
There are many interesting stories regarding mathematicians, physicists and natural philosophers.
Rene Descartes (I used to horrify my high school French teacher by pronouncing his name “Des Carties”) was seemingly a lazy bastard who never got up before 12 noon. One day he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking, and he spotted a fly. In a flash of inspiration, he realized that the edges of the ceiling can represent X-Y axes and that the fly represents a point that can be projected back onto the axes. Hence, Cartesian coordinates were born and for the first time in world history, the heretofore separate disciplines of algebra and geometry were united to give rise to algebraic geometry or what many high school seniors now dread as “pre-calculus”.
The 17th century founder of group theory Galois spent one long night frantically scribbling down his important discoveries on parchment. In the margins he wrote repeatedly “I don’t have enough time…not enough time…” It was because the following day he had a dual. He was shot dead in his late 20s.
The 20th century physicist Richard Feynman was quite a character. PhD students would come to his office to discuss their dissertation research. Feynman would listen, silently reach over and open his file cabinet, take out some papers which he never bothered publishing and nonchalantly remark “I had already formulated the general theory of which yours is merely a special case several years ago, here it is…” He was also notorious for sleeping with his grad student’s wives. According to the Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman series, on several occasions he put his Nobel Prize winning intellect to bear on the problem of how to pick up women at a bar. Central to his belief was the notion that, just like any high level puzzle of physics, this too could be reduced to first principles. From reading of his accounts, it appears that in addition to inventing Quantum Electrodynamics, the foundations of Nanotechnology, and the famous “Feynman diagram”, he independently pioneered the rigorous articulation of the techniques of a successful pick-up artist. A very accomplished and admirable individual.
That was, uh, interesting NK, but I don’t think Linkd or anyone else is going to say that you have a high IQ.
But hey, don’t fret. You get a gold star and smiley face from me!
#55 My belief about IQ scores are as follows: there are certain attributes that inherently defy any meaningful attempts at exact quantification. Emotion, for example, cannot be quantified. God in His Infinite Wisdom made certain things unquantifiable. Such attempts to do so may result in consequences.
For example, the current economic crisis was brought on by attempts to reduce, using fundamentally flawed mathematical models, an abstract and ill-defined concept called “risk” to a single number.
Hey, when I saw the headline about one of these 12 year olds already in college or whatever, my immediate first thought was “Let’s get ‘im!” Anybody with me on that?
#47,
Top 1 percentile.
#49,
Far from it. I’d be a fool to have any such pretensions.
One of my former classmate will probably win a Nobel Prize for research he did a couple of years ago and one of my longtime friends has designed things for NASA that are now in space.
They are clearly more intelligent, regardless of what their IQ test scores may be (I’m sure they do quite well, though).
#50,
I don’t do them on the net. The last I took was a battery of 6 tests administered over one afternoon.
#52,
Yes, you’re right. I don’t claim that 165 is my IQ, nor should anyone claim a one time score as their own IQ. I was using that score to argue that a person’s impressive (or unimpressive) score on an IQ test may be attributed to other factors than intelligence (or lack thereof) alone.
The main reason I do well on IQ tests is that they always seem to concentrate on my strengths (I’ve always been good with numbers and geometric shapes (I used to doodle a lot as a kid)).
“Emotion, for example, cannot be quantified.”
Yes they can. If someone stepped on your new shoes, you’d be mildly pissed off. But, if you best friend slept with your wife, you’d be extremely pissed off (well, unless you’re swingers).
PS. God’s wisdom… How could you quantify something that you can’t prove exists?
Let the religion flamewar, begin!
You know, after living in Canada, I’m not surprised the first one to post their IQ with words like top 1 percentile in a thread about a fast-tracking kid was a Canadian. Not to dismiss these scores or suggest anything negative about the intelligence of Canadians (which I will assume to be quite high), but I’ve found that, compared to Americans, sliding in their IQ scores in a conversation seems to almost be a past-time, always above 135 too. Must be the water or something
Well your not really likely to slip it in if its 85!!
you’re
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan
Langan says he spent the last years of high school mostly in independent study, teaching himself “advanced math, physics, philosophy, Latin and Greek, all that”.[9] After earning a perfect score on the SAT[7] he attended Reed College and later Montana State University, but faced with finance and transportation problems, and believing that he “could literally teach [his professors] more than they could teach [him]“, dropped out.[9]
He took a string of labor-intensive jobs, and by his mid-40s had been a construction worker, cowboy, forest service firefighter, farmhand, and for over twenty years, a bouncer on Long Island.
Coolest +200 IQ dude in the world.
#62,
Nice try. Read #58. I was clearly questioning whether someone could claim with certainty to have an IQ of 210. It had nothing to do about the young kid, who is obviously brighter than you and I.
…to do with…
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