### Intelligence in Astronomy: What You Think and Why It Matters

In astronomy we are acutely aware of the importance of intelligence for success in science. Last week I posted a poll to gauge the opinions on intelligence of the readers of this blog, and most of you are current or former astronomers/physicist or other scientists, or know astronomers/physicists or other scientists. The first question (statement):
The vast majority of you strongly agree with the notion that intelligence is important for success in science. But what do I mean by intelligence? That's a hugely important question, but I left the definition out of this question for a reason. Back to this in a bit.

The next statement:

This is rather remarkable to me. However you readers define intelligence, the majority of you feel that it is a mutable quality of an individual. More specifically, you all feel that it is something that is not a fixed trait. Can it increase in time?
The readers of this blog not only believe that intelligence can change over the course of a person's life, but they also strongly believe that intelligence can increase in time as a result of diligent practice. This is remarkable!

So what's up with these questions? Well, it turns out that these questions are key diagnostics of what psychologist Carol Dweck and collaborators call "mindset." In their extensive studies over the past 30 years they have found that humans exhibit two broad classes of mindset: fixed and growth-oriented (see  Dweck's highly accessible book Mindset, and/or Dweck, Chiu & Hong 1995).

People with a fixed mindset believe, either implicitly or explicitly, that the qualities of a person are fixed, perhaps even at birth, and these traits do not change appreciably over time. The other mindset is focused on growth. Growth-oriented people see intelligence as a malleable property of a person, and more importantly that it can increase in time.

It is important to note that there are plenty of examples of successful scientists with both types of mindsets. Fixed and Growth minded individuals are hired into faculty positions at top institutions, win grants, garner awards and attain success measured by numerous metrics.

However, the two mindsets lead to stark differences in
1. the ways in which people interact with others within their scientific communities
2. attitudes towards and quality of teaching
3. the reactions that individuals have toward adversity
4. openness to change, notably when it comes to issues related to diversity and inclusion
In the posts to come, I'll delve into issues related to mindset and intelligence. Next up: what do we mean by "intelligence?"

### On the Height of J.J. Barea

Dallas Mavericks point guard J.J. Barea standing between two very tall people (from: Picassa user photoasisphoto).

Congrats to the Dallas Mavericks, who beat the Miami Heat tonight in game six to win the NBA championship.

Okay, with that out of the way, just how tall is the busy-footed Maverick point guard J.J. Barea? He's listed as 6-foot on NBA.com, but no one, not even the sports casters, believes that he can possibly be that tall. He looks like a super-fast Hobbit out there. But could that just be relative scaling, with him standing next to a bunch of extremely tall people? People on Yahoo! Answers think so---I know because I've been Google searching "J.J. Barea Height" for the past 15 minutes.

So I decided to find a photo and settle the issue once and for all.

I then used the basketball as my metric. Wikipedia states that an NBA basketball is 29.5 inches in circumfe…

### The Force is strong with this one...

Last night we were reviewing multiplication tables with Owen. The family fired off doublets of numbers and Owen confidently multiplied away. In the middle of the review Owen stopped and said, "I noticed something. 2 times 2 is 4. If you subtract 1 it's 3. That's equal to taking 2 and adding 1, and then taking 2 and subtracting 1, and multiplying. So 1 times 3 is 2 times 2 minus 1."

I have to admit, that I didn't quite get it at first. I asked him to repeat with another number and he did with six: "6 times 6 is 36. 36 minus 1 is 35. That's the same as 6-1 times 6+1, which is 35."

Ummmmm....wait. Huh? Lemme see...oh. OH! WOW! Owen figured out

x^2 - 1 = (x - 1) (x +1)

So $6 \times 8 = 7 \times 7 - 1 = (7-1) (7+1) = 48$. That's actually pretty handy!

You can see it in the image above. Look at the elements perpendicular to the diagonal. There's 48 bracketing 49, 35 bracketing 36, etc... After a bit more thought we…

### The Long Con

Hiding in Plain Sight

ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims.
I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to do was p…