Obviously, a person needs to be exposed to math concepts to have a chance to demonstrate ability, but the converse is simply not true: someone does not acquire an ability simply because they are exposed to it.
That.
It's not what you make available, it's how they suck it up. And find more. And more. And more. Whether you will or not.
Some of our geekiest friends keep wanting to borrow our DS - because no amount of exposure is enough to get their own kids interested when they talk math, computers and engineering, while DS eats it up, because that's just who he is. DS and DD have the same geeky parents, the same exposure. He does high school math and sits in on university departmental particle physics lectures for fun, she loves to tie dye and batik. (and neither have the time of day for my own life sciences interests - exposure, schmexposure.) He's currently curled up in bed with Godel, Escher, Bach (thanks whoever reminded me of that one!), she's got Smurfs. She's MG and a pretty normal kid all round; he's, well, divergent in every possible way, and tests - well, there's some bugs, but certainly a standard deviation or two more than that. I could no more get her into Stephen Hawking than I could get him to stop. It's nothing about me, they are who they are.
But tomorrow, she'll take up quantum theory and he'll head for pottery class, just to show me I have no clue what I'm talking about.
