Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Musical talent related to "mathematical" giftednes

This is nothing but a hunch, but I tend to have good ones. I would guess that musicianship talent would be correlated somewhat with hitting early milestones in general, and also with innate calculation abilities. I would expect musicianship talent to be linked to higher-level math skills to the rough extent that innate calculation abilities are linked to higher-level math skills. I would expect musicianship talent to be linked more often with higher-level musical abilities (composition), but that of course is explainable in large part through interest in the subject.

Hi CollinMum

Thanks for remembering me:-) I have read some of your post, you have amazing boy

MY son is in Kindy now, he is Ok so far, although sometimes he complained that school doesn't teach math. I wonder if the teacher can handle him since he always ask some "tough math questions" like how much is 0 divided by 0

Sometimes I am not sure if he is that advanced, he seems like normal boy most of time(bit strong willed, and very little sleep), sometimes he just freak me out by figure out some middle-high school math problems. I was wondering if it because I give him all the chance to explore math, and answered all his math questions, or he truly is kind of "something"??? His IQ test doesn't seems THAT high.

Now, I am using some of mathematical olympiad material to let him explore the fun of numbers,. it is not high grade, but lot of deeper and fun

Ok, Back to the music & math relation

DS self-taught to read and play piano at 4, can play whole book by memory, and play by ear. I think it is because he is smart, especially his math ability, reading music sheet, learning music theory is so nature, so easy for him.
But comes to technique, which requires lots of practice, is another thing. He cries because he could not do it,( I would say, he could not do it just so EASY anymore) I have to tell him again and again it is okay, just need more practice,
even smart kid needs working hard.

So I would say, he is talent in music, compare with most normal kids, but not as good as his math ability, also not a real Musical genius.

Interesting! I know from talking to musicians and reading that there is a link but I don't know if it is that cut and dry.

My DD 4.5 takes piano and her teacher is awe struck. She can't say enough about DD's abilities. BUT I'm not sure about her mathematical side. She was able to add and subtract by age 2 but hasn't really progressed beyond that, however, I feel this is mostly due to us not providing any material for her. She is being assessed right now in math and we will focus on math through the summer. I'm definitely curious on how much she will absorb by the end of summer.

If your Kindergarten child is doing Math Olympiad stuff, I think it is a pretty sure bet that he is mathematically gifted. I'm guessing you haven't spent a lot of time with "average" kindergarten children. The children of your gifted siblings don't count...

This might be enlightening.

:-) Sad thing is, probably school does teach what they see as maths, but it's just counting and he doesn't even recognise it as such. Are you planning on advocating for him to get harder maths, or just leaving it be for now?
That is very familiar to me. (We have no test scores for DS7, but I don't think I'd expect them to be as high as his maths achievement might suggest: in other areas he's bright, for sure, but not nearly as remarkable. And I do wonder how much is exposure. I think, in the end, that it doesn't matter: I think it is good for his character development to be exposed to this maths and have things he gets to think about instead of it all being easy, and I think that'll still be true even if, as an adult, he no longer looks especially good at maths.
Yup, there's lots of good stuff out there these days, isn't there? Our best discovery lately, by the way, is Geogebra - lots of exploration fun!
Again very familiar. DS is just now getting better at practising, without needing lots of handholding, without giving up.