Sagan Jones, We know you can do better than him...

[Zucca]

And now the EEV folks are standing up, clapping their hands and screaming:
SA-GAN
SA-GAN
SA-GAN
SA-GAN
SA-GAN
....

[zapta]

Very impressive, even with that extra zero. Will be interesting to see what kind of career this kid will have. Success is not guaranteed but is very likely.

[Zucca]

Very impressive, even with that extra zero. Will be interesting to see what kind of career this kid will have. Success is not guaranteed but is very likely.

AFIK Einstein was considered an idiot when he was an elementary school student. The opposite could happen for him, I hope not...

The human brain, what a magnificent creation.

[ampdoctor]

I know I'm going to come off sounding like a dick but I'm not horribly impressed and I see no genius here. If he had independently derived the algorithm it would be a different conversation.  What you're looking at is the result of properly educating an eager child with an above average intelligence. Bravo to the parents!  50-60 years ago children were pretty much expected to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the time they were 7 or 8 years old. Kid probably never set foot in a state or federally run institution designed to reinforce mediocrity, conformity, and squelch anything resembling curiosity in young minds.

[zapta]

Bravo to the parents!  50-60 years ago children were pretty much expected to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the time they were 7 or 8 years old.

It's not just the algebra, it's its application to the circuit, the handling of engineering units, the methodological solution, and the clear writing and presentation. Just awesome.

As for Sagan, Dave mentioned once that he doesn't care what Noble prize he will get but for some reason he seemed to expect only one.

[mtdoc]

50-60 years ago children were pretty much expected to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the time they were 7 or 8 years old.

Yep, but this kid is only 5. 

As the father of 6 and 8 year old boys, I  can tell you the difference between 5 and 7 or 8 is huge.

What's impressive to me is that this kids verbal and writing skills appear to be very good as well.

[aargee]

How do you know Sagan will be an engineer?

Having an engineer father is no guarantee, no matter what they do at that age. I should know... 

[German_EE]

This is true, my father was a local government worker and in later life a preacher. Now, my grandfathers, one was a mining engineer and the other worked as a marine draughtsman in a shipyard.

English question, is it draftsman or draughtsman where technical drawing is concerned?

[EEVblog]

Very impressive, even with that extra zero. Will be interesting to see what kind of career this kid will have. Success is not guaranteed but is very likely.

From the child "geniuses" I've seen, it seems like they all end up just in ordinary jobs, not becoming anyone of note.
If true, my guess would be due to a lack of passion for anything. The parents just pushed them early.
Being smart only gets you so far.

[EEVblog]

Yep, but this kid is only 5. 
As the father of 6 and 8 year old boys, I  can tell you the difference between 5 and 7 or 8 is huge.
What's impressive to me is that this kids verbal and writing skills appear to be very good as well.

As only having an almost 4yo, no direct experience with older kids, but it's obvious to any parent there are dramatic differences between kids of the same age. And that even just 1 year can make the difference between chimp level skills, and the kind of stuff we see here. Every brain seems to grow and develop at vastly different rates.

[mtdoc]

Yep, but this kid is only 5. 
As the father of 6 and 8 year old boys, I  can tell you the difference between 5 and 7 or 8 is huge.
What's impressive to me is that this kids verbal and writing skills appear to be very good as well.

As only having an almost 4yo, no direct experience with older kids, but it's obvious to any parent there are dramatic differences between kids of the same age. And that even just 1 year can make the difference between chimp level skills, and the kind of stuff we see here. Every brain seems to grow and develop at vastly different rates.

Yes, very true. What I've seen in my own kids, their friends and the kids both myself and my wife see in our practices (I'm a family doc and she's a pediatrician) is that core abilities - motor skills, verbal skills, quantitative /analytic skills, and social skills - develop at different rates in different kids.    This is especially apparent when they are very young since they are starting out as blank slates. You'er right, their brains are growing/developing rapidly but different brains show different patterns in how they develop.  So while one kid may be very far ahead in 1 or 2 skills early on, they are often lacking or just ordinary in the others. Over time they all tend to even out so that by puberty the foundation of their innate talents has been laid. What happens from there of course depends on lots of factors.

Interesting stuff and definitely something that keeps parents on their toes!

[G0HZU]

50-60 years ago children were pretty much expected to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the time they were 7 or 8 years old.

Yep, but this kid is only 5. 

As the father of 6 and 8 year old boys, I  can tell you the difference between 5 and 7 or 8 is huge.

What's impressive to me is that this kids verbal and writing skills appear to be very good as well.

Yes, I was very impressed by his presentation and verbal skills too.

BTW I solve it a slightly different way.  I do it on a calculator as 8 (1/x)  + 2 (1/x) = 0.625 then press (1/x) again and you get 1.6 ohms.

where (1/x) is a press of the 1/x function key on an old school calculator.

The reason I do it this way is because it's then also easy to then work out the solution to a similar puzzle:


What resistor do you need to add across 8 ohm to get 1.6 ohm?

answer = 1.6 (1/x)  -  8(1/x)   = 0.5. Press (1/x) again and you get 2 ohms.

Hope I've typed that out OK as it's late and nearly bed time...

[Rory]

English question, is it draftsman or draughtsman where technical drawing is concerned?

In the USA it's draftsman, or drafter. 

My wife is one, she uses Autocad. She spends her workdays working on valve maps for a gas pipeline company.

[Zucca]

I do it on a calculator as 8 (1/x)  + 2 (1/x) = 0.625 then press (1/x) again and you get 1.6 ohms.

Why in EE 6 years university course nodoby told me that? So easy and so brilliant.
G0HZU were you a genius child? 

[EEVblog]

Why in EE 6 years university course nodoby told me that? So easy and so brilliant.
G0HZU were you a genius child? 

Err, that's the standard formula for parallel resistors!
How you did not learn that in 6 years of EE is beyond me 

[Zucca]

How you did not learn that in 6 years of EE is beyond me 

A medic should know where the hands in the human body are.

I meant the trick with the 1/x key on the calculator... I used to setup a formula on my TI-68 like this Zp=Z1*Z2/(Z1+Z2), it was working even with complex impedance too! What a beauty...
BTW funny things are happening in Italy that can blow you away, and it is realistic to me you believed that could had happen for real to an italian EE...

[darrylp]

English question, is it draftsman or draughtsman where technical drawing is concerned?

In the USA it's draftsman, or drafter. 

My wife is one, she uses Autocad. She spends her workdays working on valve maps for a gas pipeline company.

And the same in the UK

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

[rob77]

actually i'm very sorry for that little boy   he's 5 and he is forced to do things he's not supposed to do... he's supposed to be a child at the age of 5 !
and say whatever you want, he must have been forced to learn that !
there are kids learning "crazy stuff" on their own (used to be one of them) but only learning the interesting part and they're presenting the learnt stuff the "child-ish way"... that's definitely not what we see on the video.

but i might be wrong... and actually i hope i'm wrong.. otherwise his daddy would need some sessions at his psychotherapist...

[Mechanical Menace]

From the child "geniuses" I've seen, it seems like they all end up just in ordinary jobs, not becoming anyone of note.
If true, my guess would be due to a lack of passion for anything. The parents just pushed them early.
Being smart only gets you so far.

From someone who was meant to be a "child genius" and had supportive but not pushy parents I don't think it's that. I'd say it's that the first time you come across something you actually have to try at and "fail*" to do is such a hit to your self esteem it puts you off of trying to push yourself. You go down a level to where you know you always get things right.

Kids should be taught that failing and/or breaking things can be a learning experience. I'm 31 and only just got my head around that.

*And failing can be as stupid as getting a B instead of an A*.

[FrankBuss]

AFIK Einstein was considered an idiot when he was an elementary school student. The opposite could happen for him, I hope not...

Einstein was good at school, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein : "Contrary to popular suggestions that he had struggled with early speech difficulties, the Albert Einstein Archives indicate he excelled at the first school that he attended."

[zapta]

I do it on a calculator as 8 (1/x)  + 2 (1/x) = 0.625 then press (1/x) again and you get 1.6 ohms.

Why in EE 6 years university course nodoby told me that? So easy and so brilliant.
G0HZU were you a genius child? 

Didn't they teach you about mho units (1/ohm). You add them for parallel resistors.

[zapta]

...
and say whatever you want, he must have been forced to learn that !

That's a speculation.

[Zucca]

Didn't they teach you about mho units (1/ohm). You add them for parallel resistors.

Sure, but everybody to get the parallel resitor was doing R1*R2/(R2+R1), I never saw somebody pressing/using the 1/x key.

[zapta]

Sure, but everybody to get the parallel resitor was doing R1*R2/(R2+R1), I never saw somebody pressing/using the 1/x key.

That's a local optimization . Yes, nice trick, you enter each number only once. I use a quick spreadsheet.

BTW, that kid beats me with long division.

[Rory]

Didn't they teach you about mho units (1/ohm). You add them for parallel resistors.

Sure, but everybody to get the parallel resitor was doing R1*R2/(R2+R1), I never saw somebody pressing/using the 1/x key.

Product over the sum method gets cumbersome if there are more than two values in parallel.