Terence Tao

And I have to use my words.

Okay, I didn't think this was going to work, but yes, you were right all along.

Yeah, it works for me.

Yeah, I mean, there are also people who are very productive and they focus very deeply on, yeah.

I think everyone has to find their own workflow.

Like, one thing which is a shame in mathematics is that we have mathematics, there's sort of a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching mathematics.

And, you know, so we have a certain curriculum and so forth.

I mean, you know, maybe, like, if you do math competitions or something, you get a slightly different experience.

But, yeah.

I think many people, they don't find their native math language until very late, or usually too late, so they stop doing mathematics, and they have a bad experience with a teacher who's trying to teach them one way to do mathematics, and they don't like it.

My theory is that evolution has not given us a math center of a brain directly.

We have a vision center and a language center and some other centers which evolution has honed, but we don't have an innate sense of mathematics.

But our other centers are sophisticated enough that we can repurpose other areas of our brain to do mathematics.

So some people have figured out how to use the visual center to do mathematics, and so they think very visually when they do mathematics.

Some people have repurposed their language center, and they think very symbolically.

Some people, if they are very competitive and they like gaming, there's a part of your brain that's very good at solving puzzles and games, and that can be repurposed.

When I talk to other mathematicians, I can tell that they're using some other different styles of thinking than I am.

I mean, not disjoint, but they may prefer visual.

I don't actually prefer visual so much.

I need also visual aids myself.