Talk to a group in the arts, humanities or social sciences, even biology, and at some point you are likely to hear they are not a 'math person'.

But it isn't true. Sure, some amount of ability in different things is born rather than made - I will never be a virtuoso guitarist, no matter how much I practice - but claiming that math ability is 'genetic' is a huge cop-out and it's destructive to efforts to help kids who are likely not good at math for lots of other reasons.

Blame psychologists. Economists Miles Kimball and Noah Smith do. And they're right, sort of. The whole concept of IQ was invented by a psychology almost a century ago - and we don't accept anything else from a century ago, so it is a mystery why we cling to that. Maybe Big Mensa has paid lobbyists in the Education Department or something.  Whatever the reason, psychology journals have been full of explanations of intelligence and more often than not, they want to invoke science legitimacy by claiming biology.

The problem is that it becomes a cop-out too easily. If intelligence is genetic, no one has to try and be good at math (or science), they can major in music therapy or something. And that is a disservice to them society should not be encouraging.

There’s one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don’t by  Miles Kimball and Noah Smith and Noah Smith, Quartz