[Baypiggies] Chompapps Position - from Issue 31

[Andrew Dalke]

On Oct 27, 2009, at 5:25 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:
> Maybe they're taking success advice from Mark Zuckerberg:

> “Young people are just smarter,” he said with a straight face. “Why  
> are
> most chess masters under 30?” he asked. “I don’t know,” he
> answered.

I wonder where he got that idea, and how chess is applicable to  
programming. I looked but couldn't find age data for US chess  
masters. What I did find was

List of world champions:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship

Using the youngest age and leaving out the "Classical world  
Champions" category since that over-counts Kasparov and has political  
implications:

  under 30: 8+5+2+0 = 15
  30 or over: 18+11+4+2 = 35

Most of the top people in chess, historically, have been over 30.  
Even if I omit the pre-1886 numbers, that's still 7 (under 30 y.o.)  
to 17.

A-ha! I bet the source of that comes from belief comes from Howard  
[Intelligence 27 (1999) 235–250]. There's a rebuttal at http:// 
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2004.07.002 but I don't have free access  
to it and I've reached the limit of my curiosity on this topic.
   (Summary at http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/06/ 
chess_and_the_f.html by Jason Malloy)


				Andrew
				dalke at dalkescientific.com