Einstein, who failed fourth grade math and yet managed to express general and special relativity.

Well, not that it undermines your entire argument, but this is false, or so I'm told by some of Einstein's offspring in a letter to the editor of one of the science magazines I was reading in high school.

Apparently, at the school Einstein attended for 4th grade, they had an unusual grading system, where the lower numbers meant the higher grade, so that "1" = very good while "4" = very poor. Einstein got "1"s in math. Some journalist came across this data, and without verifying the context, got the rumor going around that "Einstein flunked 4th grade math", when in fact it was quite the opposite; he'd scored the highest possible grades!

No, sorry, I don't recall the precise source any more, but it was a reputable magazine (Discovery magazine, or Science magazine, or something like that).

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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