system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Being Good At Math Does Not Mean You Are Smart

 

Quite often we wrongly assume that someone who is good at math and it's related subjects is a "smart person".

Firstly, What is intelligence? It is difficult to give a perfectly accurate synopsis on what it means to be intelligent, but we have a general idea. The Oxford Dictionary describes intelligence as, "the ability to learn, understand and think in a logical way about things".

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If we take this definition as a relatively accurate one, one would assume that being good at math would automatically qualify someone as being intelligent, because In order to be good at math you have to be good at problem solving and logical analysis. The problem is that this definition of intelligence is a limiting one. There are many other aspects of intelligence that being good at math doesn't account for, such as , linguistic intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, musical intelligence ect. Being good at math doesn't necessarily mean you will be skilled at any one of these things.

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You could argue that being good at math is a strong indicator of a person's likelyhood to excel at other forms of intelligence, and that people who are good at math are also more likely to be good at composing music ect. But being good at math is not sufficient grounds to declare someone as intelligent. That is basically my view summed up in one sentence.
gpt
>The problem is that this definition of intelligence is a limiting one. There are many other aspects of intelligence that being good at math doesn't account for, such as , linguistic intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, musical intelligence ect. Being good at math doesn't necessarily mean you will be skilled at any one of these things.

You said it yourself, there are lots of forms of intelligence.  Do you have to possess all of them to be considered "smart?"  Colloquial linguistics would say no: you can be book-smart, street-smart, or people-smart.  You can also be math-smart.  Being good at math (i.e. problem solving and logical analysis) makes you smart, though you still may have weaknesses in other areas.  Wouldn't you say the same for someone who was well-read but a terrible mathematician?