"Growing Up Surrounded by Books Could Have Powerful, Lasting Effect on the Mind"

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As a child, I can recall studying combinatorics and number theory because they
were subjects of the few undergraduate mathematics textbooks available.

I can recall you highlighting some of Wolfgang59's errors in conditional probability using combinatorics.

A more statistical approach might have referred to the corresponding probability distribution and mass function for that particular discrete random variable.

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It's an interesting topic that provokes thoughts of how many of my interests were sparked by reading. I think it is also crucial to writing ability, spelling, and vocabulary.

Many things that I retain interest in were originally a childhood obsession (sparked by reading) that I now have a healthier level of interest in.

It also makes me wonder about parenting styles, and whether it can benefit to be firm about things like reading and practising music. I lean towards "let children develop and become their own people", but one also feels that you are doing them a favour that they will thank you for later.

@ashiitaka said

It also makes me wonder about parenting styles, and whether it can benefit to be firm about things like reading and practising music. I lean towards "let children develop and become their own people", but one also feels that you are doing them a favour that they will thank you for later.

There are many studies about this. Why is "parenting" such a common idea these days? We don't say "childing". Children will develop and become their own people regardless of parenting. Not taking into account obvious abuse situations. Given normal parents on a normal block of a normal city street, the child will become their own person regardless of "parenting" There is plenty of science for this.

That being said, it is hard to disagree with the concept of doing them favour by nudging children in a healthy direction. Would you like to learn the piano or the guitar? Or another instrument? 15:30 - 16:00 is music time. 16:30 - 17:00 is reading time. What book would you like to read today? At some point, early or later, they will or will not stop practicing or reading. However the groundwork will be there to give nurture a fighting chance against nature.

There is nuance but the two paragraphs are not contradictory. Thinking we know what the end result will be is the fallacy.

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I grew up in a house where the walls of the living room were covered in bookshelves. The first porn I ever read was My Secret Life by Walter. I learned the verb "to frig" and the phrase "piss proud" from that book.

I was way ahead of the other kids at reading in Kindergarten.

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I remember when I first heard about Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. I must have been about 7 or so.
And the concept of coming from Africa, but having to cross the Alps to get to Italy truly screwed up my geographical understandings...

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I wonder to what extent they've corrected for socio-economic status, which strikes me as likely to be strongly correlated with library size. Possibly the books themselves aren't the real drivers but an expression of attitudes on the part of the parents which produce literate children. Where there's more than 350 books the library is more likely to be a status symbol rather than an actual accumulation of reading material and so irrelevant to the literacy of the children.

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Yes, darling, I know.

Not when I was 7 though...

@deepthought said
I wonder to what extent they've corrected for socio-economic status, which strikes me as likely to be strongly correlated with library size. Possibly the books themselves aren't the real drivers but an expression of attitudes on the part of the parents which produce literate children. Where there's more than 350 books the library is more likely to be a status symbol rat ...[text shortened]... r than an actual accumulation of reading material and so irrelevant to the literacy of the children.

When running regressions, even practically and statistically significant coefficients suffer from that tricky issue of causality.

Guessing correlated variables (to ensure less omitted variable bias) and setting up decent dummy variables is key if one wishes to peddle a narrative of causality. Even then, one can't break down the coefficient into components, and reasoning is required.