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New Research Shows Cognitive Decline Begins At 45
An anonymous reader writes "New research shows people might start to suffer from cognitive decline as early as age 45. The research, which looked at over 7000 people between the ages of 45 and 70 when the study started, watched participants over a 10 year period. Disturbingly enough, even the youngest participants started declining immediately."
This is why we should move the Social Security retirement age down to 55. It would free up jobs for the young, and let us old folks relax with our monthly check and medicare.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Ah but teaching, even teaching a cognition heavy top, does not necessarily require much cognition. The noncognition memory way to teach is "why I remember back in '63 another young man just like you making the same mistake with integration by parts and what I told him back in '63 was..." Then there is the non-cognition cheerleader way to teach which just amounts to telling you that you can do it. And the non-cognition drill sgt way to teach is just telling you that you will do it.
Calc hasn't changed much in a couple hundred years, at least at the undergrad level. Now a math teaching job that would require some cognition would be designing a "how to prove Fermats last theorem" class. So do you start with the full modularity theorem even though only the semistable elliptic curves are necessary for FLT and the full modularity theorem was proven after FLT, but maybe you should introduce the full theory as a concept and then go in depth into just semi-stable elliptic curves, or ... Now experience does enter into this so you need to correct for that to test pure cognition.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I had a calculus tutor in high school, he was retired and had to have been at least 70, but he was brilliant and his analytical skills don't seem to have declined at all.
I would expect that the amount you exercise your brain, and how healthy you eat/exercise, plays a big role.
I'm pushing 60 and have noticed that my cognitive abilities have declined. I'm still just as good with stuff I have learned as I used to be, I haven't forgot much. What is declining is the speed that I can learn new stuff. It's takes me more work and time now to pick up on new concepts than it used to.
So I'm not surprised that your calculus tutor is brilliant in a field he's been working in all of his life and perhaps he is one of those exceptional people who don't decline like most but sometimes it's the exception that proves the rule.