Comment by philipwhiuk
4 days ago
> But if you want to live around people who know how to code, you don’t move to Springfield Illinois.
And if you want to find the best mathematician you stay in academic circles. But the best mathematician of your era might be in a random district in India. So you shouldn't immediately exclude everywhere else, or your 'optimisation' may be a relatively low local maximum.
It is impossible for an individual to do this search themself, so you have to have some global sorting. Top-down approaches include math competitions and national testing. More federated approaches include just... moving to communities where the average is closer to you.