Tom Zhang and Perseverance

What struck me the most about Tom Zhang's interview was what he said about perseverance. " If we count the time I spent thinking about the problem, then it was more than 10 hours a day," he said. 10 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks in one year...for four years. In total, Zhang spent about 14,500 hours thinking about one problem. Earlier this summer I read a book that talked about why some people succeeded (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). Gladwell talked about how the most successful people all have worked at their goals for about ten thousand hours. Now, I can't be the one to suggest that Zhang reached a solution because he worked for more than ten thousand hours; the point is that he worked for a very long time and was persistent. Math is a very fair system- you get out of it what you put into it. Math is all about hard work and perseverance. Math is somewhat of a safe haven for people who appreciate certainty. There is always a solution in math, and the process is more important than the answer. Zhang's process took time and dedication and in the end he prevailed. There is beauty in math because hard work pays off.