+1, I didn't think of my upbringing as "underprivileged" in any way until I got to college and later did a math-adjacent PhD and was increasingly surrounded by people who had been doing math circle-type enrichment throughout their childhoods. I was OK at math but not especially precocious. I represented my middle school at a couple of local math competitions and didn't do very well, but looking back, it's kind of weird that I didn't have any help preparing at all.
Thinking about this more in the last year or two has led me to shift a lot of my charitable giving to math circle-type programs, even though I know they're less verifiable than a lot of the (pre-longtermist) effective altruism causes -- I think that kind of mathematical thinking is a very valuable tool that is not so easy to come by without these kinds of programs.
Thinking about this more in the last year or two has led me to shift a lot of my charitable giving to math circle-type programs, even though I know they're less verifiable than a lot of the (pre-longtermist) effective altruism causes -- I think that kind of mathematical thinking is a very valuable tool that is not so easy to come by without these kinds of programs.