Now I’m gonna firstly place my definition of intelligence here, as to avoid future confusion. I define intelligence as one’s ability to think rationally, recognise patterns, so essentially their ability to learn new concepts and their problem solving ability.
I assert that people who attain the top scores in HSC school mathematics exams are not necessarily the cleverest. Getting 100% in HSC style exams (in recent exams anyways) just requires a basic understanding of the fundamentals, as well as minimising silly errors.
However I disagree when someone says that intelligence does not play a huge role in shaping one’s mathematical ability – just gonna put the harsh reality out there. Now, I attended the top selective high where 99.95% of the cohort has good /similar understanding of the core concepts. However, there are some people, despite not having any more mathematical knowledge/ understanding of fundamentals than others, who can instantly see ways to do a problem. Now assuming that everyone studied equally (which is a fair assumption to make at my school), the only MAJOR difference here would be differences in intelligence/ ability to think. So I assert that for these kinds of people, they really do differ from the rest because of their intelligence.
So to sum up let me just again reassert that school mathematics exams scores don’t mean much in revealing one’s intelligence, but rather it is those who can solve ‘hard’ problems who are truly intelligent. Of course, someone who has more knowledge than others has an advantage- there is no dispute to that. However, having come from a school where everyone has very similar amounts of knowledge+ motivation, yet huge disparities in problem solving ability exist, I’m gonna have to say that when someone says intelligence doesn’t play a role in shaping one’s mathematical abilities, they’re wrong.
This can be extended to all subjects actually, I don’t think any school exam scores should be a reflection of one’s ability to think or learn (because unfortunately, most exams are now about who rote learns the best responses rather than a reflection of their ability to think).
Now as to whether intelligence is fixed or not, I have not come across any reliable studies to show a strong favour of either. Though obviously, we would all (including geniuses) want the latter to be true