Comment by taeric

Right, I've also seen people that couldn't get some higher math items because they haven't learned to recognize some things on sight. Curves are a good example. You should be able to roughly sight identify basic curves. Or distributions based on their shape. With obvious caveats.

I suspect this is a lot like being able to recognize a piece of art to the artist by sight. Strictly, not required. But a lot of great artists can do it.

For real fun, I saw an interview with Magnus Carlsen where someone was quizzing him on famous games. He was able to say the match on the first 2-3 moves a remarkable number of times.