3 ms·

Depends on how motivated the 19 year old was, and how much freedom they had to focus on what was important to them. By the age of 14 or 15, most intelligent an

Depends on how motivated the 19 year old was, and how much freedom they had to focus on what was important to them. By the age of 14 or 15, most intelligent and motivated people have enough education to start learning advanced processes and systems. Say you start at 14, if you are focussed, by the time you are 19, you will have had 12,000+ hours of opportunity to develop expertise in your field. And Ms. Holmes sounds very capable (Learned Mandarin in her spare time as a teenager, as a result spent a summer at the Genome Institute in Singapore,etc, etc,...) I would expect that there is a significant (if not excessively large) population of 19 year olds out there that can not only invent, and understand, but also design, and prototype advanced technological platforms of the same complexity identified in this patent. We had a 13 year old in my Computing Science Undergraduate course at SFU who just absorbed and aced every math course he encountered, zero effort at homework or note taking. Some people are capable of great accomplishments at a very young age, and strictly speaking, 19 is not particularly young.

w1ntermute 12y ago
> Ms. Holmes sounds very capable (Learned Mandarin in her spare time as a teenager, as a result spent a summer at the Genome Institute in Singapore,etc, etc,...) Actually, that anecdote made it evident that the reporter clearly didn't do his research. If he had, he would have known that one of Singapore's draws since its inception has been its English fluency. This is particularly true in its white collar/STEM companies and research institutes. Moreover, many of Singapore's ethnic Chinese are non-native Mandarin speakers, being of Southern Chinese descent. They would almost certainly feel more comfortable conversing in English than in Mandarin, particularly if they are highly educated.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  I wonder if the Genome Institute has a lot of Chinese Nationals? But yes, agreed - I've been in Singapore for 14+ Months, and have never run into a White Collar worker who could not speak fluent english. Written English is hit and miss, but spoken english is definitely the Universal common language for business in Singapore.

w1ntermute 12y ago

> Ms. Holmes sounds very capable (Learned Mandarin in her spare time as a teenager, as a result spent a summer at the Genome Institute in Singapore,etc, etc,...) Actually, that anecdote made it evident that the reporter clearly didn't do his research. If he had, he would have known that one of Singapore's draws since its inception has been its English fluency. This is particularly true in its white collar/STEM companies and research institutes. Moreover, many of Singapore's ethnic Chinese are non-native Mandarin speakers, being of Southern Chinese descent. They would almost certainly feel more comfortable conversing in English than in Mandarin, particularly if they are highly educated.

ghshephard 12y ago
I wonder if the Genome Institute has a lot of Chinese Nationals? But yes, agreed - I've been in Singapore for 14+ Months, and have never run into a White Collar worker who could not speak fluent english. Written English is hit and miss, but spoken english is definitely the Universal common language for business in Singapore.