> Adding that these two youths came from a private school certainly relates to the "underachieving area" part of the story.
I don't want to take anything away from these two; the proof is novel and interesting and even if it wasn't novel after all it's still incredible to see high school students interested in math and capable of that level of reasoning.
But yeah, that the two researchers (they've earned the tittle by giving a conference talk!) are from a private, selective school undermines a lot the "bad area and underachieving" narrative. It reminds me of a tech company who had a panel about their black engineers, pointing to the gap between the proportion of black SWE in the bay area relative the the percentage of people who identify as black. Three out of the four panelists were Nigerian born. When discussing their path to tech, one of them explained it was hard for him to convince his parents that he was not going to study surgery like his father and uncle. I assumed it would have resonated with anyone from an "underachieving area" in the audience...
I don't want to take anything away from these two; the proof is novel and interesting and even if it wasn't novel after all it's still incredible to see high school students interested in math and capable of that level of reasoning.
But yeah, that the two researchers (they've earned the tittle by giving a conference talk!) are from a private, selective school undermines a lot the "bad area and underachieving" narrative. It reminds me of a tech company who had a panel about their black engineers, pointing to the gap between the proportion of black SWE in the bay area relative the the percentage of people who identify as black. Three out of the four panelists were Nigerian born. When discussing their path to tech, one of them explained it was hard for him to convince his parents that he was not going to study surgery like his father and uncle. I assumed it would have resonated with anyone from an "underachieving area" in the audience...