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A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

blog.benjamin-cabe.com

21–30 of 188 posts

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#21
post #6

Does anyone else approach these "teen invents x" or "wiz kid middle schooler discovers y" articles with extreme skepticism? About half the time the invention turns out to be bogus or trivial, and in the other half it comes to light the parents were behind it.

Yeah it's usually "adult who knows how to do a thing presents kid with all of the pieces and guidance to make it happen". Which is great, you should do that for kids, but the articles about it usually make one cringe.

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#24
post #7
post #3

I wonder what his parents do for a living. Just curious.

Does it matter? Watching everything through the myopic lens of "privilege" is wrong. A kid can have an idea and parents can help. For now, the set of {kids, parents} that can do that is limited. But technology changes and becomes more accessible. What matters is the new things that become not just possible but easy and cheap. For a previously "costly" problem that in 2012 would involve a 5 MP digital pictures + geota…

Pause a second and look at what you wrote and what you're responding to. You're arguing very passionately against a straw man, nobody mentioned privilege until you did.

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#25
The main invention is in the electronic nose. The kid just did the plumbing of connecting it to some ML library.

Of course, the electronic nose itself is a work of plumbing too, where some existing gas sensors are put on a pcb.

In short, nothing seems really new here, but the application is interesting. I guess it's always interesting when people start looking for correlations in data and get some positive results, so from that point of view it is noteworthy.

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#26

I wish I could read the paper. I’m interested in what kind of fungal pneumonia they were looking at. My googling got me to find the title on the Middle School Facebook page but not sure if it’s available ti read.

I doubt that it is possible to differentiate between fungal types using gas sensors trained on spores being released.

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#27
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? Watching everything through the myopic lens of "privilege" is wrong. A kid can have an idea and parents can help. For now, the set of {kids, parents} that can do that is limited. But technology changes and becomes more accessible. What matters is the new things that become not just possible but easy and cheap. For a previously "costly" problem that in 2012 would involve a 5 MP digital pictures + geota…

It does when the title says "13yo kid builds e-nose". It's not about privilege, it's about being honest. Maybe the title is honest and the kid is just very bright, that's cool too!

Yet most people seem to be jumping to the conclusion, making assumptions, and letting their views taint their judgment, without even knowing all the facts (see a comment below asking if the parents were already working in the field)

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#28

Cool. And, I have a 13-year and she is still, literally, crying over spilt milk, hacked Roblox merchandize, how done the steak is, why her monitor is tilted wrong, and why I din't warned her before rebooting the primary router.

> why I din't warned her before rebooting the primary router.

I’d be pissed too. You don’t mess with the router without warning people using it ;)

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#29

Cool. And, I have a 13-year and she is still, literally, crying over spilt milk, hacked Roblox merchandize, how done the steak is, why her monitor is tilted wrong, and why I din't warned her before rebooting the primary router.

Wonder where she got that from?

Re: A 13-year-old used my artificial nose to diagnose pneumonia

#30

I wish I could read the paper. I’m interested in what kind of fungal pneumonia they were looking at. My googling got me to find the title on the Middle School Facebook page but not sure if it’s available ti read.

I'll check with Caleb but I am guessing/hoping he will be willing to make the paper more broadly accessible soon.
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