
12-year-old uses Dungeons and Dragons to help scientist dad with his research - ColinWright
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/10/30/12-year-old-uses-dungeons-and-dragons-to-help-scientist-dad-with-his-research/
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Bud
The payoff of this article is even better than the headline hints at; I was
expecting the kid to be involved in some interesting, but relatively
peripheral way. The kid's idea was actually central, and the kid apparently
did the bulk of the work, too. Really fun reading.

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tankbot
He (the kid) was listed as First Author with his affiliation, Lord Byng
Secondary School. How cool is that?

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zitterbewegung
I wonder if he is the youngest person with a finite erdos number then.

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kerneis
Look like Biology Letters accept articles from even younger people:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/12/2...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/12/21/eight-
year-old-children-publish-bee-study-in-royal-society-journal/)

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user24
Seems like the writeup in TFA missed an opportunity to educate us about how to
involve youngsters in science, breezing over how "He persuaded Julian’s
teacher to give him some time away from school to test his ideas for himself".

Seems to me that _that_ is where the real broad-appeal lesson lies.

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otakucode
Good job on the dads part for talking about cognitive processing at the dinner
table to his 12 year old son! When you treat adolescents like thinking adults,
they almost always prove themselves to be extremely capable. So many people
see the result of treating adolescents like imbeciles that can't be trusted
with the simplest things and just conclude that it must be a natural property
of being that age, it's really sad.

And kudos to young Mr. Levy for thinking creatively enough to bring us new
insights into the workings of the human mind!

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chrislo
A link to the full paper:

[http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10...](http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10/25/rsbl.2012.0850.full.pdf)

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mcgain
Great work from a 12 (or did it say 14?) year old.

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Brashman
I saw both. May have started the work when he was 12 and published at 14.

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Evbn
Ghostbusters' Vigo had prior art.

