Brittany Wenger is seventeen. She lives in
Remember senior year in high school? That’s the year you worked really hard to do
just enough to graduate while sneaking out with your friends as much as possible. Your parents and teachers had a name for this,
remember? They called it ‘senioritis,’
and usually the only effective way to treat the symptoms was with the repeated threat
of yet another year in high school.
For all I know, Brittany Wenger is just like any other high
school senior in that regard. But I do
know at least one thing that distinguishes her from everyone else in high
school, and I’m talking the history
of high school. Ms. Wenger has invented
a neural network that allows breast cancer tissue samples to be analyzed with
more than 99% accuracy. She taught
herself artificial intelligence programming so she could create her own neural
network, and then learned everything she needed to know about how breast cancer
is diagnosed from tissue samples so she could then ‘teach’ the computer program
to sort through all the data and reach an accurate conclusion more than 99
times out of 100.
Hey-ha-huh??!
And I thought I was a genius when I figured out how to
replace the rubber flush-flapper thingy in our toilet last week.
It’s true, though.
She did just that. The
seventeen-year-old found a way to make the most minimally invasive breast
cancer detection procedure, called fine
needle aspirate, almost 100% effective, where it had traditionally been
among the least.
I may not be a genius (see above), but to me this is Nobel
Prize-caliber stuff. Whether or not the folks in
Even though the contest was held last month, I only
discovered Ms. Wenger’s achievement by accident earlier this week. And that, in itself, raises a point. How is it that this story isn’t plastered
across newspapers, blared from TV sets, and heralded on credible news websites
all over the country? Fer cryin’ out
loud, Google is one of the icons of the information age, and on top of that, they
sponsored the contest, yet I still
had to google ‘google science fair’ to find the actual site. Seems to me they could have at least created
one of those cute, customized Google logos they like to do to publicize the
event.
I feel like we should be giving this kid a parade. Seriously, is there anybody here who hasn’t
lost someone or know someone who has had to battle for their life with breast
cancer? Shouldn’t we be showering this
brilliant young woman with public appreciation for her accomplishment? Shouldn’t she be in a commercial where they
show her being hoisted into the air by a legion of ecstatic fans while an announcer
says, “Brittany Wenger, you just invented a neural network that diagnoses
breast cancer with more than 99 percent accuracy, which could help save
thousands of women’s lives every year.
What are you going to do now?” And she responds excitedly: “I’m going to the Galapagos
Islands !” Which she is (it
was another one of the prizes for winning the Google Science Fair).
What is wrong with us that a seventeen-year-old girl can do
something like this, and it gets no reaction?
Aren’t we the least bit worried we might be sending the wrong message
here? Have we really reached the point
where, unless you’re an impossibly cute Disney channel star, a boob-jobbed and
belly-shirted reality show sensation, or former teenage celebrity engaging in
bad behavior, you don’t even make the cultural radar? Do we really want to teach our girls that to
receive attention they have to rely solely on the laws of physical attraction?
As the father of two daughters, I can only hope that’s not
the case. I want them to live in a world
where girls and women are recognized for the fullness of who they are, for their
amazing intelligence, and all of their gifts and beauty, and not just the disproportionately large,
shiny parts you see on some lonely trucker’s mudflaps.
For that reason, I would like to say thank you, Ms. Wenger,
for doing something completely rock-star awesome with yourself. In return, I solemnly promise not to make my
children hate you by bludgeoning them unrelentingly with your example.
I read several brief interviews with her, and a few of Ms.
Wenger’s comments really stood out. In
an article by John Roach on NBCNews.com, she said something that really smacked
me bum good. “I came across artificial intelligence and was just
enthralled. I went home the next day and bought a programming book and decided
that was what I was going to teach myself to do.” What an amazing and, might I add, completely
childish (though I mean that in the best possible way) thing to say.
Think about
it. What ‘adult’ would say such a
thing? Oh, we might be just as
enthralled as Ms. Wenger was by a subject like artificial intelligence (I said might), but how many of us would ever
say, “…so I decided to teach myself how to do it?” See, we adults know too much. We know that you just don’t teach yourself
how to program a computer with artificial intelligence. You have to take classes if you want to be
able to do that. You’ve got to get your
bachelor’s in Computer Science, then a Master’s in Advanced Computing Theory,
and a Ph.D. in Super-Duper-Uper Computing.
Then you’ve got to go to all the latest artificial intelligence
conferences, and workshops with names like “The Startling Implications Of Cloud
Computing On The Next Generation Of Neural Networks,” and seminars like “How To
Teach A Computer To Think Without Giving It Any Ideas About Taking Over The
World.”
And when a kid
comes along and says something like this to a grown-up, what is our initial
response? After laughing in their faces,
that is? “Well, someone’s got a lot to learn about how things work in the real
world.” And we say it like we know what
we’re talking about. And then we tell
them about all the classes and the degrees and the years of studying it takes
to even sniff something as complex as artificial intelligence.
Except they don’t
listen to us, do they? Maybe it’s because
they’re bored, or impatient. Who knows? They just get started, and then try to figure
it out as they go. The arrogance of
youth.
Thank God for
it.
Sometimes I think
it’s the grown-ups who really have the artificial intelligence.
In another
interview, this one with Mike Cassidy of Silicon Valley MercuryNews.com,
Brittany explained the solution to getting kids, any kids, more interested in
learning science. The key thing, she
says, is to let kids discover their interests. “You can really see how science does have the potential to revolutionize
the world,” she says. “If kids are exposed, they are more likely to find their
true passion, to be able to do whatever they want with science, rather than
being forced into it.”
I think we all
recognize the truth in that statement. Hey, for me as a kid, it was dinosaurs
and astronomy. Anything having to do
with either of those subjects was inherently fascinating to me. On the other hand, I really disliked math. But if, instead of asking me “what is 64
divided by 8,” my teacher said, “if there are 64 Protoceratops eggs spread
equally in 8 nests in a colony, how many eggs are in each one?” I would have had the answer in a snap. Want to move on to fractions? Fine.
Just throw in something like, “Suppose a pack of 12 Ornithomimuses
invaded the Protoceratops colony, and each Ornithomimus ate 3 eggs. How many eggs survived the incursion,
expressed as a fraction?” Percentages?
“Here’s the mass of each planet in our solar system and the
corresponding weight of a man standing on each one. Express the man’s relative weight on each
planet as a percentage of his normal Earth weight.” I not only would have found the answers to
the fifth decimal point, I would have gone on to find out how many
cheeseburgers the man on earth would have to eat to reach his relative weight
on Jupiter. I’m absolutely convinced I
could have taken college-level calculus in high school if only it had included
enough Ankylosauruses and Parasaurolophuses.
But we all know
that that’s just not the way education in this country works. Expressed succinctly, if you want to learn
your elementary school math, you better like fruit. And as far as “letting kids do whatever they
want with science” goes, we all know that’s not happening. Sometimes, though, with good reason. Did I ever tell the story about the kid who
did whatever he wanted with science, and promptly blew up our high school
chemistry room?
But I do believe
her larger point is valid, and that the way to get students interested in
science is by tapping into their existing passions, and exposing them to a wide
variety of things to help them discover new ones. I know this sounds crazy, but the funny thing
about learning is that people naturally want to know more about things they’re
interested in. And the advantage science
has is that there’s a branch of it for just about everything.
Why disregard all
those untapped reservoirs of passion?
There is no
question that we have to change the way we approach education if we want to
truly transform all of our students into passionate learners, whether it’s
science, math, or whatever. We have to
find out what gets each kid excited, and leverage that natural passion into
learning. Think how many physics lessons
could be derived from skateboarding, and how much logic and math could be
taught with video game design. We finally
have the technology and access to the vast amounts of information necessary to
reach kids wherever they can be reached.
Shame on us if, in spite of this, we decide to keep education moving
along its same old, inefficient, rickety mass production line just because
that’s what we know and are comfortable with.
Turns out Ms.
Wenger has given us a lot to think about, above and beyond her mere achievement
of improving the accuracy of breast cancer diagnostics. By the way, if you want to know more about
that, I encourage you to visit the Google Science Fair website and check out
her slide show presentation explaining how she did what she did. I predict you will be impressed and inspired
by what you see.
Oh, and Ms.
Wenger, good luck with senior year.
Seriously,
though, watch out for that whole senioritis thing. It has this much in common with breast cancer:
it can infect the best of us. Listen, I’m
sure you’re very busy now, but if you could solve that one, you’d have a
million grateful parents, each of whom would gladly do all your laundry while you’re in college. I know it’s not a trip to the Galapagos, or a
trophy made of Legos, but still, give it some thought, okay?
Excellent thoughts!
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