I couldn't help but notice the discrepancies between the article and reality:
Bill Gates, the world's richest human, is a more promising candidate for those who want to explain success through talent. He became fascinated by computers as a kid and says he wrote his first piece of software at age 13; it was a program that played ticktacktoe. The problem is that nothing in his story suggests extraordinary abilities.
From wikipedia:
"Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test[17] and subsequently enrolled at Harvard College in the fall of 1973.[18] Prior to the mid 1990s, an SAT score of 1590 was equivalent to an IQ of about 170 (roughly the one in a million level),[19] a figure that would frequently be cited by the press.[20]"
"This photo's from Lakeside High School, a private school that Paul Allen and I attended. Paul was two years ahead of me in school, looking here you might think he was about ten years older than I am...This particular room was very important cause this is where the first computer connection was created ...the mothers club funded that teletype this was when I was in eighth grade and first figuring out how to use the computer, and a bunch of kids came down and were fascinated but the two who really stuck to it the most were Paul and I. In fact, people thought it was strange that Paul kept talking to a kid who was two years younger than him, but I had won this nationwide math contest and so Paul knew I thought I could figure stuff out and he kept challenging me saying hey can you understand this or you know can you figure out how to do that and so he and I became very close friends and that led directly to the creation of Microsoft only about five years later."
Microsoft without Gates, as narrated by Bill Gates.
From an interview with Playboy in the early nineties:
GATES: I was 11. But he was an enlightened guy. He was always challenging me. He would ask me questions, but he would never tell me whether my answer was right or not. He would say, That's an OK answer. Then our time would always be up and he'd give me more stuff to read.
PLAYBOY: Ever wonder what might have become of you if you had gone to public school instead of Lakeside, where you met Paul Allen and fell in love with computers?
GATES: I'd be a better street fighter.
PLAYBOY: When did you know you had something special to offer? When did you become aware you were different?
GATES: [Big raspberry] I have something special to offer, Mom! Mom, I just figured it out: I have something special to offer! So don't make me eat my beans.
PLAYBOY: You know what we mean.
GATES: When I was young we used to read books over the summer and get little colored bookmarks for each one. There were girls who had read maybe 15 books. I'd read 30. Numbers two through 99 were all girls, and there I was at number one. I thought, Well, this is weird, this is very strange. I also liked taking tests. I happened to be good at it. Certain subjects came easily, like math. All the science stuff. I would just read the textbooks in the first few days of class.
I know what you're saying, but those quotes also describe deliberate practice... look how hard Gates worked at 11 yo, and in what way.
If (and I don't know if he did or not) Bill Gates had been practicing those skills since the age of 3 or so (as Tiger Woods did), one would expect him to be highly capable by the age of 11, and to score well in any test of those skills. etc
Bill Gates, the world's richest human, is a more promising candidate for those who want to explain success through talent. He became fascinated by computers as a kid and says he wrote his first piece of software at age 13; it was a program that played ticktacktoe. The problem is that nothing in his story suggests extraordinary abilities.
From wikipedia:
"Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test[17] and subsequently enrolled at Harvard College in the fall of 1973.[18] Prior to the mid 1990s, an SAT score of 1590 was equivalent to an IQ of about 170 (roughly the one in a million level),[19] a figure that would frequently be cited by the press.[20]"
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
"This photo's from Lakeside High School, a private school that Paul Allen and I attended. Paul was two years ahead of me in school, looking here you might think he was about ten years older than I am...This particular room was very important cause this is where the first computer connection was created ...the mothers club funded that teletype this was when I was in eighth grade and first figuring out how to use the computer, and a bunch of kids came down and were fascinated but the two who really stuck to it the most were Paul and I. In fact, people thought it was strange that Paul kept talking to a kid who was two years younger than him, but I had won this nationwide math contest and so Paul knew I thought I could figure stuff out and he kept challenging me saying hey can you understand this or you know can you figure out how to do that and so he and I became very close friends and that led directly to the creation of Microsoft only about five years later."
Microsoft without Gates, as narrated by Bill Gates.
Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/storysupplement/gates...
From an interview with Playboy in the early nineties: GATES: I was 11. But he was an enlightened guy. He was always challenging me. He would ask me questions, but he would never tell me whether my answer was right or not. He would say, That's an OK answer. Then our time would always be up and he'd give me more stuff to read.
PLAYBOY: Ever wonder what might have become of you if you had gone to public school instead of Lakeside, where you met Paul Allen and fell in love with computers?
GATES: I'd be a better street fighter.
PLAYBOY: When did you know you had something special to offer? When did you become aware you were different?
GATES: [Big raspberry] I have something special to offer, Mom! Mom, I just figured it out: I have something special to offer! So don't make me eat my beans.
PLAYBOY: You know what we mean.
GATES: When I was young we used to read books over the summer and get little colored bookmarks for each one. There were girls who had read maybe 15 books. I'd read 30. Numbers two through 99 were all girls, and there I was at number one. I thought, Well, this is weird, this is very strange. I also liked taking tests. I happened to be good at it. Certain subjects came easily, like math. All the science stuff. I would just read the textbooks in the first few days of class.
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Bill.Gates.html
I recommend CNN learn to use google.