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Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

But why does the title focus on the person's age, instead of their skill? This should just read "Grad student finds classical alternative to quantum recommendation algorithm". Sure, he's young, but that's also 100% irrelevant to the actual work presented.

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His youth is remarkable, so they remarked on it. I'm not sure what about this troubles you.

Given the audience of the magazine in question, writing the headline to focus on how young he is (which tells us nothing in relation to quantum computing) instead of the fact that this is a grad student (which DOES tell us something: it gives readers a frame of reference in terms of this person's academic knowledge and skillsets) is disappointing at best, and clickbait at worst.

It may not seem as noteworthy to the HN crowd given the demographics, however his age makes it all the more impressive.

What makes it impressive is that this is a grad student. By all means, compound that in the article by going "it's a teenager" but calling an 18 year old going on 19 a teenager is kiiind of pushing it for the sake of getting more clicks.

Yes, he's doing amazing work at a young age, and that's super special. But from a result perspective, this is special because it's a grad student doing the work that usually happens at the phd or faculty level.

Because it makes more people click on the link.

true words.

both his work and the age at which he has done his work are impressive. Why do you think these two must be mutually exclusive?

Why are you imagining me saying they must be? I'm talking about the headline, not the article.

Highlighting his age in the headline tells us nothing, whereas highlighting that this is a grad student tells us why this is remarkable. You age doesn't say anything about what your skillset is, whereas your academic level is a damn fine indicator in this context.

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