Hmm feels like an Outliers effect going on : When looking at top 0.1% of people, basically everything needs to go perfect, talent, work effort, family history, birth month, ect. Also, the data does appear to be super noisy.

Steve Wozniak's dad taught him lots of things when he was growing up (according to Gina Smith's biography). It made me feel almost jealous.

Imagine what we could do if we had ongoing infusions of real practical information throughout our childhoods?

The study was published through NBER this week

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W24062

Not been through the article yet, but the first thing that comes to mind - Why did Columbus discover America, why not his father?

Patent Applicant =/= Inventor

Very true. My dad worked with an engineer who would routinely steal the ideas and work of other engineers and patent them under his name

If you want to have blue eyes, it helps a lot if your dad has blue eyes.

Ah, another fantastic article reducing lifes choices down to statistical analysis. If you want to be an inventor then work towards it.

Where does the 'wish to become an inventor' come from?

I wanted to become an inventor...

... so I taught my dad to be an inventor first. And helped him earn a lot of money. And that increased my own chances :)