Final answer:
The details about Katherine Johnson's early life, including her struggles in school and her early academic success, help us understand her later success at NASA.
Step-by-step explanation:
The details about Johnson's early life in paragraphs 2-3 help us understand her later success in several ways:
- Her struggles in school show how much she developed during her early life before working for NASA.
- By describing her love for counting, it is evident that Johnson was always passionate about math.
- Johnson's enrollment in college at just 15 years old emphasizes how different she was from her peers, demonstrating her exceptional academic abilities.
The detail from paragraphs 2-3 that best supports these points is: 'she so excelled that by age 10, she was in high school. By age 15, she’d started college!' This shows Johnson's early academic success that made her later accomplishments seem less impressive in comparison.