Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success

By on July 1st, 2009

As with any Gladwell, the stories should be enjoyed rather than summarized – the following should jolt the memory of any one who has given the book a once-over.

  • Outliers: The Story of Success
  • Malcolm Gladwell 2008

  • Great read, but it's possible to get too excited about his theories

    Great read, but it's possible to get too excited about his theories

  • Introduction
    • The Roseto Mystery
      • These people were dying of old age. That’s it.
      • People in Pennsylvania who were immune to all the other things that everyone else faced. Heart attacks were the leading cause of death in men under 65 in 1950’s.
      • But in Roseto – no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. No peptic ulcers. Food didn’t explain the findings. Culture did.
      • No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.
  • Part One: Opportunity
    • The Matthew Effect
      • Success in hockey is based on individual merit?
      • Clustering of players birthdays in January – based on age cutoff
    • The 10000 hour rule
      • Bill Joy and Beatles’ story
      • Musician study – no “naturals” who succeeded with less practice, no “grinds” who did not succeed with more practice.
      • Happy coincidences that led Bill Gates to develop programming skills.
      • List of the 75 richest people in human history – 14 are Americans born within 9 years of each other in the mid-19th century. It just matterd how old you were when the economic transformation happened.
      • Birthdays of Gates, Ballmer, Allen, Joy, Sun Microsystems founders
    • The trouble with Geniuses, Part 1
      • Knowledge of a boy’s IQ is of little help if you are faced with a formful of clever boys
      • Christopher Langan – IQ 195
      • Terman decided to do longitudinal study of child geniuses.
      • Once someone’s IQ has reached around 120, it doesn’t seem to have any real world advantage. Someone with an IQ of 130 is just as likely to win a Nobel Prize as someone at 180.
      • Minority students at UMich who didn’t slightly underperform majority students, they did every bit as well – threshold.
    • The trouble with Geniuses, Part 2
      • Langan’s story vs Oppenheimer’s. Lack of communication, persona. Different backgrounds. Langan raised poor.
      • Practical intelligence; knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.
      • Middle-class parenting: concerted cultivation – an attempt to actively foster and assess a child’s talents, opinions and skills.
      • Poor parents – strategy of “accomplishment of natural growth” – they see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own.
      • Terman’s C’s were squandered talent – not given the right community.
    • The Three lessons of Joe Flom
      • The importance of being Jewish – meant you did dirty work which became valuable.
      • Demographic luck – born at the right time
      • The garment industry and meaningful work – the lessons those workers brought home to children turned out to be critical for getting ahead.
      • Family trees of jewish supermarket owner immigrants
  • Part Two: Legacy
    • Harlan, Kentucky
      • Die like a man, like your brother did!
      • “Asshole” test
    • The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes
      • Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot.
      • Korean crashes.
      • Loss rate for United airlines from 1988-98 was .27 per million departures. Korean air was 4.79 per million.
      • Power-distance index countries.
    • Rice Paddies and Math Tests
      • No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
      • Rice paddies must be exactly right. Contrast with !Kung bushmen attitude – there will always be enough food.
      • Chinese syllables shorter -> more memory
      • Measuring how hard you are willing to work -> ability on Math tests. Erling Boe, Univ of Pennsylvania
    • Marita’s Bargain
      • All my friends now are from KIPP
      • When it comes to reading skills, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session.
      • The school year in the US is on average 180 days long. The South Korean school year is 220 days long. The Japanese school year is 243 days long.
      • 5.30am -11.30pm school days for 12 year old Marita
      • Trading social background for academic results
      • Outliers are those who have been given opportunities and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.
  • Epilogue
    • A Jamaican Story
      • If a progeny of a young colored children is brought forth, these are emancipated.
      • Gladwell’s personal story. Outliers are not outliers if you consider the extraordinary backgrounds that make them up.
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