Outliers - by Malcolm Gladwell The story of success. Amazon review Aug 22nd 2009 by Simon Laub ------- An outlier is a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others in the sample. In 'Outliers' Malcolm Gladwell looks at Hockey players, software billionaires, Manhattan lawyers, Jamaicans, Koreans and many others and argues convincingly that noone ever makes it alone to the top. Where we're from matters, always - according to Gladwell. Take health. The conventional wisdom used to be that health depends to a great extend on ourselves - our genes. On our decisions - what we choose to eat, how we exercise, what medical services are available to us. Then came the Stewart Wolf study of the small city of Roseto in Pennsylvania. A city where it was common for many generations to live together under the same roof, a city of no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime, all in a protective social structure insulating citizens from the pressures of the modern world. The result - improved health. Health that came from the society surrounding the individual. A story that sets the stage for Gladwells other stories about success - success that depends on where we are from and who we are to begin with. --- 1975 was the dawn of the personal computer age. That was when the first personal computers made it to mainstream society. Gladwell mentions the $397 Altair 8800 on the cover of popular electronics in January 1975. Who was then in a position to take advantage of this? If you were too old in 1975 you already had a job working with mainframes and were probably not that interested in doing something new (and risky). So we can rule out all those born before say 1952 ... And you couldn't be to young either. Not surprisingly Bill Gates (1955), Paul Allen (1953) and Steve Balmer (1956) clocks the precise right age. Along with Steve Jobs (1955), Eric Schmidt (1955) etc. That they eventually win the game comes down to practice (before anyone else has it) - A community that gives them the opportunity to put in the 10.000 hours of practice that it takes to become good at anything. A nearby university that allows Bill G. to work with computers at an early age (and give him more practice time under his belt than competitors). Sure intelligence is important - but only up to a point - If you have I.Q. above a certain threshold, having more I.Q. wont make you more successful. What matters then is how well you do a divergence tests. In divergence tests, there isn't a simple right answer - but it is all about where you can go with what you have - a word, an image. In short imagination. In an old Califonia study kids are I.Q. tested, and the results are compared with their positions in life later on. The brightest (I.Q. wise) kids don't end up all that well, and the study doesn't pick out the kids who eventually becomes nobel laureates. The divergence part is missing. To make it and be a success you need to be "streetclever" as well. Take Oppenheimer. Robert Oppenheimer was appointed to scientific director of the Manhattan project. He doesnt know anything about equipment, is very impractical - and worse still -in graduate school he tried to kill his tutor. Thats not good on a C.V. Here you need practical intelligence to talk your case to others and get what you want. Obviously, Oppenheimer was good at this also. And gets the job - ahead of brighter and better people (I.Q. test wise). Gladwells message is clear enough. Intelligence is relevant only up to a point. Then you need hard work and opportunity. Where hard work is a prison sentence only if it has no meaning. Different cultures have different ideas about hard work. And how meaningful it is. Kalahari bushmen works 1000 hours a year, and hasnt taken to agriculture as there are still plenty of mongongo nuts in their world. Peasants in Europe worked 1200 hours a year, much in the summer, little in the winter. Rice field workers in China worked 3000 hours a year. Gladwell argues that this work morale is what benefits students doing science and math today. Simply - more work. And hard work is not a problem if is considered meaningful work. If the culture says it is meaningful. The garmant industry in New York around 1900 was another place of hard work - where east european jews could use their skills in the modern world. Learning the ropes, of the modern world, so to speak - not surprisingly Gladwell sees a straight line from this to successful jewish lawyers and doctors later in the 20th century. Their success had little to do with Torah studies, but all to do with the skills their parents picked up in the garmant industry, according to Gladwell. Success is grounded in advantages and inheritance - some deserved, some not. A brilliant book that makes you a little wiser on the world. Aug 21st 2009. -Simon Simon Laub www.simonlaub.net XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A day later, an anonymous reader gave me this comment on amazon: Aug 23rd 2009: "The garmant industry in New York around 1900 was another place of hard work - where east european jews could use their skills in the modern world. Learning the ropes so to speak - not surprisingly Gladwell sees a straight line from this to successful jewish lawyers and doctors later in the 20th century." There's actually a more straightforward explanation for this professional success. Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115. That's only modestly higher than the overall European average of 100, but the gap is large enough to produce a huge difference in the proportion of people going on to excel in higher education. When a group's average IQ is 100, the percentage of people above 140 is 0.4%; when the average is 110, the rate is 2.3%. G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659-693 (2006). homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf Also, in relation to Asian rice workers this overlooks the fact that Asian adoptees in white households end up performing at the same level as their biological peers, not their adoptive parents. The differences show up at around age 3 so it is ridiculous to attribute this to rice growing. http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html "Contrary to "culture" theory, the ethnic academic gaps are almost identical for transracially adopted children, and to the extent they are different they go in the opposite direction predicted by culture theory. The gap between whites and Asians fluctuated from 19 to .09 in the NAEP data while the gap in the adoption data is from 1/3 to 3 times larger. This is consistent with the Sue and Okazaki paper above which showed that contrary to popular anecdotes, the values that lead to higher academic grades are actually found more often in white homes. In other words Asian-Americans perform highly despite their Asian home cultural environment not because of it." There are also physiological differences that show up early see Rushton, J. P., & Ankney, C. D. (2009). Whole-brain size and general mental ability: A review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119, 691-731. Anonymous.