...OUTLIERS SUMMARY "Outlier" is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. It is basically anything out of the ordinary. Malcolm Gladwell started using that term in his book with same name to describe truly exceptional individuals who, in their field of expertise, are so superior that they define their own category of success. For Gladwell these individuals are outliers. He tries to understand the success of different successful people, such as, Bill Gates, Oppenheimer and even The Beatles. Looking into the lives of successful individuals, he helps us change the way we think about them. He claims that a large part of their success is not only because they had put in so much work and effort, but also because the right opportunities came along once they were at this expert level. Throughout the book, he mentions the “10,000 Hours Rule”, explaining that most people need around 10,000 hours to become an expert in their specific area. So basically, those who get good usually had the opportunity to practice. OPINION I found a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about his book in an interview, which I believe is totally fascinating and really makes you think about the achievements of these successful people in a different way. It is clear that hard work and determination are often necessary, however, luck can also help you along. This fact can be illustrated with the comparison he makes of two bright individuals with different backgrounds;...
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...Outliers: The Story of Success Analysis Latasha D. McCullar Managerial Leadership MNGT 5670 Dr. Rebecca Elliott October 16, 2013 Abstract Genius is over-rated. Success is not just about innate ability. It’s combined with a number of key factors such as opportunity, meaningful hard work (10,000 hours to gain mastery), and your cultural legacy. Random factors of chance, such as when and where you were born can influence the opportunities you have. Malcom Gladwell , the author of Outliners: The Story of Success, brings alive his assertions and thesis primarily through the use of individual success stories of athletes, computer genius, musicians, artist and community cultures. Introduction Gladwell uses a straight-forward, easy-to-digest style of mixing facts with examples and anecdotes in making his point that it is not shear genius or hard work alone that results in success. Instead, the he dives deep into the story behind exceptional performance in cultures, aptitude testing trends and individual achievements around the world. Gladwell argues that the upbringing of individuals greatly impacts their likelihood to succeed, including birth dates, access to specialized resources, parenting, and community culture. Discussion Gladwell separates the book into chapters highlighting the circumstances that resulted in the creation of each "outlier" he chooses to emphasize. According to Gladwell, the vast majority of hockey stars are born in the months of...
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...When I was first introduced to the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I viewed it as yet another piece of homework. Like any other assigned reading, I thought skimming the pages and developing a general understanding of each chapter would cut it; I was wrong. It did not take long to realize that Gladwell’s compelling pieces of work were investigating something that I personally had never put any extra thought into: the root causes of success. Prior to reading Outliers, I had foreseen success as something which occurred only under the circumstances of a lucky break, but as Gladwell stated: “Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities” (155). Through analyzing the evidence and personal stories which Gladwell incorporated throughout the novel, I have developed a deeper understanding of the term “success”, and my perception surrounding the subject has certainly transformed into something more elaborate. Many key factors of success were mentioned by Gladwell throughout the chapters of the book; however, one that seemingly stuck out to me was his interpretation of the ten-thousand hour rule. Gladwell wrote that “ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness” (41). What he was referring to here, is something I had never formerly acknowledged. Beforehand, I knew being successful required hard work, but this concept of ten thousand hours was hard to grasp. My ambiguity regarding Gladwell’s philosophy behind the...
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...When we think of those with high IQ scores, we often equate them to being successful humans. In other words, the higher the IQ, the more successful the person. Malcolm Gladwell and I disagree. Gladwell believes that “the relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.” Gladwell supports this claim by referencing the studies of Terman and Liam Hudson. Often times these high IQ scores are met with a placement in the infamous Gifted and Talented education program. Although I agree with Gladwell and Hudson on the idea that additional IQ points don’t give those with an IQ over 120 any real advantage, I cannot accept Terman’s idea that success and IQ are directly correlated and using this correlation to place children in harmful gifted programs. Gladwell makes an agreeable point that IQ only matters up to a point. He does acknowledge that IQ does play a role in success. But, he believes that any extra IQ points over 120 are somewhat useless, as once you are already incredibly smart with an IQ of 120, any extra IQ point won’t necessarily make you any more apt for success than someone with an IQ of exactly 120. Though I agree with this statement, I think Gladwell needs to do a better job of explaining where the number 120 came from. Is the same statement true for a person with an IQ of 119? Gladwell references British...
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...Justin Coleman CP 102 22, March 2017 The different views on success Merriam Webster describes success as an attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence. Everyone has a different idea of success and Mary Wollstonecraft and Benjamin Franklin are no exception. Mary Wollstonecraft views gender equality as success especially within education. Benjamin Franklin views success as a personal accomplishment coming from a strong work ethic. While Mary Wollstonecraft and Benjamin Franklin ideas of success are very different, both ultimately focused on bettering themselves, whether it be education or hard work. Mary Wollstonecraft grew up without a stable family and her parents left her and her sisters to live on their own. Her father was a heavy drinker; and with him leaving her to support her sisters, it was a big drive in why she is writing and fighting for women to have the same rights as men. There are more women who have grown up to support themselves and their families, but cannot live peacefully and happy because they cannot use their God given talent or work to support themselves and their families. Woman were taught to stay in the house and make sure the kids are fed and to continue to make their significant other happy. “True happiness, mean all the contentment, and virtuous satisfaction, that can be snatched in this imperfect state” (Wollstonecraft, 232). All the things men expect their women to do can be snatched away within seconds and women would not have nothing to stand on...
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...Arguing Ethically and Thinking Logically “Hidden advantage and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies” (Gladwell, 2011, p.19). This is one way that Gladwell introduces us to the idea of the “Mathew Effect.” He argues that being among the best at something, is not a result of innate talent but rather it is having the good fortune of being in a skill-learning environment at the right time and in the right place. In some cases, the conducive environment is simply being the right age with the right resources available. When age and resources line up at the on-set of learning a skill, this initial advantage accumulates; it exponentially increases over time. The result of successive advantages leads to what is mistaken as natural ability. Getting to the top then, is not because one is born with a talent but rather because it is honed from an initial advantage. But is that always true? It makes sense that the “Mathew Effect” could be true most of the time but what about outliers to the outliers? In A Rulebook for Argument, we are asked to consider “counter examples” (Weston, 2009, p.16) to arguments. I have one in my son, Tim, whom many consider an outlier. Coaches have said of Tim that, as a baseball player, he has natural talent. Gladwell writes that major league baseball players have more August birthdays versus July and that this is significant because, July is typically a cutoff age for non-school baseball leagues (Gladwell, 2011, p.26). Interestingly, my son was born...
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...A Roman poet, Horace once said “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” By reading Outliers: The story of success, I agree with his statement. Malcolm Gladwell established multiple individuals who took important responsible risks and were given opportunities that lead to their success in life. Two individuals that stood out were Joe Flom and Louis Borgenicht. They came with nothing and worked their way to the top of success. Flom appears to be shaped from the experiences in his environment. Even though he had great characteristics like talent, ambition, and intelligence, it was not adequate to succeed because he was a Jew. In order to illustrate the the validity of this point, Gladwell examines the lives and career of some of Flom’s other Jewish peers. Apparently, they all had similar experiences. They did not fit in big firms and faced discrimination due to their Jewish faith and culture. Even though they were qualified, and made great lawyers, they were not hired by law firms. Gladwell begins his discussion about heritage, cultural identity, and social systems. He talks about how these can be advantageous and disadvantageous with regards to individual success. According to Gladwell, Flom’s Jewishness did impact have a negative impact on his goal to succeed. “If you were not from the right background and religion and social class and you came out of law school in that era, you joined some smaller, second-rate...
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...The debate of “How to become successful? ” is one of the core questions every person and every parents in this society has been curious of since the dawn of human civilization. Malcolm Gladwell's chapter two and three, “The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1 and 2”, of his best selling book “Outliers” tries to further justify his idea that there are various unseen factors are at play that can determine if a person becomes successful or not in his life. With these chapters, he takes a deeper look into “The Matthew Effect” with the help of two so called geniuses Christopher Langan and Robert Oppenheimer. Much like previous chapters “The Matthew Effect” and “ 10,000 Hour Rule” , Gladwell's ideas can be considered fairly paradoxical even to this day. Like what Gladwell says, today's society still believes that a high IQ level or the status Geniuses is a sure way a person achieves fame, wealth and success. To dis-spell this general view, he compares each Christopher Langan and Robert Oppenheimer's lives from birth to adulthood and how each of them differentiate from their family background, how they were raised, what they expect of the society and an authoritative figure, how they they dealt with any obstacles. To sell his ideas to his audience, the readers of his best selling book; “Outliers”, he supports his comparison with research such as Professor of psychology at Stanford University's Lewis Teman and his long term study of his so called geniuses “termites”. And sociologist...
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...Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers argues success is achieved through a combination of circumstances such as birth date, amount of time invested into their passion, and environmental surroundings. His claim can be validated through close examination of strong evidence and examples provided in the text. Gladwell consistently proves his claim throughout the book and persuades the audience his claim is indeed factual. For instance, Malcom explains hockey player’s birth date is crucial to starting out with a slight advantage over the normal hockey player, which can eventually lead to life changing opportunities, often referred to as the “Matthew Effect.” People born between the months of January and March typically play professional hockey. This is a splendid example because advantages occur frequently in everyday life, which lets others gain a much needed edge on their opponent. Personally, I was born in late October, and the difference of 10 months is evident among my peers. Not only have they had 10 additional months of developing skills, they have more opportunities to learn and grow intellectually. As one can see, this advantage plays a crucial role and is often dismissed. Another way a person becomes successful is inputting time into their talent or passion. A popular quote often referenced to is “Success is 10 percent talent and 90 percent hard work.” If a person has the talent but not the desire to pursue it, will he succeed? Probably not. The 10,000 hour rule explains, “Researchers...
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...Malcolm Gladwell, in his nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), asserts that although success is somewhat related to innate talent and ambition, the ones who are truly successful have the ability to recognize and seize opportunities as well. Gladwell also states that seemingly unrelated external factors such as birth dates, culture, and environment are a crucial part of becoming a success. Throughout the book, the author strives to thoroughly explore the mystery of success. He reinforces his main idea through a multitude of stories pertaining to success and failure; the book includes stories of the Beatles, Bill Gates, and Korean Air. In the first chapter, Gladwell proves to us that the the birthdates of junior hockey players...
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...ISU Critical Essay – Short Essay Option Our second mind is not as simple as it seems. Blink is a behavioral economics book written in 2005 by British-Canadian Journalist Malcolm Gladwell, focusing on our ability to ‘’Thin Slice’’. He explains through this ability we are able to determine what is truly important from a narrow experience, suggesting our spontaneous decisions are often better than the ones we consider. Using several engaging examples, he warns however that this ability of ours is challenged by personal likes, dislikes and overload of information, and is in our best interest to train our first impression to understand this reality through experience. The lack of scientific research in Blink also suggests that it is anecdotal, but Gladwell accepts this reality himself and thoroughly explains every point he makes in regards to this single flaw. Drawing scenarios that practice this rapid cognition from science, advertising, medicine and many others, he is also able to directly engage the reader’s subconscious by random screening and thought provocation. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory brings awareness to the power of our unconscious decision-making and proposes various strategies that offer a solution to its fallacy, maintaining his veracity in the research presented despite the lack of scientific method. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory brings awareness to the power of our unconscious decision-making. Decisions made quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously...
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...OUTLIER’S REACTION PAPER The book „Outliers‟ is basically are success stories wherein Malcolm Gladwell, a renowned writer, gives practical explanations of how extraordinary people gain success. The stories situated in the book always involve different aspects of success such as the environment, patience and hard work, coincidences and other things happening around. Basically, the ideas give „common-sense‟ answer to the question. These people have succeeded because of the things that surrounds them and not just only by themselves. As stated “It makes a difference where and when we grew up”, this clearly explains that a person don‟t achieve success not only by himself but it matters on the situations and opportunities that lies around him. Gladwell investigates place, time and culture of these success stories in order to come up with practical explanations behind it. This also includes the relevant events that happened in certain period of time where these people are part and been to these events. So in other words, these people have been to certain event in their lives that made them succeed. Gladwell thought of these idea to see the logic about being successful or not, in this case is by asking where these people came from. One way Gladwell explains it is by determining the important events in certain period of time which are based on patterns of birthdates of a group of people such as the Canadian hockey team, Czechoslovakian National Junior Soccer team and the people behind...
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...Liliana Tenorio Sherry AP Psychology - 3 27 August 2015 Book Review: Outliers Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers explores the societal forces that give opportunity to individuals willing to put in the effort to become successful. Through the events and experiments he has researched, Gladwell has come to the conclusion that to become a successful person you must be given a specific and miraculous string of opportunities that pave the way for you, insisting that there is no such creature as a “self-made man”. He argues that they “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” In scientific terms an outlier is something that, despite all circumstances, stands out among the other data. In Gladwell’s terms, it is a person who, unlike everyone else, is given the correct circumstances and opportunities to rise above and utilize certain benefits like how and where they were raised, their location and resources around them, and even the month they were born in. He claims that these and more are all factors that play into success only if the true element, opportunity, is seized. Part One of Outliers explores something Gladwell researched called “The Matthew Effect” which clarifies ‘timing’ as a facet of opportunity. He shows a spreadsheet of the names and birthdays of the highest ranked Canadian hockey players and points out that the majority...
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...Through multiple cases, Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” challenges the theories that success is self-made. He discovers hidden advantages and opportunities that allowed for people to become successful. He defines an outlier as “a person who doesn't fit into our normal understanding of achievement”, and attempts to convince the reader these outliers are beneficiaries or extraordinary opportunity and special circumstances. Part one of “Outliers” is centered around “The Matthew Effect”, stemming from the Bible, as in Matthew, one of the disciples just happened to be at the right place, right time, when Jesus picked him to become a disciple. The statistical advantage of time is looked at extensively in chapter one. After attending a Canadian professional hockey game, Gladwell took notice at the amount of birthdays that fell in the January, February, and March months, as compared to the later months closer to December. Gladwell concluded, that kids born in months closer to January 1st, held a compounded advantage over the kids that were born closer to the end of the year. These kids were naturally older, therefore usually bigger, which meant they were picked first for teams, and hence got better coaching. He noted that this occurred in most professional sports. In chapter two, Gladwell admits that just because you're born in the earlier months, you're not necessarily going to be a professional athlete. He adds to his original claim that 10,000 hours of practice is needed before you...
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... In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success”, by Malcolm Gladwell, he reviews the lives of those people who have accomplished a lot and have been successful. Gladwell begins his book with the definition word "outliers”. According to Gladwell, outliers makes some people remarkably more successful than the other people. He thinks that these outliers are usually supposed to have talent and intelligence compared to an average and normal person. Gladwell shows these things by searching and looking at the background of some famous and remarkable outliers. Gladwell also takes an opposite view about how people achieve and manage high points of success. He states that definitely skills, abilities, knowledge and a lot of hard work are needed, and that success is also influenced by anyone. It means that people should look afar individual’s capability, excellence, worth, and value. In the first chapter, “The Matthew Effect”, Gladwell starts the chapter by describing the Canadian hockey player’s rise to the top of the sport in Canada. The young boy is discovered by a talent scout that helped him to rise to the top of hockey meritocracy in Canada. The young boy’s individual merit is the reason for his success. He succeeded because he performed well basing on his own superior ability. According in this chapter, “Success in hockey is based on individual merit- and both of those words are important” (Gladwell 17). It is true because the young boy wouldn’t be successful if he...
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