Notes on Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

On to the next one! Tipping Point was good, but I enjoyed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell even more. It delved into the stories of rare cases of success in a number of fields -- lawyers, entrepreneurs, health, pilots -- and showed that success is much less a factor of individual freak talent and much more a factor of being in the right place at the right time and in the right community.

Yes, individual talent and IQ matter, but only to a minimal extent; once they're above a certain minimal threshold, it's about other factors much more. Those other factors are individual hard work (10,000 hours of practice) and being in the right situation. The amazing statistics the book exposed about the birth dates of athletes and famous people were really interesting and showed that success is much more about being born in the right month and year than we expect.

Intro

• Roseto Italy
  
• Immigrants to US
  
• Vastly lower heart disease rate
  
• Not genes or food or location but social situation they set up
  
• 3 generations under 1 roof and ppl stopping to talk to each other
  
• Have to look beyond  individual to culture to understand health
  

Part 1 opportunity

Ch 1 Matthew effect

• Hockey teams
  
• Judged on Individual merit?
  
• Key is not who they are or what they are like
  
• Key is their situation and context
  
• Hockey players most born in January and Feb
  
• Nothing special about these months. Just jJn 1 is cutoff for teams so those who make it are about 1 year older
  
• Selection, screening, and superior experience to those just at cut off date
  
• Small initial advantage persists for years for sports and school
  
• Confusing maturity and ability
  
• Those who are successful get more practice
  
• Success is cumulative advantage
  
• Didn't start outlier; started just a bit better
  
• Systems that screen at precise date or too early in age aren't efficient
  
• Success not just simple function of individual merit; rules we write as society make huge difference
  
• Could educate kids in maturity groups based on quartile of year born in
  
• Big for his age
  

Ch 2: 10000 hour rule

• U Mich CS dept
  
• Bill Joy
  
• Created Unix, Sun, Java
  
• Just talent and merit?
  
• Is there innate talent? Yes
  
• But the smaller the role for talent and the bigger for preparation
  
• Star violin students research study: 10,000 hours of practice
  
• 3 hours per day over 10 years
  
• Magic number of greatness
  
• Applies across disciplines
  
• Almost none do it in less
  
• And almost none who do the time don't succeed
  
• Bill Joy programmed for 10k hours to learn
  
• Got to work on timeshare system 
  
• Beatles played for 8 hours per day, 7 days a week before getting discovered; their practice is what made them great
  
• Bill Gates
  
• Happened to go to elementary school with a rare computer
  
• Got many opportunities to practice
  
• Incredibly lucky series of events
  
• Not extraordinary talent but opportunity
  
• Most Silicon Valley moguls born around 1955 and had perfect age when minicomputer Altair came out in 1975
  
• Most of the richest men in history born in 1834 and had perfect age for industrial revolution
  

Ch 3 troubled geniuses part 1

• 1 vs 100 game
  
• Langham genius
  
• IQ has a threshold
  
• Just has to be high enough like 120
  
• Rest matters less
  
• Affirmative action students do just as well in life as white in study
  
• Nobel winners among all
  

Ch 4 the trouble with geniuses part 2

• Practical intelligence orthogonal from general intelligence
  
• Family background and class biggest determinant/separator between geniuses who succeeded and didn't
  

Ch 5 three lessons of joe

• Last partner of skadden
  
• Lesson 1: Importance of being Jewish
• Not of right background or class meant they were rejected from best firms
• So had to go out on own
  
• Accepted work others didn't want: proxy fights and takeovers
  
• What started as adversity became opportunity
  
• They happened to have practice of 10k hours in the fields that later became popular
  
• Lesson 2 demographic law
  
• Depression generation fewer babies
  
• Benefits of being born in smaller generation
  
• Lesson 3 the garment industry
  
• Jewish background in clothing work
  
• Immigrants sowing in apartments
  
• 3 factors that taught entrepreneurs skills and caused them to work hard: autonomy, complexity, connection between effort and reward
  
• Same 3 factors determine if work is satisfying and meaningful
  

Part 2 legacy

Ch 6 Kentucky die like a man like your brother did

• Killings between two families in small town in Kentucky
  
• Multiple famous family feuds in Appalachians
  
• Culture of honor among herders where man's reputation because depends on society
  
• As opposed to farmers whose crops can't be stolen
  
• Settled by scotch Irish who knew violence
  
• Reproduce in new world the culture of honor they had before
  
• In south, murders way more personal
  
• It matters where you're from including many generations back
  
• Experiments on culture of honor by insulting subjects
  
• Men who were from south were way more angry than north; that was only thing that mattered
  
• Call a southerner an asshole and he's itching for a fight
  
• Traditions and attitudes from forebears and legacy affect us just like background and cultural surroundings from part 1
  

Ch 7 theory of air crashes

• Korean Air had way more crashes
  
• Then turned itself around
  
• It did not succeed until it acknowledged the role of its cultural legacy
  
• Crash requires 7 human errors
  
• Requires lots of communication
  
• Mitigating tone: hedging to be polite with superior
  
• Bad when need to be direct in emergency
  
• Plane safest when flown by least experienced pilot because then crew won't be afraid to speak up
  
• Crashes might be due to captain's cultural background
  
• Hofstidi cultural dimensions
  
• tendencies, assumptions, reflexes handed down by generations
  
• Uncertainty avoidance, power distance
  
• Americans most willing to push back against superiors
  
• Colombians much less so because have higher respect of authority
  
• Required English fluency when fixing Korean air
  
• Language was key to separating pilots from Korean legacy
  
• In west it's transmitter's job to communicate clearly; in east, it's receivers
  

Ch 8 rice paddies and math tests

• Rice is life in south china
  
• 7 digits memory in US because we can memorize 2 second audio loop
  
• In China can memorize more numbers because each number is faster to say
  
• English counting system and number word naming irregular
  
• Asian is regular so Asian kids can count higher earlier than English
  
• Math more logical and enjoyable so kids do it better in Asia
  
• Easier to state fractions more logically
  
• Being good at math rooted in culture and language
  
• Cultural legacies matter
  
• Work on rice farm really hard and similar to Jewish garment work
  
• 3000 hours per yr
  
• Willingness to concentrate and not give up on hard problem directly related to math ability
  
• Seeing how long students spend filling out long test exactly predicts their math outcome
  
• Countries with culture of hard work ethic and long hours (proverbs about long hours of work in rice paddies) directly related to math ability
  

Ch 9 all my friends go to Kipp

• Kipp school
  
• Poor kids learn nothing over summer vacation but rich do, and both learn the same during the year so achievement gap all due to differences in summer
  
• Students in Asian schools get shorter break
  
• 50% more learning time at Kipp
  
• Not about intelligence or resources
  
• Ppl just need to be given a chance
  
• Make a league for hockey players born in second half of year
  
• More schools that make kids work longer
  

Epilogue

• Jamaica, story of his mom
  
• Mom owes success to timing of her birth and many other random occurrences
  
• Outliers are not outliers
  
• Just got lucky breaks
  
• Gates, Jobs, Joy born within 6 months of each other
  

---