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Book contains some interesting and provocative ideas, especially for educators and those concerned with education. His last chapter - about the KIPP schools - is a fascinating plea for American schools to infuse more rigor (and quantity) to the educational school year. As a main part of Gladwell's thesis is that how hard one works (and is willing to work) is endemic to one's likelihood of success, we set students up for failure by not expecting them to work as hard as other countries expect of their students. This is especially true in the two chapters devoted to debunking the myth that intelligence is the key to success. Unfortunately, Dan Goleman beat him to the punch way back in 1995 with his book "Emotional Intelligence: Why it matters more than IQ.". If readers keep that in mind, they won't be too disappointed by the methods or originality of the research. His job is to weave together an interesting story, which is something Gladwell does exceedingly well. If all you want is some good entertainment and fodder for cocktail party discussions, Outliers might make a nice addition to your bookshelves.

The main tenet of Outliers is that there is a logic behind why some people become successful, and it has more to do with legacy and opportunity than high IQ. He simply makes the point that both encountered the kind of "right place at the right time" opportunity that allowed them to capitalize on their talent, a delineation that often separates moderate from extraordinary success. The author asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man, that "the true origins of high achievement" lie instead in the circumstances and influences of one's upbringing, combined with excellent timing. Gladwell suggests that things like what income level, culture, and time of a child's birth are important contributors to success, as well as a person's tenacity and agility. As the last of these is the least conventional, think of it this way: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and many other computer masterminds would likely not have distinguished themselves.

We read this book for our book club, and I found it very interesting! Although, there were some things that I thought were perhaps a bit of a stretch, I loved to learn the backgrounds of the people he discussed and the possibilities of the effect it had on shaping their futures. It will definitely be an interesting discussion at book club.

Malcolm Gladwell is in this book looking at the hidden patterns behind success. Since early 18th century there has been a cult of the 'genius', e.g. a believe that achievement in arts and sciences is linked to being a 'genius', some mythical quality which falls outside of normal experience and is something like a gift from the gods. Gladwell does well in attacking the notion that genius is god given. He (to my understanding) does not dispute that some people for example have musical talent while others have not. But to become a superstar amongst thousands of musically gifted it also requires hard work. And hard work in its turn requires that you have a supportive family and a suitable material background - e.g. if you have to work all day on the farm you will not be able to spend much time on piano lessons. And to some extent hard work and determination even trumps talent. Yet first of all - is this really news? I remember learning that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Secondly - many of the examples he uses seem to be statistically irrelevant. For your career success it is obviously better to have an IQ of 120 rather than 70. Yet will someone with an IQ of 130 enjoy more success than someone with an IQ of 120? Not only can it be debated how meaningful IQ measurements above 120 really are, also, like in many other fields, there are some threshholds above which other factors start to count. With cars in F1, above a certain top speed to add more speed does not help, factors like agility etc. come into play. And his example regarding the influence of the date of birth on your success in sports - well, I checked the German National Soccer team. The players were born in the following quarters of the year: Q1: 4; Q2: 6; Q3: 6; Q4: 6. This is as even as it gets in statistics. Then he even tries to link performance to culture. For example by linking the undeniable superiority of Asian high school students in certain fields to a culture of rice growing. First - why does he link it to rice growing rather than the many thousands of years of confucian tradition of learning? At least the latter would explain why students from North China (where no rice is grown) also outperform their peers in American highschools. And, as it seems, this way of learning seems to produce very few or no outliers, e.g. people who outperform their peers not by a few degrees but like a genius outperforms others. Though their might be other reasons (history, prejudice....) involved in explaining why there are so few East Asian Nobel Laureates. Conveniently he also does not really discuss brilliant performers which did not have the favourable conditions which maybe a Bill Gates or The Beatles had. Why was Bobby Fischer a brilliant chess player long before he could have clocked the learning hours which Gladwell thinks neccessary for brilliance? And Fischer surely did not have the right background. Srinivasa Ramanujan had a reasonably well protected childhood, but how on earth could he, within one year of encountering formal mathematics, master more mathematics then a typical college student? And this at the age of 11. So, summed up, this book is fun to read, it is an eye opener of some kind, but the author is far to much in love with his own prejudices and ideas to consider inconvenient facts.

The inclusion of charts, graphs, and lists in Outliers suggests that the book will be scientific in its attempt to show significant factors in the roots or causes of success. Closer examination reveals, however, that many fallacies in reasoning--for example, reasoning from anecdotes, metaphors, and correlations--throw his contentions into question or at least should make the reader question the significance of what he is saying. However the most egregious fallacy is "hypothesis contrary to fact." Although used frequently in informal speech, this device which postulates what might be true if something else had not happened, proves nothing. According to Gladwell, the Beatles would not have been famous if they hadn't had a 10 year period of practice, Bill Gates owes his success to having access to a computer lab when he was in school, the first officer of Korean Airlines plane could have landed the plane if he hadn't shown such deference to the pilot. Or consider," If a million more teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?" Gladwell seems to have a New Age or pop sensibility in that he favors intuition over logic, is poor in analysis, revels in the irrelevant, is preoccupied with appearances, thinks you can detect lying from facial expressions, exaggerates the role of culture in health, and dismisses logical argument in favor of provoking thought. Readers thinking about enriching Gladwell even further by buying his book might consult various reviews: Michiko Kakutani and Stephen Pinker (Harvard psychologist) in the New York Times book review, Richard Posner in The New Republic, and Maureen Tkacik in the Nation. Some of their criticisms: lack of technical grounding in statistics and psychology; occasionally blunders into spectacular failings; interviews experts and comes to banal, obtuse, or flat wrong generalizations; undermines ideals of intelligence in favor of luck, opportunity, intuition; contradicts himself frequently; frequently amazed or flabbergasted like naive observer. A couple of Gladwell's statements: Hunter gatherers had a pretty leisurely life; everything we've learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course; to build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success with a society that provides advantages for all; the outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all; who we are cannot be separated from where we're from and when we ignore that, planes crash; success is not a random act-- it arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities. In short, Gladwell is a sloppy thinker and his conclusions about success are insignificant--either they're common generalizations or unproven assertions.

Reviews

This book dissects what factors create a successful person. Gladwell admits that there must be a minimum of inate ability which exceeds the average, but he demonstrates that ability alone cannot guarantee success. Other factors that affect success are family background, ethnicity, persistence, practice, and luck. Being born at the right place at the right time has as much to do with success as education. This is luck pure and simple. As a student of statistics I know that one can cite statistics to support any theory. One just chooses particular statistics. Gladwell's theories are interesting and thought provoking but should not be taken as the gospel. His theories dictate different solutions for educational dilemmas. Here , however, is an example of a fallacy. He determines that every music maestro completes 10,000 hours of practice. An ordinary musical performer will complete 6000 hours and music teachers will complete 4000 hours. He deduces that every highly successful person has engaged in 10,000 hours of practice in his/her chosen field. Gladwell concludes that 10,000 hours of practice is the path to success. But he cannot address the issue of whether or not a more talented musician tends to practice more. Perhaps, the more talented musician derives more pleasure out of his production and thus is induced to practice more hours. So does the mastery come from practice or does the practice arise from the talent. There is no way to separate these threads and Gladwell does not attempt to do so. Perhpas, they are too entwined to be separated. If you read this book for other theories of what makes people successful but not for rules set in stone, you will be satisfied and rewarded. Clearly, the implications his theories have for closing the gap between the poor and the rich in schools is itself worth the read. Still without this analysis most people would agree that a longer school day, more homework, and shorter summer vacations will increase poor children's learning. He does not address how that same formula would affect rich children's learning. That is the fallacy. Still this is an easy breezy read about the social phenomenon of success.

The Author dissects sociology first, then turns it inside out. Excellent book and very inciteful.

This is a excellent book. It explains how successful people have had help of somekind, be it mentors, parents, teachers, or just being in the right place at the right time. Even birth. I have always felt they had some kind of help and I was correct.

The common conception is that success is based upon intelligence: Orientals are more intelligent, therefore they excel in academics; the poor, living in slums, are not bright, therefore they achieve little or no success. Gladwell demonstrates with many examples that his notion is wrong. Scientists have found that the people of Roseto, Pennsylvania, for example, of Italian descent, live longer than their neighbors or their Italian ancestors because they socialize, and the socialization reduces their tensions. But, in another example, parents can affect children. A genius whose parents never taught him how to relate to other people and who never learnt it on his own, remained a farmer throughout his life, while individuals with much lower IQs accomplished much because they were taught how to deal with people. Similarly, descendants of feuding Appalachians absorbed their ancestors' manners and tended to become angry and aggressive and vindictive. Much more than IQ, persistence and practice lead to success. Gladwell shows how people such as Bill Gates, the Beatles, and even Mozart, despite their innate skills and intelligence, would not have been successful if they did not practice for some 10,000 hours. Similarly, studies have shown that by extending the daily hours of schooling of slum children, giving them three hours of homework after leaving school at 5 PM, and cutting down on their summer vacation, led to a sizable percentage of these children being able to attend college and secure good jobs. He shows also that Orientals do not have a higher IQ than other people. They are descendants of ancestors who worked on rice paddies virtually every hour of the day 360 days a year. The work required meticulous care. This way of acting and thinking affected their posterity and prompted them to achieve and seem smarter than others.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now Malcolm Gladwell points out the obvious. Or what should have been the obvious. Using statistics and a type of insight, he finds that to be successful there is a minimum of natural ability and downright luck. Even them it does not guarantee want Malcolm supposed success is. This book is a fun and easy to read book. But do not let it fool you into thinking that this is light reading or just the popular science of the day. There is a dead serious theory that appears to really apply (split infinitives allowed here.) Knowing this theory will help you to make the requirements for success instead of just guessing at them. At least I came away with a different paradigm, and now see everything in the world differently. It has been suggested that regardless of the factors in this book that one may be content with a job that fits his/her value-system. I must have been schizophrenic in a job sense. In the U.S. Army and Reserves, I well enjoyed being a mechanic and power systems maintenance sergeant. While at the same time, I was a business/engineering systems analyst in the civilian world. So this book helps me look back to see how I found myself in the situation. With a little bit of blooming luck. How to Lie with Statistics