outliers

When I first got this book, I did not expect it to be about what it was about. Outlier is a term that we use in math. Something out of the ordinary, a number that is not like the others, different. Who would have thought that this book was going to talk about people? I thought it was so clever to call people outliers. What an intelligent way to describe those people. To describe the people out of the ordinary, the talented ones and to explain why they are so. The first chapter is called the Matthew effect. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, opens the books by telling the reader that “people don’t rise from nothing”. He starts of by taking about it make a different when and where a person was born and grew up. Gladwell uses the example of hockey players and reveals that hockey players born earlier in the year are most likely to become the better hockey players than those who were born later in the year specifically because of their birth date. He explains that because someone is born earlier in the year, they have more time to grow and practice than someone who was born later in the year. A hockey player born in January would have a full year of experience more than a hockey player born in December of the same year. Later in the chapter, Gladwell talks about children being the youngest in the class and how parents aren’t worried about their struggle because they think that it will eventually go away. Gladwell says that it won’t go away just like that without any work being put towards getting better. He says that when children start school feeling inadequate and insufficient, that feeling will stick with them through the years. In the second chapter, Gladwell talks about what is called the 10,000-hour rule. I actually heard about this before so I knew where this chapter was heading. It’s a “rule” where one must spend at least 10,000 hours towards an activity in order to be a master at it. These 10,000 hours consists of hard work and practicing at this specific