Preview

Outliers Gladwell Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
455 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Outliers Gladwell Summary
Outliers is Malcolm Gladwell's examination of what makes some people a lot more successful than others. These "outliers," as he calls them, are commonly thought to possess some sort of talent and intelligence far above a normal average person, but he also looks at this popular belief by looking at the background of some famous outliers.
Gladwell begins his research in a small town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. The town is known for having a remarkably low rate of heart disease among its residents. After eliminating possible causes such as diet, genetics and other factors, researchers state that it is the social structure of the tight-knit community that keeps them relatively healthy. The town is founded by Italian immigrants from the same place
…show more content…
He finds that in each time, these successful people have a bigger opportunities than others to gain an enormous amount of experience. Bill Gates had access to a computer terminal while he was in middle school, at a time when only large schools and corporations had computers. The Beatles are hired to play almost every day in Hamburg nightclubs before they start seeing success as a recording act.
In addition to receiving an opportunity to gain experience, a successful person also benefits from his cultural legacy. Gladwell compares the legacies of Asian cultures that center on a year-round intensive farming of rice with Western cultures that center on farming less intensive crops. Asian cultures appreciate hard work more, he claims, and this is partly demonstrated in the longer school years they have for their children. He describes that a New York City school that use this Asian model of schooling into a poor neighborhood would receive good results.
Gladwell informs his readers with many examples that apply his theories about experience, opportunity, and cultural legacy to his own family, explaining the conditions that allow his grandparents and mother to succeed in

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Outliers Gladwell Summary

    • 392 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Outliers Summer Reading Assignment Introduction: The beginning of the book, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, starts off with the story of the Roseto Mystery. This is referencing from a true story taken place in a small town named Roseto in Pennsylvania. The name Roseto originated from Italy, this is named so because the people who make up Roseto, Pennsylvania are immigrants from Italy. People from this small, self-sufficient town amazed many doctors such as Stewart Wolf; the fact that heart disease is less common for men under the age of sixty-five.…

    • 392 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers focuses on the concept of success. Through various case studies and examples he challenges the notion that an individual's Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a direct predictor of an individual's success. Gladwell's carefully chosen case studies and the manner in which he presents them is how he is able to connect to his audience. In the span of these two chapter the author references several areas of popular culture, sprinkles in statics and historical tidbits, all the while emphasizing his stance that "success" is independent of…

    • 89 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In chapter two of Gladwell’s book, he states “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours”, this means that in order to achieve maximum potential in a subject, many thousand hours must be put in to develop a talent (Gladwell 40). A direct example of talent is the pop culture icon, the Beatles. The Beatles is the band that started “The British Invasion” of American music. In the Beatles early days as performers they played at a nightclub in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles grew their talents over the course of their time playing at the club. They played over 270 times in one year and a half at this club, which gave them the chance to develop as musicians and move to America to become one of the most famous bands…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While going through the PBS website called Power of Illusion, we found many things that were new to us and that surprised us. The things that were new to us was the idea of race is actually a modern idea. Ancient societies did not divide people according to physical differences. Another idea that was new to us, was the adding of race to our census was not added until 1790, additionally the race of “Mexican” was not added until 1930. What surprised us the most was that us as humans actually have not been around long enough to put ourselves in subcategories based on our race or ethnicity.…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever had to make a split second decision? Have you ever mad an impulse judgment without knowing all the facts? You probably have; its human nature. Whether its reading body language, processing facial expressions, or even having someone rub you the wrong way, your gut feeling or intuition about situations can be described in a different manner. In the book “Blink” By Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell describes his theory on thin slicing, how it works and how we can utilize this unconscious tool for our own benefit. Thin slicing is when the unconscious mind automatically identifies patterns developed from past experiences and makes what Gladwell calls snap judgments. He shows several examples of when thin slicing can be beneficial as well as a few flaws in the slicing process. One of the main points to the thin slicing process is that only small amounts of data are required so long as it’s the right data in making the proper snap judgment. This point is made in the examples that Gladwell uses with the Getty Museum, John…

    • 1255 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the First Chapter of the book “the outliers”, Gladwell gives the reader a overall view of what his big message is in the book. What he is trying to inform the reader.…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell presents his thesis of small tipping points to a bigger problem in the very title of the book. Within the first chapter, he introduces the simple idea that there are three simple “tipping points” that causes a large problem. From there, he elaborates on his different causes in a full chapter with other examples to help prove his point. Gladwell uses plenty of examples that the general population could pull from memory easily and then proceeds to use these examples to make more challenging ideas easier to understand. For example, Gladwell uses the famous Paul Revere ride within the second chapter, explaining the importance in a word of mouth epidemic (Gladwell). Through the example of Paul Revere and his famous word of mouth…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book Outliers written by Maclolm Gladwell is a book about success. Throughout the book he gives numerous examples of how people have achieved and in some instances, not achieved success. Popular belief would suggest that people who are considered outliers have gotten there through hard work and innate talent. Gladwell however, suggest that something is contributing to people being able to seek the levels of success that would make them an outlier. Gladwell believes that hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies are the main factors of predicting success. Gladwell makes strong arguments to back up his claims chapter after chapter in the book. While I was reading Outliers one…

    • 821 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Outliers: The Story of Success Chapter 3 and 4 “The Trouble with Geniuses 1 and 2 ” by Gladwell shows that two phenomenal genius person, but both are not the same.…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell Outliers

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Gladwell gives us plenty of examples of known outliers in the world and through them Gladwell tells the secrets in becoming an outlier. In the first part of the book we learn about opportunities and through those opportunities given to us, we can become successful if we seize them. Talking about Bill Joy, Gladwell writes, “before he could become an expert, someone had to give him the opportunity to learn how to be an expert” (P.46).…

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell in the fifth chapter to Outliers, "The Three Lessons of Joe Flom", argues that even if you were born into the lowest stature, poverty, and was given life in the wrong life, there is a small door of a slice of opportunites being given to the poorest. Gladwell supports his argument by illustrating several different people who were going through the same scenario as Joe Flom- being born into the poverty class stature- and were had difficulty trying to "fit-in" with society. Despite even trying to get to their goal, and failures, in the end, they did not give up because they had other mean's of alternatives to help out with their dilemma and quickly bail them out in dire times. The author's purpose is to show the aspect of how,…

    • 177 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The novel Outliers, aims to investigate the very thing we want for our family, our students, and ourselves. For most of our lives we have believed that with hard work, anyone can achieve success. That had to be the reason that poor immigrants like Andrew Carnegie and college dropouts like Bill Gates achieved unimaginable wealth. Most of us were taught that working harder than anyone else would lead to ultimate success.…

    • 1864 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In chapter Eight of the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell claims that Asian people are more likely to develop and have better mathematical skills than Western people because of their cultural background. Gladwell explains how difficult it is to farm rice without advance equipment yet high percentage of Asian family handled to maintain and produce good quality of rice for years. Gladwell also mentions how farming rice requires about 3000 hours of care in a year which led to shaping Asian people’s personal qualities such as patience, motivation, and hard work. Gladwell then demonstrates how these cultural developed qualities encourages Asians to excel in math because they are more likely to put in hours and dedicate themselves to stick with math…

    • 186 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    On page 285, Gladwell writes, “The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.” An outlier is someone or something that is valued different from a main body. Gladwell is saying that in the end these outliers are not as different from everybody else. These people were just given advantages, or born into a well off family that helped them grow into a highly successful individual. Others are not as lucky as some and they grow to be the ordinary working-class individual. This quote by Gladwell, affects my outlook on my upcoming academic life by making it hazy. I was always so sure that somehow I was different and that I have achieved all I have on my own. Therefore, I thought for sure I could make it into an ivy league school. However, now I see that I will need some help to get there and who knows if it will come. In the end, I’m going to continue to study and thrive in my academic life ,so that hopefully I can reach my university goal. While reading this book and understanding its lessons, I have come to conclude, that I am only at the beginning of the story of my own success. First of all, there are many more things for me to achieve and I haven’t even begun to attempt…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Outliers Analysis

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages

    As I read Outliers, an excellent book by Malcom Gladwell also author of the Tipping Point one of my favorite marketing books I couldn’t help being reminded of the movie Good Will Hunting. There is a particular scene in the movie where Matt Damon, playing a poor teen from Southern Boston confronts a wealthy MIT student. Damon tells him, “You were born on third base and you think you hit a triple.” In other words, we often over-attribute our successes to our natural talents. But really, those talents and abilities came about through a series of explainable, fortunate circumstances that we should recognize, learn to use wisely and be grateful for.…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays