The 10,000 Hour Rule is the idea that it takes about 10,000 hours to master a skill. In Outliers, Gladwell uses Bill Gates as an example. According to Gladwell, Gates spent approximately 10,000 hours practicing coding, honing the skills that he would later use to build his multi-billion dollar software company known as Microsoft. Bill Gates is a real-life example of the idiom “Practice makes perfect”.…
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.…
In chapter five of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, in which Malcolm Gladwell has several main points of focus, which correlate previous chapters and bring new ideas into sight. In the previous chapters, he talks about “thin-slicing” (Gladwell Ch. 1, Section 2, Paragraph 7), which is finding patterns in narrow windows of experience and also how snap judgment can help you in situations in which quick reactions are used. In chapter five he focuses on the other side of “thin-slicing” (Gladwell Ch. 1, Section 2, Paragraph 7), showing that you cannot always trust it, how emotional involvement can…
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…
Many of these ideas are applicable to the rest of our lives.In particular Malcolm Gladwell's book explains a wealth of interesting information about humans and the way we think. Much of this information comes in discrete chunks, each of the results of a different social science experiment. The Love Lab, Marriage and Morse code,and Importance of contempt. In these chapters Gladwell observes and explains how much you can find out about a person,and relationships by watching clips to viewing a room to labeling a marriage.…
As explained in Blink by Gladwell and Payne, unconscious discrimination is a type of discrimination that is very hard to recognize. We have all heard about explicit discrimination, which can take two forms: the individual level and the institutional level. At the individual level, people openly like. This can be seen in the case of bias hiring when an employer tells a postulant; “I will not hire you because you are a female.” At the institutional level, one of the most striking examples of discrimination occurs with the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany. These laws restricted the rights of German citizens that were Jews. People working in the Nazi institutions had to enforce these discriminatory laws even if they disagreed with them. By discriminating against Jews, they were only “doing their job and following orders”.…
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.…
Malcolm Gladwell’s 2006 essay Troublemakers provides an interesting discussion about how we use generalizations in organizing and regulating our society. He frames his discussion with a consideration of the 2005 law banning pit bulls in Ontario, but in between he refers to generalizations in insurance (young male drivers pay higher premiums), medicine (overweight males will be counseled to have their cholesterol checked), law enforcement (what markers are used to identify terrorists) and our perceptions about crime rates in New York City. The pit bull ban is the only law that he considers, the rest are practices or perceptions. Gladwell concludes that the ban on pit bulls is overbroad, because not all pit bulls are dangerous, and that it…
Malcolm Gladwell's, The Matthew Effect argues the opportunity in the country of Canada. The piece argues that the opportunity of the setup of ages being placed by year is unfair. Malcolm shows the example of how boy’s hockey is even subjected to this. In Canada, looking at the statistics of best players, you can see that the boys born in January, February, and March make up 40% of the country's best hockey players. With this being said Malcolm discovers that the cutoff line for age class hockey is January 1st. From the statistics given it leads to the information that boys born in closer to the cutoff mark have more experience than boys who have a summer or fall birthday. Malcolm argues that this opportunity is unfair. Barbara Ehrenreich's,…
In the first chapter of Outliers: The Matthew Effect, author Malcolm Gladwell introduces research done in showing that society has a unique way in perceiving success. He provides evidence of an uncontrollable source such as birthdates being a large factor in success by presenting the reader with charts. The author also tells of how children perceived as successful at a young age will continue to get ahead during life. The overabundance of proof shown in the text shows that the author has done an immense amount of research on this topic. Author Malcolm Gladwell effectively builds his argument of the connection of success to uncontrollable factors by appealing to the reader’s emotions, giving proof of research done by professionals, and giving…
1. In the novel, Outliers, the author, Malcolm Gladwell, defines key factors that leads one to be successful. To begin with, Gladwell asserts that “parentage and patronage” are key factors of success (19). In other words, success is measured based on one's maturity level. For example, a younger child in the same grade level as an older child is more likely to be at a disadvantage because he/sh e lacks the cognitive skills that the older child has developed. Therefore, the older child is placed in a more advanced program,which leads to a higher rate of success because of the opportunities the older child is exposed to (28). Furthermore, Gladwell claims that people who are blessed with more fortunate upbringings have higher chances of being successful. He emphasizes that individuals with more fortunate circumstances are given more practice time than the less fortunate; the countless hours of practice are a key factor to success (59). Another factor of success is one’s culture. Towards the end of his book, Gladwell provides an justification of how those that are Asian are more likely to succeed because of the legacy from past generations that they have a growth mindset (259). This legacy and mindset has been…
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…
The song “All I Want” by Kodaline refers to Holden’s feelings toward Phoebe near the end of the book. For example, when Holden is delusional, he thinks he is going to die of pneumonia and says, “...so finally what I figured I’d do, I figured I’d better sneak home and see her, in case I died and all” (Salinger 156). Holden’s one wish before he dies (or so he thinks) was to go see his kid sister Phoebe. Holden has a very close relationship with his sister, and they are both very fond of the other. This mindset is displayed by the members of Kodaline when they sing “‘cause if I could see your face once more/ I could die a happy man I’m sure” (Kodaline). While “All I Want” is admittedly about a romantic relationship and not one of a sibling nature,…
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell explores the idea of “thin-slicing,” which is the act of the brain only using a small bit of information to make a decision. These types of snap judgements are sometimes thought to be inferior to well thought out and studied decisions. Gladwell shows that well researched decisions are not always better decisions.…
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…