(Wayne Gretzky, born January 26th 1961)
We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth… To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and the arbitrary advantages that today determine success… with a society that provides opportunities for all.
The above statement pretty much sums up Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis statement in Outliers. He aims to elucidate the many factors that precipitate success in individuals that lie outside their individual ability and drive. However this book is not nearly as dull as the above statements suggests it could be. He skillfully combines a decent amount of data and statistics relating to incredibly interesting cases with clever analysis and detailed description.
Probably the most famous case that Gladwell uses is that of the success of Canadian hockey players born in certain months. If you look at the months in which elite hockey players are born roughly 40 percent of them will have been born in the three-month period between January and March. Furthermore this number decreases 10 percent for every three months so that thirty percent of them will be born between April and June and so on for the rest of the months. Is it the case that people born in those months are just better at hockey than those born in December? Of course not.
The reasoning behind the elite hockey player birth month discrepancy is this: the system is set up for those with early birthdays to succeed. Canadian hockey is highly organized (like baseball in America and soccer in Europe) in that every year or so kids are judged by their skills, and then sorted into leagues in the following season depending on their skill level. This seems like a reasonable approach, the cream will rise to the top. This would be true of adults where 6 months doesn’t mean a lot in terms of aging, but for 10 year olds this is a huge amount. Thus the kids born early in the year (the cut off date for leagues is January 1) have a distinct advantage over the late year kids just because they are slightly older and thus more physically mature. As they get pushed into the higher level leagues they get more attention and better coaching, until the gap is widened so much that the late year kids have no chance of making it.
This example is interesting in its own right, but really shines a light on how we think about success and those who achieve it. The analysis above can be used for many situations, and one of the most startling is that the same thing happens when you look at birth dates and success in school. As many of you recall the same sort of sorting happens in primary schools. Gladwell describes the results of one such study below.
At four-year colleges in the United States… students belonging to the relatively youngest group in their class are underrepresented by about 11.6 percent. That initial difference in maturity doesn’t go away with time. It persists. And for thousands of students, that initial disadvantage is the difference between going to college… and not.
This should be an eye-opening statistic, 11.6 percent is a huge number! So if you were/are fairly successful in school and you were an early month birthday or were held back for a year to avoid being the young kid, you should really consider yourself lucky and thank your parents (thanks Mom!).
Gladwell spends the rest of the book describing other examples where one might look at success and say ‘that person just tried harder and was smarter’, where if we look closer the culture and environment that that person grew up in had just as much, if not more, influence in their success. He does this for Bill Gates (and other silicon valley kings), New York Jewish Lawyers, Robert Oppenheimer, Asians being good at math, and many other examples. He successfully describes the situation they were in, and what eventually led to their success. Gladwell does tend to downplay the innate ability of these successful people. Obviously they are very gifted and if you replaced Bill Gates with someone in the exact same situation they most likely would not have had nearly the success of Gates. Gladwell recognizes their ability, but tries to focus on the other factors determining their success seeing that society and our culture already does a good enough job of promoting the ‘self-made man’.
It’s hard to walk the line between general cultural analysis and creating a prejudice. Using the example that Asians are better at math (it has to do not only with their culture and attitude towards work but also how their languages are constructed, if you are interested) is a dicey move, seeing that it could easily degenerate into ridiculous stereotypes. Gladwell does a good job of explaining what he means and giving supporting evidence so he doesn’t come off as someone who is trying to reinforce cultural stereotypes.
I actually found his discussions of the importance of culture quite refreshing. Our country and world is way too politically correct these days. Some (but not nearly all) stereotypes exist for a reason. Asians as a whole are better at math! There is data and statistics showing this. There is a high percentage of lawyers in New York which are Jewish, and they are great lawyers! These are not opinions but fact. Gladwell’s attempt to uncover why these things are true is a worthwhile and interesting effort. Only if we understand where certain developed skills come from, and why some kinds of people have more success than others at the same task, can we start to ‘even the playing field’ and give everyone the chance to rise to the top. Imagine if Canada restructured its junior hockey leagues to give everyone an equal shot of being a high level pro. There might be a Sidney Crosby every couple of years instead of once a generation.
(Interesting note, Crosby was actually born in August. Maybe he's the real 'outlier'.)
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