...Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”, analyzes the traits of successful people in an incredibly unique perspective. Gladwell attempts to explain how the outliers of our society using statistical analysis , considering and explaining every confounding variable imaginable. A perfect quote from Gladwell perfectly exemplifies the overall theme on why individuals succeed or fail, “They had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of, who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from”. Though hindsight bias led to me believe it sounds quite logical; reading and understanding Gladwell’s message has forever changed my perspective on success in our society. The book changed my ability...
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...This book is all about how things around will be affected by a simple or small change. This book is entitled “The Tipping Point” and is written by Malcolm Gladwell. I believe this is the best book among the three that I’ve read. For me this is the most interesting book of the three. The reason for that is because the different stories here are more relatable than the stories from the other two books. There are so many things that are interesting about this book. The first thing that caught my attention was the first part of the book which contains the acclaims for this book. Just by reading those lines, you would get the feeling that there are a lot of things that you would learn from the book. True enough, once you’ve finished reading the book you would make certain realizations about life and agree with what Gladwell says in the book. The next part that caught my attention is the part where he talked about yawning being contagious. Before reading this part I already know that yawning is a contagious act, that if one person sees you yawning he or she would also yawn few moments after you started yawning. What I didn’t know is that just by also reading the word “yawn”, a person would also be yawning, and I’ve experienced it first hand when I read this part. I yawned a few times before I finished reading that part, and after reading that part I said to myself that I shouldn’t read when I’m tired especially when there is the word “yawn”. Next thing is chapter 1 when he started...
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...Malcolm Gladwell’s famous novel, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, opens up a new idea of how first impressions truly have a major impact within our minds. Gladwell is not only a well known best selling author, having all five of his books on New York times best selling list, but also a respectable journalist. Gladwell introduces his idea of “thin-slicing” through situations with both good and bad outcomes. “Thin-Slicing” is the idea that humans are able to make accurate judgments based on solely a “thin slice” of knowledge. Gladwell’s notion supports humans can make decisions with merely a blink of an eye and be accurate. These snap decisions are made unconsciously. Throughout his book, Gladwell shows that “thin-slicing” is the...
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...Outliers THE S T O R Y OF S U C C E S S MALCOLM G LAD W E L L # 1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink $27.99 $ 3 0 . 9 9 in C a n a d a Why d o s o m e p e o p l e succeed far more than others? T h e r e is a story that is usually told a b o u t extremely successful p e o p l e , a story that focuses o n intelligence a n d ambition. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell a r g u e s that the true story o f s u c c e s s is very different, a n d that if we want to u n d e r s t a n d h o w s o m e p e o p l e thrive, we s h o u l d s p e n d m o r e time l o o k i n g around them — at s u c h things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth d a t e . T h e story o f s u c c e s s is m o r e c o m p l e x — a n d a lot m o r e interesting — than it initially a p p e a r s . Outliers e x p l a i n s w h a t the B e a t l e s a n d Bill G a t e s have in c o m m o n , the e x t r a o r d i n a r y s u c c e s s o f A s i a n s at m a t h , the h i d d e n a d v a n t a g e s o f star athletes, why all t o p N e w York lawyers have the s a m e r é s u m é , a n d the r e a s o n y o u ' v e never h e a r d o f the w o r l d ' s s m a r t e s t m a n — all in terms o f g e n eration, family, c u l t u r e , a n d c l a s s . It matters w h a t year y o u were b o r n if y o u want to b e a S i l i c o n Valley billionaire, G l a d w e l l a r g u e s , a n d it matters w h e r e y o u w e r e b o r n if y o u want to b e a s u c cessful p i l o t . T...
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...Critical Essay – Short Essay Option Our second mind is not as simple as it seems. Blink is a behavioral economics book written in 2005 by British-Canadian Journalist Malcolm Gladwell, focusing on our ability to ‘’Thin Slice’’. He explains through this ability we are able to determine what is truly important from a narrow experience, suggesting our spontaneous decisions are often better than the ones we consider. Using several engaging examples, he warns however that this ability of ours is challenged by personal likes, dislikes and overload of information, and is in our best interest to train our first impression to understand this reality through experience. The lack of scientific research in Blink also suggests that it is anecdotal, but Gladwell accepts this reality himself and thoroughly explains every point he makes in regards to this single flaw. Drawing scenarios that practice this rapid cognition from science, advertising, medicine and many others, he is also able to directly engage the reader’s subconscious by random screening and thought provocation. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory brings awareness to the power of our unconscious decision-making and proposes various strategies that offer a solution to its fallacy, maintaining his veracity in the research presented despite the lack of scientific method. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory brings awareness to the power of our unconscious decision-making. Decisions made quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously. A...
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...wherein Malcolm Gladwell, a renowned writer, gives practical explanations of how extraordinary people gain success. The stories situated in the book always involve different aspects of success such as the environment, patience and hard work, coincidences and other things happening around. Basically, the ideas give „common-sense‟ answer to the question. These people have succeeded because of the things that surrounds them and not just only by themselves. As stated “It makes a difference where and when we grew up”, this clearly explains that a person don‟t achieve success not only by himself but it matters on the situations and opportunities that lies around him. Gladwell investigates place, time and culture of these success stories in order to come up with practical explanations behind it. This also includes the relevant events that happened in certain period of time where these people are part and been to these events. So in other words, these people have been to certain event in their lives that made them succeed. Gladwell thought of these idea to see the logic about being successful or not, in this case is by asking where these people came from. One way Gladwell explains it is by determining the important events in certain period of time which are based on patterns of birthdates of a group of people such as the Canadian hockey team, Czechoslovakian National Junior Soccer team and the people behind today‟s technology, MAC and PC. There are many different stories that Gladwell shared...
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...Review: Outliers Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers explores the societal forces that give opportunity to individuals willing to put in the effort to become successful. Through the events and experiments he has researched, Gladwell has come to the conclusion that to become a successful person you must be given a specific and miraculous string of opportunities that pave the way for you, insisting that there is no such creature as a “self-made man”. He argues that they “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” In scientific terms an...
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...Through multiple cases, Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” challenges the theories that success is self-made. He discovers hidden advantages and opportunities that allowed for people to become successful. He defines an outlier as “a person who doesn't fit into our normal understanding of achievement”, and attempts to convince the reader these outliers are beneficiaries or extraordinary opportunity and special circumstances. Part one of “Outliers” is centered around “The Matthew Effect”, stemming from the Bible, as in Matthew, one of the disciples just happened to be at the right place, right time, when Jesus picked him to become a disciple. The statistical advantage of time is looked at extensively in chapter one. After attending a Canadian professional...
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...In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success”, by Malcolm Gladwell, he reviews the lives of those people who have accomplished a lot and have been successful. Gladwell begins his book with the definition word "outliers”. According to Gladwell, outliers makes some people remarkably more successful than the other people. He thinks that these outliers are usually supposed to have talent and intelligence compared to an average and normal person. Gladwell shows these things by searching and looking at the background of some famous and remarkable outliers. Gladwell also takes an opposite view about how people achieve and manage high points of success. He states that definitely skills, abilities, knowledge and a lot of hard work are needed, and that success is also influenced by anyone. It means that people should look afar individual’s capability, excellence, worth, and value. In the first chapter, “The...
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...passages that both act as conclusion to the previous topic sentences and introduction to the next topic sentence. The other passages are longer because they are evidences that are used to support the topic sentence. For example, in paragraph 8, we can see how Gladwell slowly connects the previous topic sentences to his thesis statement: “In fact researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise 10,000 hours”. Because Gladwell starts this excerpt with a story as an introduction instead of with a thesis statement. He finds a need to create critical passages that not only can slowly lead the reader to the unfolding thesis statement “10000 hours rules” but also pose essential questions which can be used as topic sentence for the next story. ”Is the 10000 hour rule a general rule of success?”...
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...Some people believe that we have the ability to forge their own destinies. How much of what happens in our lives do we actually control? With strong evidence and logical reasoning, Gladwell builds a more convincing argument to support the claim that humans forge their own destinies through hard work and practice rather than Epstein's opposing position. The quotes Epstein uses from the sports gene to support his claim that physical ability is an advantage over athletic practice addresses only one aspect of one athlete's physical and potential impact. "Tendon length is not significantly impacted by training, but rather is a function of the distance between the calf muscle and the heel bone, which are connected by the tendon"(7). "The Achilles...
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...Compare/Contrast Essay: Malcolm Gladwell - “The 10,000 Hour Rule” Have you ever thought about what makes someone better than you? Is it innate talent, or is it thousands of hours of practice. Malcolm Gladwell argues that know one is just born innately gifted and through the years becomes better than everyone without practice, a lot of it. I agree with Gladwell on the point that “Achievement is talent plus preparation” (60). This is the point of view adopted by Malcolm Gladwell in his essay “The 10,000 Hour Rule” from Outliers: The Story of Success, published in 2008. However, Gladwell and I differ on his point of view about when you need to have reached your 10,000 hours. One area where Gladwell and I agree is that “Achievement is talent...
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...why, you might say “because I like it.” But what led you to take such decision? I was unaware that our brains unconsciously judge almost every decision we make. Until I read Malcom Gladwell’s Blink. Those two-second judgments is what Malcom Gladwell identifies as a snap judgment, a judgment so powerful and quite accurate, that is present in most of our decisions. Before the book I used to call this an intuition, but Gladwell rejects that definition. Blink, is a book that focuses on rapid cognition, and how our brain judges those first two seconds. At the same time, Gladwell addresses the question on when should we trust our snap judgments, and when should we measure our decisions? Or Are these judgments trusthworthy?...
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...Geniuses, Part 2, Chapter 4” by the Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell that success and achievement are accomplished through this sort of intelligence. One can argue that, based on the text, Gladwell has an intriguing and conceivable claim; however, he could improve some miniscule...
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...The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell provides a thought-provoking spin on stories of success. Gladwell looks deeper into each person’s or group’s rise to fame. He shows that success does not occur without some sort of “help.” In other words, successful people are put in a superior situation. One of Gladwell’s many intriguing points is that ten-thousand hours of practice at something will make you world class in that particular area. This can be one area of “help” that you need to succeed. Not just anyone can practice for ten-thousand hours at something, but if you have the right opportunity- Gladwell points out- you will be able to strive. A second attribute to success that Gladwell makes is birth dates. Being the correct age to pursue what...
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