Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell
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Book Reviews of Outliers: The Story of Success
Book Review: DISAPPOINTED in Gladwell: Bad Journalism to make a point to wrong audience...
Summary: 1 Stars
I like Malcolm, I really do. However I can not endorse with clear conscience his recent book. This book is fraught with incomplete and sometimes downright inaccurate statistics that are made up to make the point that Malcolm is trying to make (see some examples below).
I think the fundamental problem is as follows; Malcolm's intended audience for this book were public policy makers but most of his readers are the general public. Malcolm wants to convince policy makers that by providing opportunities for all of our population, we can create a nation of more successful people and hence a more successful nation -- a fine thesis that no one in their right mind will disagree. Problem starts in the book when he starts to make up statistics to make his point repeatedly. Additionally while he is addressing the policy makers on why equal opportunity is important for higher rates of success, he forgets that most of his readers are going to be general public. As a result his book is giving a bad advice to the general public that right opportunities and not their efforts are responsible for their success in life.
Problem 1 with the book: bad journalism and false statistics to support writer's arguments: Malcolm expounds a theory that in computer /software industry wild success is primarily based on when you were born and if you were not born within some magic years which put you at the right age when computer industry took off then you are out of luck. To support his theory he repeatedly gives examples of well known computer industry success stories like Bill Gates, Bill Joy. Afterwards he claims that no one became a billionaire in software industry if they were born outside those magic years within 9 years of Bill Gates birth date. If you were not engaged in software industry you will probably believe him as well. However for anyone remotely in tune with software industry will notice obvious misses of Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brim, or Facebook's Mark Zukerberg or Netscape's Mark Andreesen or Skype's Ahti Heinla, Kazaa's Niklas Zenntrom and the list goes on and on. This was a prime example of lying with statistics that we hope our journalists and educators avoid at all costs. For the untrained minds this is the most pernicious lies as they are supported with numbers.
Malcolm was using his statistics to make a point that external factors play a determining role in our success. While his secondary point that in addition of being born at the right time, you must have had 10,000 hours of computer programming training by the late 70s to be well at the right time and in the right place with the right training. His argument about 10,000 hours of training to become an expert in any field is well supported by third party research. However neither one of his points take into account the personal ambition, motivation, vision, resolve and doggedness that successful people showed to make it big. After all hundreds of other kids were born in those same years and had similar amount of training in computer programming but for some reason only two names really stood out.
While I can forgive the mistake of not emphasizing the importance of personal ambition and effort but I can not endorse a successful writer massaging statistical data to make a point. If data does not directly support our thesis then it is our responsibility to either propose theory as our opinion, conjecture or a theory as opposed to a statistical truth that conveniently avoids accounting for counterpoints to our opinion.
Problem 2: Bad Messaging:
It is writer's job to judge and speak to his audience and talk in an appropriate language to get the right message across. In the process writer is supposed to bring peer reviewed research, his own opinions or his strong convincing power to put across his points. However is writer misjudges who is his audience he stands the risk of speaking to the unintended audience. In the best case that makes his writing ineffective but in the worst case it can actually give the unintended wrong message to the unintended audience.
As I mentioned earlier, this book was intended for public policy makers to convince them the importance of policies like `no child left behind'. To make his point Malcolm obviously had to convey the point that external factors that can be affected by good public policy are determining factors for success of individuals. However as majority of the readers of outliers are general public, the message real message that is being taken away from the book is that individual effort is not the determining factor of individual success and person has to depend on external factors for their ultimate success.
Needless to say that a good reader will not take the messages as negatively as I mentioned above but I state them more strongly than probably warranted to ensure that reader is warned.
I will be posting more details on this on my site at www.shadmanzafar.com
Book Review: DISAPPOINTED in Gladwell: Bad Journalism to make a point to wrong audience...
Summary: 1 Stars
I like Malcolm, I really do. However I can not endorse with clear conscience his recent book. This book is fraught with incomplete and sometimes downright inaccurate statistics that are made up to make the point that Malcolm is trying to make (see some examples below).
I think the fundamental problem is as follows; Malcolm's intended audience for this book were public policy makers but most of his readers are the general public. Malcolm wants to convince policy makers that by providing opportunities for all of our population, we can create a nation of more successful people and hence a more successful nation -- a fine thesis that no one in their right mind will disagree. Problem starts in the book when he starts to make up statistics to make his point repeatedly. Additionally while he is addressing the policy makers on why equal opportunity is important for higher rates of success, he forgets that most of his readers are going to be general public. As a result his book is giving a bad advice to the general public that right opportunities and not their efforts are responsible for their success in life.
Problem 1 with the book: bad journalism and false statistics to support writer's arguments: Malcolm expounds a theory that in computer /software industry wild success is primarily based on when you were born and if you were not born within some magic years which put you at the right age when computer industry took off then you are out of luck. To support his theory he repeatedly gives examples of well known computer industry success stories like Bill Gates, Bill Joy. Afterwards he claims that no one became a billionaire in software industry if they were born outside those magic years within 9 years of Bill Gates birth date. If you were not engaged in software industry you will probably believe him as well. However for anyone remotely in tune with software industry will notice obvious misses of Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brim, or Facebook's Mark Zukerberg or Netscape's Mark Andreesen or Skype's Ahti Heinla, Kazaa's Niklas Zenntrom and the list goes on and on. This was a prime example of lying with statistics that we hope our journalists and educators avoid at all costs. For the untrained minds this is the most pernicious lies as they are supported with numbers.
Malcolm was using his statistics to make a point that external factors play a determining role in our success. While his secondary point that in addition of being born at the right time, you must have had 10,000 hours of computer programming training by the late 70s to be well at the right time and in the right place with the right training. His argument about 10,000 hours of training to become an expert in any field is well supported by third party research. However neither one of his points take into account the personal ambition, motivation, vision, resolve and doggedness that successful people showed to make it big. After all hundreds of other kids were born in those same years and had similar amount of training in computer programming but for some reason only two names really stood out.
While I can forgive the mistake of not emphasizing the importance of personal ambition and effort but I can not endorse a successful writer massaging statistical data to make a point. If data does not directly support our thesis then it is our responsibility to either propose theory as our opinion, conjecture or a theory as opposed to a statistical truth that conveniently avoids accounting for counterpoints to our opinion.
Problem 2: Bad Messaging:
It is writer's job to judge and speak to his audience and talk in an appropriate language to get the right message across. In the process writer is supposed to bring peer reviewed research, his own opinions or his strong convincing power to put across his points. However is writer misjudges who is his audience he stands the risk of speaking to the unintended audience. In the best case that makes his writing ineffective but in the worst case it can actually give the unintended wrong message to the unintended audience.
As I mentioned earlier, this book was intended for public policy makers to convince them the importance of policies like `no child left behind'. To make his point Malcolm obviously had to convey the point that external factors that can be affected by good public policy are determining factors for success of individuals. However as majority of the readers of outliers are general public, the message real message that is being taken away from the book is that individual effort is not the determining factor of individual success and person has to depend on external factors for their ultimate success.
Needless to say that a good reader will not take the messages as negatively as I mentioned above but I state them more strongly than probably warranted to ensure that reader is warned.
I will be writing more about this on my site shadman.com.
Book Review: Book's Answer: For young kids, more school, eliminate summer vacation
Summary: 2 Stars
The author of this book says, in short, that elementary and middle school children should work like workaholics to be successful starting from a young age to be successful.
This is the basic argument being presented by Malcolm Gladwell on pages 267-269 in the chapter titled "Marita's Bargain" [1].
Overall, this books mentions some interest facts about success early on, however it has a disturbing ending.
He makes the argument that since 12 year old kids test scores drop right after they return to school from summer vacation that all vacation should be eliminated (the bottom of page 259 - middle of page 260, "Suddenly the causes of Asian math superiority become even more obvious. Students in Asian schools don't have long summer vacations ... America doesn't have a school problem. It has a summer vacation problem"). Also, he uses first to fifth grader's test scores as an example on pages 255 and 257.
He goes further to imply that recess and lunch should be eliminated for the sake of higher test scores (page 261, lines 5-8: "If you take an average day, and you take out lunch and recess, our kids are spending fifty to sixty percent more time learning than the traditional public school student"). What? Excuse me? Reduce physical health to be more successful? Being healthy and getting exercise has been shown to improve brain function [2].
He further states that young kids would be better off going to school on Saturdays, and spending an average 12 hours a day at school (top of page 261, "The day goes from seven twenty-five until five P.M. After five, there are homework, clubs, detection, and sports teams. There are kids here from seven twenty-five until seven p.m." and the middle of page 265, "She (Marita) had the hours of a lawyer trying to make partner, or a medical resident"). In other words, he argues American students should adapt the "Rice Paddies" mentality or Asian work ethic like Marita has in order to be more successful in life.
He reasons that because persistence (or hard work with many hours) is a characteristic in almost every successful person, all children should be persistent in school work, in particular (on the bottom of page 259, "The only problem with school, for the kids who aren't achieving, is that there isn't enough of it"). One flaw with this logic, is what about the Children who want to the persistent in something else in life? Malcolm, did you ever think that maybe kids aren't achieving in math because they are not interested in it?
The author claims that this idea of long school hours is only necessary for poor students since their bad environments at home over summer vacation affects their success in life.
However, if one considers that if this policy is implemented on a large scale for almost every poor school, what would the results be? The students from rich schools would in turn increase their studying effort to in general remain on top in the competition. In other words, the whole system is dynamic and reacts to changes. The result would be EVERY elementary and middle student in the country would be spending 60-80 hours a week working in order to beat the competition and stay successful. Not just the poor ones.
And all these long hours are for what? There is not actually proof that high test scores lead to real world success especially at a young age (see reference [3] for example which statistical surveys are done with Millionaires in America, i.e. asking Millionaires if their grades in school were a major factor in their success? It wasn't).
He is basically ok with the idea of children working non-stop (see the bottom of page 265-top of of page 266, "Marita's life is not the life of a typical twelve-year-old ... Children, we like to believe, should have time to play and dream and sleep. Marita has responsibilities"). What!? This is ridiculous. Are we saying children should act like 40 year adults with huge work loads, stress, and responsibilities. He is implying that playing, dreaming, and sleep are not as important as test scores in order to achieve success.
All I can say to that is "wow". This guy is really off base and out of touch with reality. What he is missing is that persistence and passion are what drive success, not substituting summer vacation for a geometry assignment.
I will pass on the "Rice Paddy" theory present in this book which requires long classroom hours for young children. The author cites Singapore as a model example to follow in the footnotes on page 231. It reminds me of the following quote from reference [4]:
"When the education minister of Singapore came here [the United States] ... people [asked him]: "What are you looking here for? Your kids ... score on top of all international [standardized achievement tests] ... He said ... "all that our kids can do is take tests".
[...]
Book Review: Three Good Lessons Amidst Non-Sequiturs & Uncritical Thinking
Summary: 2 Stars
The Outliers delivers one incredibly strong lesson in its first chapter: beware of the effect of arbitrary decisions on people's lives. Beware cut-off dates on ages for example. This is admirably shown in William Gladwell's first chapter. Hockey players in Canada are chosen on teams based on their talent, but also based on their age on January first. Those born on December 31 are effectively one year younger than those born on January second. Obviously many younger players won't be as adept as older ones, but so it goes. This means it may be advantageous to have two start dates for Kindergarten in schools.
A second strong lesson of the book is that timing, out of one's control, matters. People born in the middle 1830's in history were the most successful people in history. Cute stuff, but not too usable.
The third lesson is somewhat unremarkable; although vital: social background and elite status matter in success. Children of dedicated, usually wealthy, parents who are flexible in their own accomplishments do better than those from rigid, poor families. Duh.
The point of the three lessons is that people don't succeed by themselves, but their location in time and place determines the limits on their success. This point is told in very engaging ways by Gladwell. It is worth the time to read his text, but there are some caveats.
Isaac Chotiner's valid question (The New Republic, February 04, 2009) on why the chapter on airlines and culture was included in The Outliers can be answered with these three related points.
First, Mr. Gladwell did not want his book to justify racism. If wonderful family and social support is necessary for success, then a variation of William Shockley's argument that affirmative action is of no practical value to people doomed to failure would be true: why help a poor black student with a single parent, when he or she could never be a great success like Bill Gates or Bill Joy.
Second, the Korean chapter suggests that a few tweaks to culture can fix a problem and allow reasonable success. Similarly, affirmative action for law students seems to work out OK, as long as IQ is above 120. Please note that this is questionable research.
Third, Gladwell above can be seen as differentiating great success, ability combined with wonderful circumstances and timing, from "good enough" success, which society can support at certain intervals such as during schooling.
Unfortunately, Gladwell made three choices that undermine his likability and discernment. He's simply not self-reflective in his editing. Gladwell seems so full of himself and has simple politics.
First, his excessive demeaning of Langan was coarse, bordering on mean. Langan is such a buffoon that he doesn't know there is no "thumb right on you (p. 96)" at Harvard. However, readers of TNR's article on Zeke, Rahm's brother, may have noticed his words "But it was Harvard that was most oppressive (The New Republic, July 1, 2009, p. 27)." Maybe Langan, wasn't all that wrong. Furthermore, Reed College and Montana State should have been slapped by Gladwell. They failed disgustingly; almost inexcusably. Instead, Gladwell blesses their bureaucratic ineptness and laziness in dealing with Langan, because liberal Reed doesn't have a rigid (i.e. bad) bureaucracy. Reed, a small liberal college, simply let go one of its most promising students. As a student at Stanford, with parents having limitations, at the same time as Langan, I struggled to get my financial paperwork delivered months after it was due each year. I was never shown the exit - I was given emergency loans to pull me through. One of the 'red state' arguments against affirmative action is that it's affirmative only for preferred (i.e. liberal) people. Langan's situation makes ones wonder: is social support reliable as policy to help all people succeed?
Second, the most beautiful chapter in the book concerned how Gladwell's mother didn't claim racist discrimination in England after realizing that she and her ancestors had enjoyed generations of success because of the light tone of their skin. Sweet. Her blessed son disparages an abused man Langan (who has overcome a great deal) in print and left a pointless sentence in his book "Kiddo, when you leave New York, every place is Bridgeport. (p. 138)" Yes, Mr. Gladwell may be on the A-list of the chattering class and power clique at Harvard, but his framework is immature.
Third, Gladwell acts like a 'fellow traveler.' The chapter on KIPP read like a propaganda piece by Shaw when visiting Stalin in the 1930's, where his railroad car attendants had read his work! Yeah, sure. My high school junior read the chapter and asked "Is KIPP for stupid people? They work so hard, but only 83% are proficient." Gladwell may be smart, but you could sell him some swampland near Forrest Gump.
Book Review: Gladwell is over-rated
Summary: 1 Stars
After reading all three of Gladwell's books (Tipping Point, Blink, and Outlier), I have pretty much figured out his formula. Glackwell is half black as well as a Canadian. Basically, he writes about things that would normally be politically incorrect for a white person to write about. For example, according to Gladwell, Asians are good at math because they come from a culture of growing rice. He does this from behind the "shield" of being half black, so of course he can't possibly be implying anything racist or ethnocentric. In addition, Gladwell has a very obvious ideology that he is espousing - essentially that of a political liberal who believes that the individual is less important than the culture he comes from or the lucky advantages the individual enjoys. In other words, the important thing is the collective.
Some of the insights in Outlier are interesting. I have to admit it's a bit refreshing to read some of the politically incorrect things that Gladwell gets away with saying (but most others cannot say simply because these things are not stated often in our self-censured society). But on the whole, the basic premise - that people who enjoy success owe more to luck than to their own effort - is flawed.
Some degree of luck certainly plays a role in the extreme cases, such as Bill Gates. However, is it really any sort of major insight that Gates was helped along because he enjoyed free access to a time sharing computer? In fact, millions of people did at the time in universities and businesses across the globe. It is accurate to state that spending a lot of time writing computer code is required to become a successful entrepreneur in software, but not that this success is a direct result of having done so. It's no different than saying that to be a great basketball player, you need to practice many hours per day. But practicing hours per day does not mean that you will be a great basketball player. Something more is required, such as natural talent and perhaps heart and will. In other words, Gladwell's Outlier theory is based on a fundamental error in logic.
Here is the basic logical flaw: "All people that become great NBA stars practice basketball many hours per day for many years. Jerome practiced basketball many hours per day for many years. Therefor, Jerome is an NBA star." Um, sorry. That is an error in logic that is glaringly obvious to anyone that, for example, has written computer code! (And therefor knows something about logic). This logical error in Gladwell's thinking is so obvious that it is remarkable that nobody seems to point it out or that he hasn't lost his popularity as smart people that read his books dismiss him. Does this not happen because his readers just are not that smart? Is it because he is half black and immune to criticism?
Gladwell fails to account for the huge group of people that are, say, millionaires but not billionaires. These are people that mostly worked hard to get what they have. In other words, they are people that made good choices, such as studying and applying themselves. Do they owe something to the culture they were born into, such as having a "future time orientation" and "protestant work ethic." Probably. So? Should they not apply the lessons of their culture? Does their work ethic culture mean that they somehow are less worthy of the fruits of their labor? These people did, after all, have choices. Their culture did not force them to study, pursue goals, work hard, to save money, and so on. These people individually made these choices.
Underlying Gladwell's work is a deep animosity towards the very white people that seem to eat up his books with such fervor. White farmers, for example, are lazy, according to Gladwell (as opposed to Asian rice farmers). My white mother grew up on a farm and I can say for certain that white farmers work 365 days per year. He makes many observations about the cultures of various groups and, without much evidence, links these cultural observations to what these groups appear to be good at doing. There is never any mention, however, of why blacks as a group are poorer and perform below other groups in things such as school. There is plenty of mention of how blacks were oppressed by whites, however, so the implied excuse for blacks is that all of their problems are the fault of whitey.
Gladwell picks and chooses from anecdotal history and this or that scientific study in an attempt to prove his flawed thesis. His work lacks rigor. While his books provide tid-bits of insight here and there thanks to well written descriptions of real research, they disappoint when it comes to pulling this information together to provide a larger meaning.
Gladwell is popular at the moment. But I do not think that his books will prove to be the lasting sort that will be read for insight 20 or even 10 years from now.