Malcolm Gladwell is an awesome author, just finished Outliers a week ago and almost done with Blink. If you hate reading like me but enjoyed Freakonomics, you would absolutely love Outliers, explains why Chinese kids are better at Math and when Pilots are most likely to crash. Random post I know but oh well.
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chinese kids are better at math because of higher IQs. but gladwell attributes it to them spending a lot of time on it. let's go to chinatown and build the next jeremy lin based on the gladwell philosophy of mixing up correlation with causation.
Obviously someone didn't read the book, he says it has to do with the fact that their language for numbers is far easier to comprehend and he actually disproves the theory that they have higher IQ's. When we see 45, we read it as fourty five, they read it as four tens and a five, so adding 45 + 96 to them is four tens and a five plus nine tends and a six. Also, they can remember a far longer string of numbers due to how short their words are for numbers. Please re-read that section and then get back to me.
ah yes. i indeed did not read the book, or any gladwell work. i have two problemos with mr. gladwell:
i did have to read enough reviews on gladwell to get a sense of how this charlatan thinks though. thank you for reminding me about his thesis on how asian language renders numbers. how exactly does he quantify this moonbat theory? i can come up with insane non sequitur explanations too. western kids eat bread: there are usually no more than 20 slices in a loaf so white boys don't count too good. asian kids eat rice: usually 500 grains in a bowl so asian boys count real good!
come on man stop supporting this fraud's royalty income.
He actually attributes it to how the language/logic used for math differs across cultures.
Overall I love gladwell, he has some great free talks/podcasts you can find searching on itunes
Gladwell is a hack of the highest proportions. He's an author that appeals to emotions and pop science. Any amount study regarding IQ eviscerates the central premises in his book.
to be fair to the gladwellians, i did mix up his violin virtuoso (spend a lot of time = be a virtuoso) theory with his asian kids are math whizzes because of their language theory.
but gladwell is a terribly destructive intellectual mountebank nonetheless for all the reasons stated.
Check out The Tipping Point by Gladwell and Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
My gf has the tipping point, reading that after i read Blink.
Liked the part about pilots as well.
The part about birthdays and sports drew me into the book immediately, didn't really initially understand where it was heading with the Italian city. Book of random fun observations about correlations.
Very interesting and entertaining book. I agree with his overall thesis, but most of the points are pretty suspect, as other posters have mentioned. The asian language argument was just one of many. He's making a huge leap of faith by arguing that the short length of the East Asian words for numbers leads to the East Asians being better at math
Perhaps I didn't see it in the same perspective, I didn't think he was attempting to state facts, rather that there are certain statistical correlations around these different phenomena that generated interesting interpretation as to why they may be, but I didn't think he was trying to state that these were the reasons that these things were true entirely, but to kind of blow your mind that they could be based upon possibilities offered by different research.
I think the point of the book was that everything in life is total chance, and I don't particularly buy that.
He wasn't arguing that, he was just arguing that our analyses of outliers are too narrow in focus. We focus on the innate qualities of the outliers and not their environment
I thought he specifically stated that success was basically chance that assumed everyone (of relative standing) are all trying just as hard and series of good luck opportunities led to those people's success and not others.
I somewhat disagree with the premise that having the right family background is what gets you successful, I'll try to find the statistic but something like 90% of people of wealthy backgrounds come from the middle class and most wealth dissolves after 2 generations. It's why you don't see Washingtons and Jeffersons rolling around like bosses in Ferraris with Park Avenue apartments.
a powerful noncausal correlate with US GDP is goat milk production levels in bangladesh. a numbskull like gladwell could write a chapter on how to use that fact in one direction or another.
Lots of anecdotal evidence and absurd intellectual leaps. Most overrated thinker today.
Blink and Outliers are by far the best books in his collection so far
Blink more so in my opinion; however, with that being said.... Party on HFFBallfan123
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-11-16/news/30019785_1_outliers…
gonna go with pinker on this one. gladwell is a boneheaded fraud who is good at flattering his audience.
Gladwell is a hack
Lotta haters up in here.
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