Chapter 9: Marita's Bargain

"Outliers are those who have been given opportunities- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them(pg.267)." We may assume that the outliers in our society were born that way and they were destined to be outliers. Through this book we are able to see that becoming a success is about seizing opportunities that are given to you and making the best out of them. Sometimes you may think that doing something is a waste of your time but in the end it could be the difference between you getting the job or the other person getting the job.

We are able to see that Marita understands that although she may be sacrificing some things know in her life she will later reap the rewards. The school that she is attending allows her to have the opportunity to move up in the world. It does not guarantee that it will happen but she is able to put herself in a better position to take advantage if the opportunity were to present itself. Giving up a little know can pay back big later on in your life. Marita has seized this opportunity and because of it she just opened doors such as attending college, heck she seized the opportunity to make it through school and graduate. For some they don't even take that opportunity that is presented to everyone in the United States. While people should take advantage of things that are presented to them, not everyone will be able to receive these benefits. If everyone was given the same opportunity then we would never have any outliers or would we create a whole new "breed" of outliers? We will just have to wait and see what happens next.

Chapter 8: Rice Paddies and Math Tests

People's upbringing leaves a large mark on who they become in the world. Those who struggle may work hard to get what they want while those who have things handed to them may not know how to work at all. The upbringing that you had may also reflect on your school work and your ability to succeed in that setting. They have found proof that people test higher if they had to work for their livelihood in fields compared to those who don't especially from the East and the West side of the world. Western agriculture thinks in the "mechanical" mind, while Eastern agriculture is in the "skilled" mind. They have always been two ways of thinking out there that has been linked to different cultures that have evolved on the two sides of the Earth.

Western farmers think about how they are going to obtain more land to make more crops because they have the option of obtaining more land. Eastern farmers think about how they are going to increase the amount of product they can produce with the same amount of land because they don't have the ability to just go out and buy more land. Since this is the way that people have been doing things for several hundreds of years it is hard to break those patterns. We can see these trains of thought translating into schools. Students who know China are able to do better in math and understand the concepts at a much younger age then their American counterparts because of the way that we speak. English is one of the hardest languages to learn because there is no "sense" to it. In Chinese, there numbering system makes more logical sense allowing for students to learn the information quicker. Although, we can not change years of history, maybe we should look at what parts can we take from the Eastern world to improve the Western world.

Chapter 7: The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes

Cultural miscommunication is something that I think people have faced before in their lives. If you are new to a culture or don't know the culture then there will be things that you don't understand. At times that is when you learn from your mistakes and you learn the culture. Other times it may be against the culture but appropriate for the situation such as on a airplane. In the book he talks about it taking seven mistakes compounded on one another to really make a tragedy. Mistake one is not telling someone, like the captain, what is going on and alerting them to a situation that is an emergency. They need to be able to communicate clearly no matter if one is the subordinate. Respect needs to be maintained while effective communication needs to be practiced because it can save lives.

I think that many people may experience this when they go to school for the first time at any level. When you go to high school, you are always trying to figure out what is the cool thing and what shouldn't you be doing that will make you stand out. I mean its bad enough that you are the freshman class, you don't want to draw more attention to you then necessary. This is were pressures are brought about to fit into a culture and there are always those who don't who become the outcasts. Schools work in a weird way in that they segregate those in the system all on its own. People are broken up into groups such as the jocks, cheerleaders, goths, band geeks and the drama club to name a few. Why does this happen? I think that people are afraid to break the mold and not fit into one group. People want to be a part of something and they will conform to become a part of a group. How far though are people willing to take it?

Chapter 6: Harlan, Kentucky

The culture of honor is a very interesting concept to look at. This culture is one that still exists today. People are always willing to defend those they love, their family. People will also become apart of their culture and defend it when it is attacked. As a country, to a certain degree depending on your opinion, we are in a culture of honor. Men and women joined the military to defend their country when the World Trade Centers were hit and as a country we went to war. We are in that culture and will be until the war is over. We were attacked and we will defend our country to protect it from attack just like the families defended each other.

The honor culture is also present in teams, at least ones that I have been on. Your teammates along with yourself are honoring each other by showing up and trying their hardest at games and practices. If you play for a school team, you may be honoring the legacy that was left before you from previous teams. While this may bring teams together, sometimes the pressure may be too much. If there is a standard, you will always try to reach it if not go beyond it if you are a competitive athlete. Although it may not be as common or talked about today there are still families that have a large presence in towns that have a lot of pull. Look at the town you grew up in, I bet there is a prominent family.

Chapter 5: The Three Lessons of Joe Flom

Looking at things that impacted Joe Flom's life we are able to see that even the smallest things can make a person a outlier in society. Once again it can come down to something as small as what year you were born in as to what your parents do for a living. I think that being at a certain place at a certain time can change your whole world but most of the time we don't realize that it changed our lives until a long time afterwards. For example, Gladwell was talking about how those born between 1912 and 1917 were demographically at an advantage compared to those who were born between 1903 and 1911. Those born in the later group would have graduated college during WWII and would have only been drafted into the military for three to four years. He described it as more of a bump in the road to their lives. Those born in the first group would most likely already have started families and their whole lives would have been disrupted when they were called up by the draft. Those in the second group were born at a demographical advantage. To compare, look at when the World Trade Centers were hit and collapsed. I was only in 8th grade and had a limited understanding of the world around me. My parents on the other hand were older and knew immediately that life would never be the same. Since then all the tight restrictions on things is normal for me while my parents remember a world where things weren't so restricted. You were able to bring liquids with you on a plane and not have to worry about a terrorist threat. The whole world changed, in a sense we could be demographically at an advantage because the way the world is today is the only way that we know the world. There are no changes that have to be made for us while the older generation has to adjust to new and ever changing regulations.

Chapter 4: The Trouble of Geniuses, Part II

People can have two types of intelligence, general intelligence and practical intelligence. These are orthogonal meaning having one doesn't mean you have the other. We all know people who are high in one area and low in the other. Personally, I think the best place to be is having equal amounts of general and practical intelligence. I think people who have more general intelligence have a harder time fitting into society because they don't know how to interact socially. I think that they feel that they can't relate to their other peers who may not be at that same level. Throughout my school career, I have seen several people who have excelled really well in school and because of that they became segregated. I think that sports help take away from that and allow those who excel in school to work on their social skills. Through sports, a commardarie is brought about that people can translate to other parts of their life.

Chapter 3: The Trouble With Geniuses, Part 1

Intelligence has a threshold. Although people may have higher intelligence levels than others once you reach a certain point it is irrevelant. Someone who has an IQ of 150 may be 30 points lower than someone with an IQ of 180 but that doesn't make them 30% less smarter. Both are off the charts for IQ level but at that point it makes no difference. This same theory can be applied to sports. Once you get to the elite level, such as professional sports it becomes a level playing field because they are all that good.The thing that seperates them at that point is their ability to deliver on their talent. At the same time you will still have those who stick out such as Micheal Jordan or David Beckham.

With geniuses, there will be a sort of arrogance that they can do anything and know anything in their particular field of study. They also have competition within themselves to be the best. People also assume things are going to be easier for them when we really shouldn't. People should always look at people for what they are, not based on something you have heard about them.

Chapter 2: The 10,000 Hour Rule

The 10,000 hour rule is pretty simple. To become the best at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours into the task. While this seems like an outrageously high number, lets break it down into something that we can relate to. 10,000 hours equals 417 days which equals 59 weeks equaling 13 months. Looking at it that way makes it seem like a smaller mountain to climb. Thinking about that realistically, we spend that much time on something without even thinking about it. For example, when we learn to walk we put a lot of hours into it. Once we have conquered walking we then move to running, skipping and galloping. By the time that we have conquered those skills, we will have easily have put in 10,000 hours. With any athlete that you look at they will easily have spent that much time in their sport by the time they reach the age of eighteen. Most will reach that before then.

For example we can look at the Beatles and how long it took them before they gained fame. The Beatles started playing together in 1957. In 1960, they were invited to a club in Hamburg where in a year and a half they played a total of 270 nights. By the time they gained success in 1964, they had already played live 1,200 times. Many groups are not able to say that when they first begin to gain success let alone at the end of their careers. The Beatles had to learn the ins and outs of performing because they were doigng so much performing. It gave them an edge when they came to America in 1964. They had the stamina it took to keep up with the demands a music career has and they were able to perform and perform to the best of their abilities. For all of the outliers that we see in our world, we can probably trace how many hours they put into their profession and it probably comes out to 10,000 hours if not more.

Chapter 1: The Matthew Effect

Looking at a team's roster you would think there is nothing more than a list of players and their information such as age and height, but look again. Many team rosters have players born in clusters with a range of 3 months. The cutoff dates in leagues brings attention to the phenomenon of relative age. In the Canadian league the cutoff date is January 1st. Looking at the rosters of the teams in the league a overwhelming majority of the players were born in January, February, and March. They all have an edge based upon when they were born. Players who have their birthdays in the beginning of the year will physically be ahead of those who have birthdays at the end of the year. They all are the same age but those who have an earlier birthday have more time to participate in their respective sport.

Although this phenomenon was not brought to may attention until recently it makes sense.I experienced this myself since I have a late birthday, August 28th. My sport of choice was soccer. When I was playing with the kids I was in the same grade in I was always in the bottom of the group being told I needed more time, more practice. When I played with the group below me in school, which was legal because the cut-off date was August 1st, I was at the top of the group. Compared to those in the younger group, I had almost a whole year ahead of them while with the kids I went to school, I was a whole year behind. Knowing what we know now about the rosters and birthdays, I wonder if this travels into other things such as school performance and businesses.

Introduction

outlier:

1. something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body

2. a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

What exactly does it mean to be an outlier? By definition we see that it can be described as something out of the ordinary or is it that out of the ordinary? Why do those certain people or things stand out while others are pushed to the wayside? People everyday are going along with their lives and some would say things are predetermined while others would say that things happen by choice. How much control do we really have? Going through life we make decisions but are the decisions already made for us and then presented in a manner that makes us think that we are making them ourselves. The outliers in our society are those that are singled out for something that they can do or did that others have not been able to achieve. Micheal Jordan, the greatest basketball player to live? Micheal Jackson, the greatest songwriter and performer? Bill Gates, a computer genius? Tom Brady, the greatest "undiscovered" quarterback? These people have become outliers in our society. The book written by Malcolm Gladwell discusses how these things come about.