The Outliers Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, a novel depicting success, provides different examples of how an individual can achieve success in every chapter of his book to show his audience that success, despite a variety of barriers, is in fact in our control. A very important chapter titled, “Marita's Bargain”, explains the flaws in today’s public school systems. He shows the problems with the solutions to fix them while showing the alternatives to the regular system such as the KIPP Program in New York. The KIPP Program (Knowledge is Power Program) is a new kind of middle school that selects students from less fortunate locations and uses unique teaching strategies to turn them around into fantastic learners. In the chapter, Gladwell is extremely descriptive by using visual words to paint the picture of the South Bronx in New York City. He describes the buildings that were built in the 1960’s as squat and bleak looking. Gladwell had an interest in this subject as it involves success, however he had no prior experiences to produce the piece. Gladwell establishes personal credibility through the use of knowledge, reason, and facts and figures. He comes across very knowledgeable on the subject presenting great data with excellent vocabulary. He is able to do this with no obvious bias as well. Gladwell shows authority because he is well known for writing novels that involve success. His intention is to teach and explain how schools need to change the length of vacation breaks

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers defines an outlier as “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.” According to this definition, an outlier in society is one who achieves something highly unusual when compared to their peers. According to the theory Outliers presents, success is based not only on one’s individual merit, but on the accumulative advantages they gain throughout their lives. Seemingly arbitrary circumstances such as the time and place of one’s birth can affect the entire course of their life. Society’s outliers are produced from an extremely unusual set of circumstances that allows them to diverge from the paths of those around them. One such example of an outlier comes from F. Scott

Prompt: Write an essay that defends or challenges or qualifies Gladwell’s assertion that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and you use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” (Gladwell 151).

Success has several definitions and differs for each person. However, In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”, Gladwell prattles about Lewis Terman, a young professor at Stanford University during the First World War who conducted a special experiment that who charted some people from childhood into adulthood. After scanning through the results, Gladwell concludes that socioeconomic status and class as a good indicator whether an individual was destined for the higher or lower group. However, Gladwell’s findings are not truly correct due to the fact that socioeconomic class and status are only some of the factors that determine whether a person belongs to the higher or lower group.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print

While the author, Malcolm Gladwell, does not dispute that hard work in a necessary component, we learn that many factors, lucky breaks, and some coincidences all occur in making high achievers into true outliers. We also learn that many of the richest, most famous, and most successful people in

Outlier is defined as “something that is situated away from or classified differently from a main or related body” or “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample”, which is the beginning to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. The meaning of outlier itself in relation to success symbolizes those who stand out with exceptional rates of success. The book does not necessarily cover how to become an outlier (in fact it first deams becoming an outlier is nearly impossible) but more which are the factors that have contributed to certain outliers in history on a broad spectrum of hockey players to the beatles to even the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates.

Malcolm Gladwell argues that hard work and practice has more value than “innate talent” (Gladwell 1) in an excerpt from Chapter 2 “The 10,000-Hour Rule” of his novel Outliers: The Story of Success. Although he acknowledges that talent can be a factor in success, Gladwell believes that a person’s choice to work hard is what ultimately determines their achievements. To support this claim, he alludes to famous musicians and cites psychologists and other scientists to establish credibility, with the attempt to convince the audience that hard work overrules talent. His passage has a very clear and academic tone, making it easy for the audience to understand and not get confused.

In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell attempts to prove that success is based on more factors than the general public believes. While hard work is important to the prospering of the very successful, the sheer circumstances presented to those individuals gave them a far greater chance of success than their peers. Through the use of statistical analysis, very well organized writing, and many quoted authority figures, Gladwell exemplifies his phenomenon very clearly with little ambiguity.

In “Outliers: The Story of Success”, Malcolm Gladwell explains some factors of success that many people overlook. He covers many topics regarding how people become successful, one I found particularly interesting was how intelligence correlates to success. According to Gladwell’s findings, “Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.” At first, this claim seems ridiculous; how can anyone with a higher IQ not have any advantage over someone with a lower IQ?

In the Outliers: The Story of Success written by Malcolm Gladwell, one main idea introduced is that the success of an individual generates from the ‘10,000-hour rule’. Gladwell comments, “researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” (40) The idea behind it is simple. Any person who wants to succeed must devote ten thousand hours of practice to what they want to achieve. Gladwell also suggests that instead of viewing a person by their success, people should focus on where the success thrived from.

In Outliers, focusing on outliers, defined by Gladwell as people who do not fit into our normal understanding of achievement, Outliers deals with exceptional people, especially those who are smart, rich, and successful, and those who operate at the extreme outer edge of what is statistically possible. Malcolm Gladwell interviews Bill Gates and focuses on the opportunities given to him throughout his lifetime that have led to his success. A common theme that appears throughout Outliers is the "10,000-Hour Rule", based on a study by Anders Ericsson. If you become clearer about what you focused on from the ages of 13 to 18, you will become clearer about where to focus your wealth creation efforts.

During the Kennedy era, many Americans saw Jacqueline Kennedy only as the wife of the president who did not know much; however, not only was she a faithful wife and First Lady, but she was also a very intelligent magazine editor with a very interesting life. In the New York Times bestselling novel called The Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell challenges the way that success is typically viewed by introducing the idea of an “outlier.” Gladwell defines an outlier as “something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body (Gladwell 1).” Throughout the book, he goes on to explain that success is much more than hard work; it also has to do with what he calls “The 10,000-Hour Rule” or “The Matthew Effect.”

Malcolm Gladwell’s book examines the contributing factors of high leveled success by looking beyond common beliefs. First of all, viewing the key element of an opportunity making way for success like the good nutrition the tallest tree receives from the sun and good soil. For example, Roger Barnesly, a psychologist, suggested good player are born in January, February, and March. However, Gladwell views this phenomenon as a difference in strength due to age as an almost eleven year old is stronger than a nearly ten year old. In most success stories an innate talent needs to be practiced and encouraged. Gladwell refers to this need of practice as the ten thousand hour rule done by Bill Jay,

Some people claim that the nature of parenting is the main factor of children’s future successes. One of those is Amy Chua, the author of "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superiors," who advocates for strict parenting. Malcolm Gladwell, on the other hand, the author of Outliers: the Story of Success, rejects Chua's idea of strict parenting and further condemns forced practices and attributes success to a myriad of factors that shape a person's identity, including life circumstances and practicing intelligence which are necessary for individual success. Gladwell discusses that a person should practice what he loves not what he is forced to do while Amy Chua claims that practice must be forced and parents should be strict and in full control.