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“Horace Mann believed that working students too hard would create a ‘most pernicious influence upon character and habits’”(Gladwell 253).

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“Horace Mann believed that working students too hard would create a ‘most pernicious influence upon character and habits’”(Gladwell 253).

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Pernicious (Adj)
Having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way.
The pernicious man caused many employees to abdicate their responsibilities.

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“The chart below shows a breakdown of two categories of Jamaican professionals -- lawyers and members of parliament -- in the early 1950s”(Gladwell 279).

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“The chart below shows a breakdown of two categories of Jamaican professionals -- lawyers and members of parliament -- in the early 1950s”(Gladwell 279).

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The following chart shows how many members of each profession belong to different Jamaican racial distinctions. Unlike most of Gladwell’s data and tables, this one actually exemplifies his point nicely and is easy to follow. In fact, it did a better job of explaining the intrinsic nature of racial classes in Jamaican society and culture than Gladwell could have done if he had simply stated it. The fact that Gladwell used data well at the end of this book further shows that the last few chapters were the best, and the book would have worked better if it was on long piece building up to a final assertion.

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“That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don’t reach forty until they’re five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills”(Gladwell 229).

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“That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don’t reach forty until they’re five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills”(Gladwell 229).

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This quote exemplifies the characteristics of this essay that make it more effective than its subject would suggest. It is an essay about why Asians are better at math, and at first it seems as if the essay is going to be full of racial stereotyping, but Gladwell manages to pull together some convincing evidence. I still would not say his essay proved Asians are inherently better at math, but it definitely proposed some interesting thoughts and theories.

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December 2, 2016

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“And then the flight engineer cries out, ‘Flameout on engine number four!”(Gladwell 200).

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“And then the flight engineer cries out, ‘Flameout on engine number four!”(Gladwell 200).

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Flameout (N)
An instance of the flame in the combustion chamber of a jet engine being extinguished, with a resultant loss of power.
The pilot knew they were going down when the engineer reported a flameout.

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“Our ability to succeed at what we do is powerfully bound up with where we’re from, and being a good pilot and coming from a high--power distance culture is a difficult mix”(Gladwell 209).

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“Our ability to succeed at what we do is powerfully bound up with where we’re from, and being a good pilot and coming from a high--power distance culture is a difficult mix”(Gladwell 209).

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This quote is the beginning of Gladwell’s conclusion to this essay, and it demonstrates the clear and understandable logical transitions Gladwell makes in the last few essays of his book. This is one of the best arguments he has presented in this book, because it has all of his previous assertions available as background support. If he had structured to book in a more continuous and less sectioned format, it would have been easier to see where he was going with it all and the overall purpose would have been more effective.

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“In this chapter, we’re going to conduct a crash investigation: listen to the ‘black box’ cockpit recorder; examine the flight records; look at the weather and the terrain and the airport conditions; and compare the Guam crash with other very similar plane crashes, all in an attempt to understand precisely how the company transformed itself from the worst kind of outlier into one of the world’s best airlines”(Gladwell 182).

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“In this chapter, we’re going to conduct a crash investigation: listen to the ‘black box’ cockpit recorder; examine the flight records; look at the weather and the terrain and the airport conditions; and compare the Guam crash with other very similar plane crashes, all in an attempt to understand precisely how the company transformed itself from the worst kind of outlier into one of the world’s best airlines”(Gladwell 182).

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This essay is one of Gladwell’s most interesting and exciting in this book, and that is shown through this intro summary. The summary above is written as if it is a murder mystery or some other type of mystery thriller, and this is the tone he achieves throughout despite it being an objective non-fiction investigation. The quote above is also just one long, complex sentence, paralleling the continuity and congruity Gladwell aims to achieve throughout this book.

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November 25, 2016

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“The decade of the 1930s is what is called a ‘demographic trough’.”(Gladwell 134).

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“The decade of the 1930s is what is called a ‘demographic trough’.”(Gladwell 134).

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Demographic Trough (N)
A demographic trough refers to a region or a time when the population is or was at its lowest point(s).
The era of the Black Death in Europe was a demographic trough.

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“Louis and Regina found a tiny apartment on Eldridge Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for $8 a month. Louis then took to the streets, looking for work. He saw peddlers and fruit sellers and sidewalks crammed with pushcarts. The noise and activity and energy dwarfed what he had known in the Old World. He was first overwhelmed, then invigorated”(Gladwell 140).

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“Louis and Regina found a tiny apartment on Eldridge Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for $8 a month. Louis then took to the streets, looking for work. He saw peddlers and fruit sellers and sidewalks crammed with pushcarts. The noise and activity and energy dwarfed what he had known in the Old World. He was first overwhelmed, then invigorated”(Gladwell 140).

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This passage stood out to me because it was very different than the sort of writing I expected in this book. The story he tells is very anecdotal and not very factual or scientific sounding. It is interesting how Gladwell tells these stories because the book itself is very factual and analytical, yet he introduces the subjects through an enrapturing and fiction-like style. It helps the audience engage more with the text before Gladwell introduces the dryer and more objective aspects of the piece.

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“In Skadden, the legal historian Lincoln Caplan describes that early world of takeovers:”(Gladwell 126).

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“In Skadden, the legal historian Lincoln Caplan describes that early world of takeovers:”(Gladwell 126).

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This quote is followed by a two page passage. This is yet another example of Gladwell’s excessive and poorly implemented use of quotations and references. While the passage included does relate to the essay, it is not properly addressed or tied in. It would have been better used as a brief passage to help clarify what Gladwell has been saying throughout. Instead it is used as a way to seem more credible without actually having that credibility.

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November 18, 2016

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“To use the technical term, general intelligence and practical intelligence are “orthogonal”: the presence of one doesn’t imply the presence of another”(Gladwell 101).

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“To use the technical term, general intelligence and practical intelligence are “orthogonal”: the presence of one doesn’t imply the presence of another”(Gladwell 101).

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Orthogonal (Adj)
(of variates) statistically independent.
The presence of light and the ability of the subjects to sleep was, surprisingly, found to be orthogonal.

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“But take a look at the following list of where the last twenty-five Americans to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine got their undergraduate degrees, starting in 2007”(Gladwell 81).

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“But take a look at the following list of where the last twenty-five Americans to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine got their undergraduate degrees, starting in 2007”(Gladwell 81).

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Included after this quote is a long list of colleges, organized alphabetically. This is another example of Gladwell’s pointless use of data tables and lists. He could have summarized what the reader was meant to interpret from this list in a much more brief and engaging way. The inclusion of this list makes it feel like you as the reader have to figure everything out and it can be frustrating to feel like the author is not telling you the facts, and instead making you figure them out.

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“The guest has to be smart enough to answer more questions correctly than his or her one hundred adversaries -- and by that standard, few have ever seemed as superbly qualified as Christopher Langan”(Gladwell 69).

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“The guest has to be smart enough to answer more questions correctly than his or her one hundred adversaries -- and by that standard, few have ever seemed as superbly qualified as Christopher Langan”(Gladwell 69).

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This quote is very successful in catching the audience’s attention and making them wonder about the story. This is the first introduction of one of the subjects of this piece, Chris Langan. In addition, he is only described as being extremely intelligent. It makes the audience want to know more about the essay and who Chris Langan is, and therefore they will continue reading the essay.

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October 28, 2016

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“Here is the player roster of the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers. Take a close look and see if you can spot anything strange. (Table has headings: No., Name, Pos., Left/Right, Weight, Birthdate, and Hometown)”(Gladwell 20).

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“Here is the player roster of the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers. Take a close look and see if you can spot anything strange. (Table has headings: No., Name, Pos., Left/Right, Weight, Birthdate, and Hometown)”(Gladwell 20).

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This quote is an example of something this author does often which I find to be distracting and unnecessary. In this example the author wants you to notice that all of the players are born in the same few months, and this would be an effective way to make the audience feel more engaged in the data if there weren’t so much data given. The author includes lots of irrelevant information which is meant to make it less clear what the trend is and make the search for the trend more interesting. However, this just comes across as excessive and makes it more difficult to remain engaged with the text.

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Short Bio - why did you choose this particular book?

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Short Bio - why did you choose this particular book?

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I chose this book because of a recommendation. When we first got this assignment and we were talking about our nonfiction books Emily Milnamow was telling me about Outliers, which she was reading at the time. It sounded very interesting to me because I find sociological trends very interesting and this book aims to explain why certain people are more successful than others and how one can apply this information to their life.

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“This is where Michigan came in, because Michigan was one of the first universities in the world to switch over to time-sharing”(Gladwell 44).

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“This is where Michigan came in, because Michigan was one of the first universities in the world to switch over to time-sharing”(Gladwell 44).

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Time-sharing (n)
The operation of a computer system by several users for different operations at the same time.
Thanks to Martha, I now had access to the school's super-fast time-sharing computers.

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285 pages
DUE DATES:
10/21 - pages 1-68 -- 10/28 - pages 69-115 -- 11/18 - pages 116-176 -- 11/25 - pages 177-250 -- 12/2 - pages 251-285

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October 21, 2016

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“These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society”(Gladwell 67).

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“These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society”(Gladwell 67).

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This quote is from the chapter “The 10,000 Hour Rule”, which is about how people become more successful than others. I have a problem with it because it is meant to be a summary of the essay but does not match the title. The summary quote does speak about the other things discussed in the essay, but it fails to ever mention the 10,000 hour rule or anything related to time put in. This essay would have been more coherent, and resultingtly more effective, if the title had been something like “The 10,000 Hour Rule and the Need for Fortunate Opportunities”.