Outline & Excerpts

Part 1: Opportunity
Chapter 1: The Mathew Effect
[Central idea]: The lucky ones will only get luckier / "accumulated advantage"
- Canadian hockey: meritocracy
arbitrary cut-off age -> head-start due to difference in age -> selection, streaming & differentiated experience -> skewed age distribution -> "accumulated advantage"
=> seemingly determined by individual merit alone, but strongly affected by relative age
- Solution: more effective selection system
  e.g. multiple age groups within one year
Our notion that it is the best and the brightest who efforlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic.
Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung, We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive.
Chapter 2: The 10000-Hour Rule
[Central idea]: Diligence is the prerequisite of success; opportunity is the prerequisite of diligence.
- Ericsson's study of violinists: 10000 hrs
- Bill Joy
child prodigy -> stumbled upon computer science in high school -> went to Michigan University -> programmed 8 hours a day -> rewrote UNIX -> cofounded Sun Microsystems -> rewrote Java (~10000 hours)
- The Beatles
invited to play in Hamburg -> lived 1200 times
- Bill Gates
wealthy family + precocious -> elite high school -> computer club -> investment from Mothers' Club -> C-Cubed -> programmed at Washington University full-time -> programmed for TRW
- Time of birth important
needs to be young enough to accept new ideas, but old enough to grasp the opportunity
-> people born in mid-1900s disproportionately more successful
the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works.
Chapter 3 & 4: The Trouble with Geniuses
[Central idea]: IQ is not directly linked with success
- The Terman study: geniuses are not more successful
- University of Michigan law school
minority students who enter with slightly lower standardized-test scores are not any less successful than majority students who enter with perfect scores
- divergence test (brick & blanket)
people with high IQ not necessarily more creative
- Chris Langen
unable to get good education because of ineffective communication, unable to show his talents
=> high IQ, but low "practical intelligence"
- Oppenheimer
nearly killed his tutor, but talked his way out of serious punishment
convinced Groves to admit him into Manhattan project
- The Lareau study
wealthier parents: concerted cultivation -> sense of entitlement
poorer parents: passive parenting -> intimidated by authority, does not know how to customize
Intelligence has a threshold.
intellect and achievement are far from perfecty correlated.
He’d had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses—ever makes it alone.
Chapter 5: The Three Lessons of Joe Flom
[Central idea]: success is built from a string of opportunities
- Joe Flom's opportunities
1) being Jewish -> excluded from white-shoe law firms -> start own law firm -> specializes in proxy fights
    - Alexander Bickel
2) born during demographic trough -> easy access to good resources (education, jobs, etc.)
    - Maurice & Mort Janklow
3) (grandparents own grocery store -> ) Jewish parents specializing in garment making -> immigrate to the U.S. -> enter garment industry -> become rich
    - Louis & Regina Borgenicht
Successful people don’t do it alone. Where they come from matters. They’re products of particular places and environments.
The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with.
Part 2: Legacy
Chapter 6: Harlan, Kentucky
[Central idea]: we are shaped by the culture we are in
- Harlan County: family feuds
=> "culture of honor"
    highlands -> reputation of shepherds directly linked with ourcome of quarrels
- the "asshole" study
northerners: unaffected by insults
southerners: easily insulted, becomes more aggressive
Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives, they persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.
Chapter 7: The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes
[Central idea]: our achievement in a field is greatly determined by cultural legacies
- Korean plane crashes
great power distance -> mitigation speech during flight -> inefficient cooperation
problem solved by intentionally lowering power distance during missions
- the Avianca accident
bad weather -> unable to land on time, ran out of oil
mitigatation -> inefficient communication, both in the cockpit & between the plane and the ATC
- Fischer and Orasanu's study
first officers more prone to mitigated speech
- Hofstede's study
countries with high power distance index more prone to plane crashes
Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and asumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraodinarily specific.
Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from — and when we ignore that fact, planes crash.
Chapter 8: Rice Paddies and Math Tests
[Central idea]: our culture determines how diligent we are
- Chinese rice paddies
the more you plant, the richer the land -> year-round work
exact & demanding -> hard to mechanize, everything had to be done manually
no slavery -> autonomous work
=> "no pains no gains"
- French and ¡Kung farming
French: sleep through the winter
!Kung: abundant food -> no need to put effort into farming
- Asian number system
mono-syllabic numbers, transparent number system
=> Asian children learn math easier
- Renee
came up with answer to a math problem by unrelenting experimentation
=> whether you learn maths well has more to do with attitude than with ability
- TIMSS exam
students who are willing to finish the questionaire do better in the exam
No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
It's not so much ability as attitude. You mater mathematics if you are willing to try.
Chapter 9: Marita's Bargain
[Central idea]: the more you work, the more you gain
- KIPP academy
long school years + tight schedule + long study hours + strict discipline 
=> students from the poorest families graduate with above-average academic skills
- traditional US education system
farming: slash and burn -> students might be exhausted if they learn too much -> long holidays
- Alexander's study: "achievement gap"
give students CAT before and after each semester
Upper class: study hard during school year, does not relax during holidays
Lower class: learn equally well during school year, but slacks off during holidays
=> achievement gap almost originates entirely from difference in learning during holidays -> differences in parenting styles
The only problem with school, for the kids who aren't achieving, is that there isn't enough of it.
To become a success at what they did, they had to shed some part of their own identity.
Outliers are those who have been given opportunities -- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.
Epilogue: A Jamaican Story
Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy.
These were history's gifts to my family -- and if the resources of that grocer, the fruits of those riots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would now live a life of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill?