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Have you read his other books?

I've read two of his other books but not this one.

No, this is the only one of his I read.

Just finished this weekend. I actually found it interesting there was a whole section about Korean Air which was very interesting and relevant to my life.

Yeah, I had heard about that whole thing beforehand, though. 20/20 did a segment on it. It is fascinating, though, how cultural differences can have an effect on air travel safety!

I like your points about small sample sizes and wild extrapolation. Do you have training in statistics? The reason I ask is that my own schooling has been in a related field and I recognized the same shortcomings you did in this book.

I know! I just read your review and agree with just about every point you made. You mention that he "infers causation from correlation" and that the evidence for many of his claims is anecdotal. Maybe your friend has it right—he's a cherry-picking, pseudo-intellectual fraud! I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do agree that his writing should be viewed as subjective, and I'm afraid a lot of people without a statistical background might interpret it as scientifically-based fact. Or something.

Oh, but to answer your question—yes, I have a TINY background in stats, but very tiny. I have a scientific background but obviously experimentation and result reporting requires a bit of stats application. So yeah, on a day-to-day basis, we do routinely speak of experimental reps in terms of "n=..." and report assay results with standard deviation, etc.

Ah, very good. I'm a big fan of the scientific method myself. I wish more opinions were shaped using it. Sounds like you know all the most important parts of how stats can help confirm or deny hypotheses.

Sometimes it can be a clutch, though, too. I get too easily frustrated when, for example, I overhear someone saying something like, "I'm not getting the flu shot this year because last year I got the flu a week after getting the shot, and so therefore the flu shot gives me the flu." ACK! The to support this decision!

Yup. Good example. Decisions based on small samples are a bugaboo of mine, too.

Jason’s review contains the excerpt: "Like the town in Italy where people are healthier and live longer because they have a sense of “community�� or the fact that Southerners react more violently to certain situations than Northerners because they derive from a “culture of honor.��"

On the latter issue — southerners and violence �� check out Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature. He provides a much more detailed and compelling argument on that.

On both of them, and the discussion on Gladwell's lack of sufficient n, it might be charitable to the author to remember that he's writing as a popularizer, not as an academic. If he ladled in enough evidence to satisfy the skeptical, his books would be doorstops like Pinker's or Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Richard wrote: "On both of them, and the discussion on Gladwell's lack of sufficient n, it might be charitable to the author to remember that he's writing as a popularizer, not as an academic."

I know...but what's concerning to me is that the average reader will accept it all as fact because Gladwell sounds so convincing, but it can't be fact without enough evidence to support it. I feel like he picks and chooses anecdotes to support his theory, but in the end they're just anecdotes. It's something we all do, but that is my gripe with this book essentially.

I can see your point, but take a look at the flip side: if he, and every author who can write good prose, wrote to accommodate the idiots out there, then their books would be less enticing to those of us who aren't idiots.

Maybe Gladwell sees his job as one to get you to think about these things without really worry overmuch that he's convinced you. By focusing on how he isn't convincing, you're missing the point. Just appreciate his good storytelling about how things might not quite be what we'd thought they were, and exercise the pondering organ.

I agree, it isn't worth dwelling on every little point. But unfortunately that is how my mind works. And I did like the book (which is why I gave it a 3). Overall, I thought a lot of his points were interesting. It's just that, either a) many did not come as a surprise to me; or b) every now and then he inserted a wild extrapolation that pissed me off.

Apparently I hold NF to a higher standard or something. I don't feel I do this intentionally, but there it is.

I didn't like Outliers for the same reason I'm unimpressed with TED talks: oversimplification. Of course, I'm oversimplifying.

Yeah...I kind got bored with TED pretty quickly myself.

The town is in Pennsylvania, not Italy.

Ciprian, you're completely right. Thank you.

Another good reason not to skim.

Totally agree with this review. To simple, was like reading a poor research study that had been dramatized for magazine publication.

What really disgusted me was the correlation between birth year and success among the worlds wealthiest people. He completely leaves out the fact that all those billionaires born in the 1830s made their wealth 1) in a country where it was possible, 2) before there was an income tax in said country and 3) before monopolies were banned in same country (most of them cited had monopolies on their particular business). So it had far less to do with birth year and everything to do with economic change at the time. If it wasn't them, it would be someone else, during that small opening of technological change in the US.

Even more irritating was the dwelling on the tech moguls being born in 1954 and 1955. Well duh, there is always a small window for individuals to step in when culturally changing technologies come about. And while the book cited all of Gate's socio-economic advantages, it glossed right over Jobs' disadvantages. And then failed to even address that all of the individuals he goes onto dramatically list birth for are each a genius in their own right.

*too simple.

Thanks, peanut. I get the impression most of his NF books are a little...skewed. He likes to ignore any and all data that refutes his point, rather than offering a rational explanation for it.

I understand that you didn’t love the book. I didn’t necessarily either at first, but after reading through every page, you do a get a much better sense if the theme and the main point Gladwell tries to convey. I suggest that rather than ‘skimming�� through the book, read it all. Trust me, it’s totally worth it, and you’ll learn a lot from it!

I agree with Richard in this thread, if a book is not claiming to be a science based academic work, it doesn't necessarily bother me if it lacks references or uses anecdotal evidence for its claims.

I started reading non-fiction about four years ago and started with 'pop science' books at a similar level of detail. At the time, for someone who had read very little, I felt I was getting scholarly insights because of what little I knew. But the sheer pleasure I got from this new found knowledge, led me to more ambitious and academic books, leading my curiosity deeper and deeper into a subject.

If Malcolm Gladwell can hook the average reader into wanting to learn more, surely that's a good thing. Just because he doesn't provide academic level evidence, doesn't mean such evidence is not out there. More importantly, always keep an open mind no matter what you read - nothing is finite! ...and keep reading diverse ideas without judgment or prejudice. Eventually a pattern will emerge that will tell you what ideas are closer to the truth than others.

I would also not be too suspicious about the part of the book where he talks about "Southerners react more violently to certain situations than Northerners because they derive from a culture of honor.�� Thomas Sowell bases much of his book 'Black Rednecks and White Liberals' on such a theory, which I found to be very compelling despite the initial caution.

In the almost-decade (!!!) since I was commenting up there, Gladwell has jumped into podcasting, too. Perhaps that's an even better forum for his kind of storytelling? In fact, he co-founded Pushkin Industries , running fifteen podcasts. His own, is quite good (or at least the opening seasons were; I'm so far behind on my podcast listening that his has fallen by the wayside).

His authorial voice doesn't provide closure, but curiosity.