Outliers - The Story of Success

Outliers - The story of success brings some interesting facts out to the public. The beginning of the book is mostly know eg. most professional hockey players are born in January, February as the cut off date makes them more fortunate - they are bigger and stronger than their counterparts born in December for that year.

But at the End there are some interesting facts about Airplane Crashes and the cultures in the Airplane cockpit, eg. Korean Second Officers are not daring to speak up when something is wrong, so an airplane crash is more likely.

Also interesting is why Chinese are better in mathematics (they are used to grow rice and can concentrate better and longer than us - “everyone who can stand up 365 days before dawn every year does not need to fear hunger for their families) and why pupils form poorer families are worse after summer holidays than their richer counterparts (richer families educate their children while on holiday, poorer families not eg. poorer children are 5% dumber but richer children are 10% smarter - the gap gets bigger over summer holidays).

To sum up the book, if you want to be a winner firstly you have to work hard (rule 80.000 hours of work at something eg. playing violin to be a good violinist - to be the best you always need to train more than the others) and secondly you need to have fortunate circumstances - all great people like Bill Gates or James Gosling had fortunate circumstances (all really rich IT guys are born around 1955 and had access to computers all day).

Behind every genie there is a story as well and once you hit a certain IQ other factors are getting more important.

tj