Talk:Outliers (book)

Outliers (book) has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 18, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed
January 31, 2009	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on January 20, 2009.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the book Outliers, written by Malcolm Gladwell, claims that the key to success in any field is practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours?

Current status: Good article

The Matthew Effect

Could we please change the bible citation? The King James version is not only wildly out of style with the rest of the article but difficult for modern readers to understand. I could cite other reasons why more modern translations are more accurate but that's not the point here. The point is that a more modern translation like NRSV or even The Message would avoid a massive stylistic change and readers like myself wouldn't have to pause for a couple minutes to figure out exactly what that thing said. The only reason I haven't done this myself is that I'm not sure if it's important to the source being cited (Robert K. Merton). 129.186.253.5 (talk) 21:59, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reception

28.12.08: I'd reccomend changing the first sentence, which gives the impression that he only talks about those three things. Instead, how about throwing in the thesis? So we'd take away everything after "looking at how Bill..." and say, "he argues that people's surrondings contribute more to their success than previously thought and that the

Heading text

ir innate qualities play a more marginal role." Something like that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.101.126.214 (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to place back into the article some reviews by reputable periodicals. They were removed without a valid reason. Bearian (talk) 22:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

13.04.2009: This was released in India in December 2008. I was not sure of the location to add this in the contents. Here is the link and the details. [[1]] Ajosephantony (talk) 08:49, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Singularities

Is singularity really the best term to characterize the subjects of his work? It seems that a term like "individual" keeps the notion of one-ness, without overlaying Kurzweillean physics-inspired concepts like the singularity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.182.197 (talk) 20:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Synopsis and Style

The synopsis is incomplete it only takes into account half the book,completely and brazenly ignoring the other half. The Style part is woefully inadequate,considering thousands of people refer Wikipedia on a daily basis.I will definetly try and add to the article myself.Meanwhile I request others having expert knowldege of the subject to help.

Jacki Moon (talk) 08:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the Synopsis completely ignores half the book. I just finished reading Outliers, wrote a summary of my own, and linked to it in the External links section. However, it was deleted on the grounds that it was "someone's personal wiki". I will probably be slapped with WP:COI, but I don't even have ads on my site, I genuinely believe it's the best freely available summary, and I simply wanted to help Wikipedia by linking to it. Anyway, feel free to copy from my summary and add to the Synopsis. I personally don't feel like contributing to this article any more, after my good faith contribution was reverted. -- Dandv^{(talk|contribs)} 04:58, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

did the Beatles actually play 10,000 hours in Hamburg from 1960 to 1964?

In the 3rd paragraph of the “Synopsis” section, it currently states, “The Beatles performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time, therefore meeting the 10,000-Hour Rule.” For this to be accurate, every performance would have had to average 8 hours and 20 minutes. Even if by “performance” we mean multiple sets played on the same evening, the Beatles would have had to play 8+ hours seven nights a week for almost 4 years solid to rack up 10,000 hours. Is this accurate? Fp cassini (talk) 20:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Add practices, including jam sessions, and any discussions of how to make their music better, which are likely as important as playing. Add any previous learning in school and from any private music lessons that they got, and George, Paul, John, and Ringo each go over 10,000 hours.

The remarkable point is not so much that each individually went over 10K hours in learning or doing music; it is that the four actually met and stayed together long enough to be the greatest pop group ever.

Now what is so special about 10,000 hours? An achievement that takes much more than 10K hours to master may be impossible. Practically nobody gets the opportunity to struggle along in anything; extreme difficulty and especially fruitlessness of efforts will deter just about anyone, and if that doesn't stop one, then economic difficulties (like not having the leisure time because the trust fund or parental support runs out or because the government stops the research grants) will stop one. The mathematics in proving Fermat's Last Theorem goes beyond the 10K hours, which explains how long it took for anyone to prove the theorem.

10K hours also indicates the time needed for refining raw skill or talent into excellence. In music it is fairly easy to master the reading of music, recognizing the proper keys or fingerings on an instrument, music theory, intonation (is 'perfect pitch' innate or learned?) and mastering the usual sequences of notes. Playing the right notes might be adequate for playing in a college band, but that is not professional mastery.

Those who lack the innate talent are going to give up long before 10K hours. Such people will settle for more modest objectives in their field or go onto something less glorious. Those who are really good get to know the subtleties of what they do, acquiring the taste (in performance or creation of any kind) to know what rules they can break and when and what rules they cannot break.

On the other side, something that requires much less than 10K hours isn't so special. If practically anyone can do the job, then accomplishing the task isn't so remarkable. Much work is designed so that people can learn it fast and resume the work with little loss of ability after a layoff. Pay scales so indicate.

The Beatles were compensated very well once they went onto the international scene. Pbrower2a (talk) 22:02, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also worth remembering: Paul McCartney learned to write some very sophisticated music. Eleanor Rigby has some fine counterpoint, something at which not even Johann Sebastian Bach was a natural. (Gladwell did not mention him, but Bach was a prolific performer early in his career. He put in a huge time developing himself as a musician). The trick to the Beatles making big money was writing their own songs. Other pop musicians typically had to spend much of their revenue on music rights to other musicians or to publishing houses. The Beatles made money off others using their songs even in Muzak arrangements.

The Beatles made it look easy, but it was easy only after 10,000 hours. Pbrower2a (talk) 23:18, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Raven's Matrices Possible Error

It seems there's an error in one of the editions in the Raven's Matrices example dealing with clubs, hearts, and diamonds on page 78. I have First Edition: November 2008, which I believe to contain the correct example. I believe the first (top-left) matrix in the question and answer 'H' are switched in some edition of the book - I saw this on the internet. If anyone has a book where the bottom 3 boxes of the top-left matrix are NOT all hearts, please let us know. I'm personally very curious about this possible error. If different questions in different editions are truly still correct, then this solution I figured will be incorrect (there are three things that can be done):

(1) Heart's diamond, diamond clubs, clubbed hearts. (2) The columns (from top-left 3x3 box to top-middle box to top-right box) move left and (3) increment/rotate up by 1 when passing/looping over the matrix's edge.

I provide the solution in hopes it will somehow resolve the mystery concerning the possible error. I couldn't find anything suggesting the change was intentional. Sarek Mather (talk) 21:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This interests me. It's been some time since I read the book but I vaguely remember having trouble with one of the examples. If I stumble across my copy I'll take a look at this. Anyone else? --Pine^✉ 23:44, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]