Geologically speaking, the rock above is not an outlier, it is a Glacial erratic, but it is the closest I could get with one of my pictures. Still, Gladwell’s book, Outliers, The Story of Success, is not about geology, it is about very successful people and how big a part luck – both regular luck and deep luck – played in their success. It is pretty typical of the kind of book I like and that all fit into a, sort of, Matrix category. These are the kind of books that says here is what seems like reality and the reasons we are told for that reality, but there are other, deeper, reasons. I should also add that I very often buy into these deeper reasons and I have completely bought into Malcolm Gladwell’s arguments.

Two factoids that are especially interesting are that almost all professional hockey players were born in the first half of the year and that the Chinese way of writing numbers makes basic math much easier.

Professional hockey players are mostly born in the earlier part of the year because Canadian Youth Hockey Leagues segregate players by age, based on the calendar year. So, a five-year old, born on January 1st is about twenty percent older than a youngster born in December of the same year and they play in the same age bracket. At five years old, another year  makes a big difference. The older kids do better and are encouraged to work at hockey while the younger kids get discouraged, work less, and fall behind setting a pattern – in hockey at least – the results of which carry through to the Pros or notPros.

As for the numbers, add fifty-three and thirty-five in your head. It is hard to do without converting to Arabic numerals, 53 plus 35. In Chinese, those numbers are written as five-tens three and three-tens five. The logic of the numbers is written into the language making it much easier to work with them.

Gladwell weaves details like this into a new narrative about several successful people including Bill Gates and the Beatles. It’s fascinating and a very easy read.