In his manuscript, American astrophysicist and science educator Eric J. Chaisson explains, “…nature almost surely operates by combining chance with necessity, randomness with determinism…”. In their respective manuscripts, authors Malcolm Gladwell and Leonard Mlodinow mainly argue the significance of luck and randomness on our lives. Both authors support the idea that success is primarily a result of luck or chance. In the subsequent paragraphs I will analyze The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives and Outliers. Specifically I aim to compare and contrast the books themes, strengths, and weaknesses. Personally, I enjoyed Gladwell’s book Outliers best, as I found his writing style and anecdotes to be engaging and entertaining.
Both books were written for anyone who is interested in the elements that effect success and our everyday lives. Outliers is much easier to read as it requires no previous knowledge to manage the material. In fact, the manuscript heavily relies on basic and straightforwardly understood observations of society and human nature. Conversely, some readers of The Drunkard’s Walk may find it helpful to have previous knowledge of statistics and probability.
Leonard Mlodinow’s manuscript aims to “illustrate the role of chance in the world around us and to show how we recognize it at work in human affairs”. The author centers his argument on the evolutionary path of probability and mathematics while focusing on statistics, mathematical laws and theorems. In addition, The Drunkard’s Walk covers the form in which our bodies react to randomness and why it may result in ill-advised decisions and poor judgment.
One of the focal points in Mlodinow’s argument is a concept known as the regression towards the ...
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...l not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
So while randomness and luck greatly affect our chances of being successful, persistence can help lower our rate of failure. Some factors may hinder our opportunity to become successful, but ultimately we have far more control over our fates.
Works Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print.
Mlodinow, Leonard. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. Print.
"Outliers: Missing Pieces." One Read Leaf. WordPress, 19 Nov 2013. Web. 1 Dec 2013. .
Throughout the book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell focuses on using the rhetorical technique of pathos to aid his readers in understanding the formula for success. In one particular part of the book, Gladwell uses experiences and human problems as examples to support his idea that plane crashes and ethnicty are related and the greater idea that success is based on opportunity.
Gladwell, Malcolm. “The 10,000-Hour Rule.” Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown, 2008. 35-55. Print.
Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates use of figurative language including repition and exemplum, along with ethos and pathos current in the 10,000 hour rule; however, his credibility of his sources and knowledge is not present. He makes use of successful people who have impacted the world in analyzing their previous lives and how they had obtained 10,000 hours of practice. Outliers affects the audience to make them feel more knowledgable and aware of the characteristics of success, inlcuding a more relatable and understanding concept established by figurative language. Gladwell provides an ambition, or goal, for young people to achieve success in future generations. Outliers is a very inspiring novel that maintains many aspects of practice through the 10,000 hour rule, and will transform how society views success in many other generations.
Malcolm Gladwell is a canadian-english journalist, speaker, and bestselling author. In his bestselling book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell discusses success and what patterns correlate with it. He states that how much time you put into a certain activity, specifically 10,000 hours, can put you in a elite level of proficiency. This in turn can give someone the tools to allow them the ability to be successful. Using historical citations, patterns, and real life examples, Gladwell forms his 10,000 hour rule. Due to his knowledgeable yet calm tone Gladwell seems to show credibility. His intended audience could be people who enjoy statistics or people who want to be successful and find possible ways to do so. Gladwell uses a logical appeal to show the patterns he has found through his studies of success. He supports his claim with overwhelming statistics which back it. He also uses similes to help better understand how he can relate the patterns he has found for the elite in a certain activity to other things. Foil is probably Gladwell's best means of convincing the reader to his thesis of the 10,000 hour rule. He uses Foil to compare success and we define to legends such as Bill Gates The Beatles and Bill Joy. Overall Gladwell uses Logos, similes, and foils to support his claim of the 10,000 hour rule.
...ew of success, readers can believe that his ten thousand hour rule works but is not something everyone must have to be successful. Even with the few lacking details of his novel, Outliers is still an enjoyable experience that everybody can learn from. It is a novel that shows the audience a new point of view on success and can help people discover what is truly takes, sometimes, to be successful. The knowledge contained in the book is universally sound, offering excellent advice for all those who are willing to take the time and listen. In today’s current atmosphere of doubt, stemming from the Recession and events in the Middle East, the world could use a few more outliers to take the lead. By reading Malcolm Gladwell’s novel, maybe we could spur the creation of a few more.
Hardworking. Persistent. Determined. These are all adjectives the United States associates with successful people. Whenever a story is told about someone who has risen through the ranks to become a successful person--an Outlier-- that achievement is usually said to be earned through personal means and a tremendous amount of effort. Gladwell’s book takes this success stereotype and conducts an examination of the way the world views an Outlier. Outliers: the Story of Success is an unusual nonfiction book in that it is not only easy to understand, but also well written and interesting. Gladwell engages and persuades the reader using not only research, but also real-life examples and anecdotes to prove his point. Outliers demonstrates the point
The popular saying “practice makes perfect” has been used for many years encouraging younger generations to strive for success in whatever area they wish to excel in. Success is something everybody in society strides for but some do not know how it is achieved. However, there are many people throughout history who are known for achieving success in many areas. Malcolm Gladwell, a best selling author and speaker, identifies these people as being outliers. Gladwell identifies the word “outlier” in his story Outliers as “a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience.” Although Malcolm Gladwell does not establish credibility for himself in his novel, his targeted audience of a younger inexperienced generation feel the need to be informed by his detailed theories about becoming successful and eventually becoming an outlier. Although the reality of becoming successful can depend on instances one can not control, Gladwell tells his readers there is a great portion they can control through his theory, the 10,000 hour rule. He does this by using well presented logical persuasive appeals and interesting rhetorical devices such as: onomatopeias, exposition, and argumentation.
Society, however, is a state towards which humans have naturally evolved, and our continued existence without society is inconceivable. Thus, although determinism is argued successfully from a causal point of view, it is clearly flawed in a practical context as it fails these fundamental aspects of human life.
Even when one has a rough childhood and upbringing, they are able to take all of these hard times and turn them into motivation to work harder to improve not only their lives, but their family and friends lives. Through this hard work and dedication comes the 10,000 hour rule. Marcus Gladwell is a very well-known author, writer, and speaker from The New York Yorker; his first four books were on the New York Times best seller list and in 2005, Time magazine named Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people. Because of Gladwell’s outstanding achievements and background, it furthers his readers to believe that he is a very credible and knowledgeable resource. Gladwell’s purpose in writing Outliers is to teach and inform the audience about what an outlier really stands for and how some people become an outlier from a young age. Gladwell’s main audience is people around the world that are interested in the statistical studies. Gladwell, through the use of several rhetorical devices and examples is effectively able to express what it takes to be successful through the 10,000 hour rule....
In the book, groups of successful people are broken down and Gladwell compares their individual characteristics to see if there are any abnormal trends. He starts with talking about how the chance birthdates of a large number of professiona...
Outliers-The Story of Success is a sociological, and psychological non-fiction book, which discusses success, and the driving reasons behind why some people are significantly more successful than others. Malcolm Gladwell explains this by dividing the book into two parts, opportunity and legacy. Opportunity discusses how select people are fortunate enough to be born between the months of January through March, and also includes the idea that those who are already successful will have more opportunities to improve and become even more successful. The 10,000-hour rule proves the idea that in order to become successful in a certain skill, one must have practiced that skill for at least 10,000 hours. In addition to the 10,000-hour rule, timing is also a major component that implies being in the right place at the right time, which brings the author to discuss Bill Gates who was born during the time where programming and computer technology was emerging, therefore sparking his interest in computers, later bringing him to create Microsoft. Another point Gladwell brings forth is the notion of one’s upbringing, race, and ethnicity can be a factor behind their success. And lastly, pursuing meaningful work will cause one to continue working with their skill and not give up. Legacy is a collection of examples that support the idea: values are passed down from generation to generation, which may cause a certain group of people to be more persistent in a skill, or occupation.
If people work hard, focus, and are disciplined, they will succeed in the future. This has become a universal idea taught by parents, teachers, and peers. People have passed down this idea to the younger generations and they chose to live by this moral that makes sense. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell debunks the universal idea that working hard will allow people to play hard and get further in life. Gladwell eliminates the traditional ideas of success by showing that opportunities, family background, and being born at the “right” time are actually what lead to success.
When pressed with explaining the progression of human society to its current state and, more broadly, the historical process in general, one has several possible options. Three of the most compelling views, however, can be attributed to Jared Diamond, William McNeill, and Hans Zinsser. Although each offers a distinct model of how to understand chance and how history explains evolution, they all take radically different approaches. Diamond proposes that everything is explicable by a few simple laws and principles, and even goes so far as to suggest that there are no alternatives in history. McNeill argues that although there are loose, regulated principles at work, they do not dictate or explain everything; instead, he suggests that they create broad general patterns but adds that while there is pattern, there is also a fair amount of chance. Zinsser suggests simply that historians have largely disregarded disease as an agent of change. While all seem to be sound, when examining these three views on a more fundamental level, while focusing specifically on the role disease has played throughout history, it is evident that Zinsser’s stands as the most well-reasoned.
In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell (2008) tells a series of stories of success and concludes his discoveries of underlying secrets in success. Gladwell divides his book into two parts: opportunity and legacy. For the first part “opportunity,” Gladwell explains that individual talent is necessary but not sufficient to achieve success because accessible opportunities matter a lot to one’s success. As to the second part “legacy,” Gladwell emphasizes the significance of cultural legacy and the historical advantages that can’t be ignored when considering the factors of success. Although some critics argue that Gladwell uses stereotypical examples, Outliers is a convincing book because its merits outweigh the defects.
“A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work,” a quote by Colin Powell. When someone wants something big in life, they do their best to go and get it. It is not by sitting down and fantasizing about it, but actually going out into the world and putting it into action. People look at others’ achievements, telling themselves that those people are successful because they were determined to do it. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story Of Success, he investigates how people become successful. He suggests that a person’s success is through key factors such as intelligence, opportunity, hard work or culture. Gladwell introduces several people who have gone through life successfully and examines the opportunities that helped them achieve the highest spot. What really makes a person an outlier? The most important factor for a person to be defined as an outlier is individual hard work in trying to achieve an accomplishment.