A brief introduction of the book. As implied in the title of the books, it's about a new perspective to look at the outliers, the success stories.
The book starts from the Hockey team story. There's a surprising statistical finding that nearly all the candidates who make it to Canadian national team were born in the first four months - January, February, March, April while none was born at the end of the year. As found by the researcher, there was a pattern over there. But why? One of the convincing theory is that because the cut off line for selecting the best Junior hockey team players was January, those who born in early of the year makes the perfect candidates because they are older, and physically stronger. Once they are selected, they are heavily trained, and when time goes by, they are actually better because of the hours spent on training. Opportunity of being born at the beginning of the year plus hard work.
This is basically the whole theme of the book, but it makes sense. I will just go on talking about two more examples.
Following by the Hockey team story, story of Bill Gates, we all knew him being the founder of Microsoft but not many knew that he was from a family that could afford him to go to secondary school with a computer club enabling him unlimited access to computer. That might sound nothing now but it was a big deal by then. The vast majority of the students at that time had no access to computer, let alone a student club in school. Even professors in computer science department didn't have the unlimited access. His parents'connections allowed him to make his first deal. Undoubtedly, he worked really hard to develop his software and spent hours on it. But it was also the opportunities that allowed him to get a beginner's advantage and get the practice. Again, opportunity plus hard work.
There has long been a stereotype that Asians good at maths and indeed, according to international test result, that's the case. But one researcher realised that there was a correlation between students who were willing to try (problem solving skills) and the maths result). How fast a student can solve a mathematical problem at the first time varies, but there's no proof that the slow-learners are not as smart as the quick-leaners. It's psychology. The quick-learners are convinced that they could solve the problem, so they do and get more confident in problem solving skills over time and do more exercises, while the slow learners are more likely to tell themselves that maybe they are just not good at maths and give up on themselves. Overtime, there comes the differences. The more one falls behind, the more reinforcement on the thought of "I'm just not good math", and thus it's mindset that matters.
Going back to the Asian stereotypes. One of the explanation could be about the value of hard work. Agriculture in Asia differs from other part of the world, Asians have been growing rice for generations. Unlike the crops of their western counterparts, the harvest of rice depends a lot on hard work.
People may doubt whether the culture back then could still affect us. Yes. This applies to the Irish immigrants in the U.S, like those mentioned in the book "Hillbilly Elegy": Blood for blood. Honour goes first. Regardless of their status, for example, even after being a law graduate from Yales university, the author in Hillbilly Elegy still gets irritated easily by small insults (while their counterparts from other parts of America simply laugh it off in face of insults) and is affected by the culture. But how the culture was formed? Peasants in that part of the world made a living through keeping animals, resulting in a culture that was different from places where people grew crops. To keep their animals well without being stolen, they had to be tough and retaliate when there was a threat ( not a problem for most farmers cuz it took too much work and time for one to steal everything in the field)
Another possible reason found out by researchers was the number itself. Number in Chinese was fundamentally easier to pronounce than English, which may enable a better head start for Asians because Asians can pronounce and remember the number easier.
Number of school days could also be one of the possibility. It helps explain the math scores in different countries and also the inequality in education.
According to the author, the number of school days in America are much less than that in the Asian countries. In other words, more holidays, especially summer holidays for American kids. But what's the big deal about it ? Those pioneers for American education had a misperception that pushing students too much would drive them nuts, as therefore long summer holidays were invented so that students can rest and play and keep themselves sane.
A research showed that for kids from a wealthy family and those living in poverty, their academic results were similar when they entered school, based on the comparison on exam result. What makes a difference is the summer holidays. Kids from the well-off family joined summer camps, read books, and had classes while the impoverished kids did not. The latter simply watched TV and played. As time went by, this explained the reason for which the poor kids had a comparative disadvantage. The tuition fee should be taken into accounts as well but for the normal public school, this is the case, the holidays are what hold the poor kids back, creating education inequality.
And certainly all those summer camps can't bring the American kids comparative advantage to their Asian counterparts because when American kids are having holidays, Asian students are actually taking classes in school with even more hours per day especially for Chinese students.
The book review was based on my memory and the overall impression of the book (I also added the Hillbilly Elegy part which I found relevant ), and therefore it might not be that accurate when it comes to some small details. For further details, go read the book ;D Overall, quite recommend the book cuz it provided a new prospective to all those success stories.
