Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

            In Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers: The Story of Success," Gladwell argues there is something profoundly wrong with the way society views success (Gladwell 19). In Gladwell's first chapter "The Matthew Effect" he makes the argument successful people are "invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies which allow them to learn hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot" (Gladwell 19). This means it does make a difference in where and when a person grows up. Whereas in his second chapter "The 10,000- Hour Rule" Gladwell makes the argument that Outliers reached success through a "combination of ability, opportunity, and utterly arbitrary advantage" (Gladwell 37). In this essay, we will examine what it takes to make someone successful. .
             In the first chapter, "The Matthew Effect," Gladwell shows us the roster which was similar to the one psychologist Roger Barnsley and his wife discovered in the mid-1980s. Barnsley's wife pointed out there was an incredible number of hockey players that were born during the months of January, February, and March (Gladwell 22). After further research, Barnsley found a relation between the statistics on other professional hockey players and when they were born. He came to the conclusion "the very best of the best - 40 percent of the hockey players were born between January and March" (Gladwell 23). Gladwell, however, argues that there was nothing "magical about the first three months of the year" (Gladwell 24), it simply was Canada's eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey being January 1st. Gladwell stated the 12 month gap in age represented an "enormous difference in physical maturity." Because of the physical maturity, the older hockey players were viewed as the talented, bigger and more coordinated players because of arbitrary advantage (Gladwell 24).