Argumentative Essay On 'Outliers'

In the story "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell uses a series of experiments and logical reasoning to clarify that practice determines the success of one's destiny. "In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours" (Gladwell 12). The experiment showed that the students that excelled had practiced a lot more than the merely good proving more practice determines success. In addition, the studies found from the experiment reveal that there were no "naturals" with the innate talent to be an elite performer.

The 10,000 hours rule, a myth or a fact? The 10,000 hour rule is a theory that states in order to master a skill the person needs to practice their skill for at least 10,000 hours. In the novel Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell the author argues that success depends by one 's ability to reach 10,000 hours of practice. Gladwell focuses throughout chapter 2 on the 10,000 hour theory. He also comes to the conclusion that if one is poor they won’t have the time they need to practice as much as they need to.

Malcom Gladwell, the author of The Outliers, analyzes the factors to success based on real-life example. Through statistical facts and logical reasoning, he attempts to prove how success is more than just hard work and being intelligent. He supports his arguments with accurately calculated statistical facts to gain the trust of his audience and to work towards 2proving his points. Gladwell determines the reasons of success by comparing well-known successful people and finding commonalities between those people.

This quote is only not relevant to the performing arts. It is applicable to every ability a person could wish to become skillful at. At the beginning of my junior year I struggled in my math class. I could do the problems without issue, but writing intelligently about how I solved the problem was required and did not come easy to me. I went into my teacher’s office hours to get more practice and spent additional time on the homework to ensure I understood the concepts completely.

Intrinsic factors critically considered when people think about the main components of success. However, Malcolm Gladwell, a famous writer, contradicts this tendency through the book, Outliers. The book, Outliers insists that extrinsic factors define success rather than the intrinsic ones. Nonetheless, Gladwell himself goes against the topic of Outliers in his assertion: “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires (Gladwell, 2008).” The assertion implies that individuals could achieve success only with those intrinsic factors. Gladwell’s assertion is wrong because people can’t achieve success without an opportunity of relative age, an opportunity to have practical

I think in my adult years I can continue to use deliberate practice in certain things of my life. Colvin states that, “Becoming world-class great at anything seems to require thousands of hours of focused, deliberate practice... For an adult facing the responsibilities of a family and a career, devoting that kind of time to purely developmental activities would be exceedingly tough. Only in childhood and adolescence will the time typically be available” (171). This shows how influential deliberate practice is during childhood and how it becomes less effective when one reaches adulthood.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell teaches you the understanding of success. Malcolm Gladwell in the book Outliers uses logos, pathos, and ethos to get his argument across. Outliers was written for the purpose to show the audience that success isn’t all on how hard you work, raw talent, intelligence or personality traits. Success comes from your culture, who your parents are, when you were born and the opportunities you have been given. The argument by logic, emotion and character are all put into Outliers to convince the readers that success is what you make of it.

Author Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." Based on my experiences, I agree with Emerson's statement. If you have mastered a task, what is the point of sticking to a pattern? I believe that unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow because you have to go outside of your comfort zone to learn new things and keep yourself excited, becoming stagnant will bore and frustrate you, and you can discover new talents and abilities by going beyond what you are used to. My first reason for agreeing with Emerson's statement is that you have to go outside of your comfort zone to learn new things.

Carol Dweck states that “ new research shows that the brain is more a muscle-it changes and gets stronger when you use it” What Carol Dweck means is every time you use your brain, your intelligence is always growing and being smarter. The more a person learns, the easier it gets to learn new things for that person because their brains have gotten stronger. Additionally, Carol Dweck provides us with another quote “Just like a weightlifter or a basketball player, to be a brain athlete you have to exercise and practice. “ By this she means that the more you practice the easier things get by practicing it over and

Socrates states that people by nature are “too weak” (149c) to learn new skills that they are inexperienced with. I disagree with the claim, so much so that I will use this paper to refute it. I will begin this refutation by making sense of what was meant by his claim. I will then proceed to explain why the meaning of his claim is mistaken.

Outliers: The Story of Success Writing about Reading Defense of Passages In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell challenges those who assume hard work is the only path to success. “It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of decisions and efforts we make on our behalf.” Gladwell states that success can happen through a series of different factors.

For nearly 150 years, research scientists have studied and debated the origins of human intelligence. The phrase “Nature vs. Nurture” has become the proxy by which scientists and philosophers signal their beliefs: the “nature” argument for those who believe in hereditary origins and the “nurture” position which proposes that environmental factors can influence this human trait (“Intelligence Debate”). Modern theorists, such as Professor Eva Krapol from King’s College and Professor Regina Sullivan of New York University are major proponents of the “nature” and “nurture” position, respectively. These spokespersons continue to advocate vociferously their positions in stark, black and white terms. However, the more rational approach is less stark

differences that manifest across the population—the domain in which neurology and genetics hold sway. And environment is potent when considering intelligence differences that manifest across time—the domain in which neurology and genetics possess no influence at all. But although this short answer does manage to resolve the paradox precisely, it does not address what is actually at issue here—namely why does Flynn think this is a paradox. There are several different analogies one might use to illustrate this essay’s dual-component model of human intelligence with its orthogonal influences of neuronal intelligence and environmental intelligence. For instance, Lewontin’s example of the batches of seed corn would do quite well.

In 1993 Anders Ericsson published the results of a study on a group of violin players in the West Berlin Music Academy and found that the most accomplished student spent on average 10,000 hours by the time they were twenty years old. From Ericsson’s study, Gladwell coined the 10,000-hour rule. Liking into the study in greater detail, there are no actual measures of variance, which means there was no information taken on the range of time to reach expert status was given. Further, Gladwell chose the 10,000-hour number based on the participants reached twenty years of age simply because 10,000 hours was a nice sounding round number. Secondly, participants were asked to retrospectively estimate the time taken to reach expert status.

However, this does not mean that it is the only factor which can lead to success and make people masters in their fields. Reaching mastery is a long and difficult process which cannot be acquired just with practice. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice can only explain one third of the variation in performance levels, because mastery actually consists of a combination of many essential factors like genes, innate talents, dedication and intelligence. Finally the quantity of practice is not as much important as the way and quality