Outlier Chapter 8 Summary

     In chapter 8 "Rice Paddies and Math Tests", the author Malcolm Gladwell mainly states that those people who are successful must be persistent and spend countless time doing what they want to do through analyzing the rice paddies and math tests. Firstly, he illustrates the rice paddies' situation in China and shows that Chinese people spend a lot of time growing rice paddies well. He then takes a math test for example. He shows that the big different math system between western countries and Asia leads to that those people who are born in Asia, their math abilities are better than American people, which makes him think about whether it has a connection between growing rice paddies and math abilities. Then, he points out that Western agriculture is "mechanically oriented", which leads that people do not need labor to complete the tasks and the time is always enough. On the contrary, in China or Japan. farmers do not have enough money to buy machines, which leads that they must manage their own time well and make better choice to improve their yield. It is like "skill oriented". According to the comparison of these two different methods in agriculture, the author finds that people who are from Asia use their brain more frequently, which makes them good at math. Besides, he points out that as to the farmer, the harder you work, the more you get. Then, Malcolm uses the "Straight line in coordinate system" experiment carried out by a math professor at Berkeley, called Alan Schoenfeld. Afterwards, he compares the rice paddies with math tests again, then he points out that the reason why math ability of people who come from Asian is better than people who come from America is that Asian people practice more; they insist it and they believe that they can do it well. After he states two examples, he believes that success is made up of persistence to what you want to do and willingness to work hard. Finally, all the things prove that "No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich"(pp. 224-249).

Response

­     When I started to read the introduction to Outlier, I felt really interested in the beginning part. It gave us two definitions of the word-"outlier", which made me want to know what the author’s purpose was to do this. Did he want readers to choose one definition that was more suitable for the article. In my opinion, I liked this part, because to some extent, it seemed like a hook to catch readers’ eyes or make readers to think. With the question in my mind, I began to read. At the beginning of the introduction, the author told us historical things about the mysterious place Reseto. When I read this for the first time, I felt really confused about this part. I thought it was hard for me to understand. I first thought that Reseto was the aspect that the author focused on, but then I realized that the author wanted to introduce the physician Stewart Wolf. After finishing the reading, I know at that time, there was heart disease in the United States. The heart attacks were the main cause of death of men who were under the age of sixty-five. It was impossible to be a doctor at that time but Wolf did. He spent a lot of time investigating the origin of the disease. Comparing those people who were over sixty-five between Reseto and America, he found that the death rate caused by heart disease was half in Reseto. After seeing this, he thought that there must be something special in that place. In order to find out why that phenomenon appeared, he asked his friends to help him. He investigated people’s diet and knew it was diet habit that led to this fact. In my opinion, Wolf was brave enough and he should be respected by anyone because he may die if he suffered the heart disease during his investigating. Health plays an important role and everyone is eager to be healthy. I am really willing to read the book because I want to see how the author shows what Stewart Wolf did for people’s better understanding of health.          ­ 

what you do not know about me

     Hi, everyone! I am a freshman in university of San Francisco. I was born in ZheJiang Province which is located in south of China. I lived with my parents and grandmother since i was born. It is my first year in San Francisco. Before I came America, I had studied in China for 12 years, and I did well in junior middle school and senior high school. In my opinion, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in America, and it is really suitable for people to study or live. I also want to learn the education differences between China and America and improve my English. Therefore, I choose San Francisco to study. It is also my first time to write something on the internet, which makes me really nervous. I am a quite optimistic people as well as a humurous one. I always keep a positive attitude no matter what problems I meet. I am good at mathematics, which leads to that I choose math and computer science as my majors. Although it is very difficult to learn these two majors well, I will try my best to do and I believe I can conquer them.
     In addition, I do take care of my personal health. I do exercise in school gym everyday, like running, playing basketball, or swimming. After coming to colleague, all my articles were written in English though it was very difficult for me at the beginning of my semester. However, if I practice a lot, I think i can do well in it. In the future, I want to be a business man and go all out to make my parents have a happy life.
     Certainly, I am also a friendly people and I am willing to makes friends with you!