Why Did I Say 'Yes' to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist is a collection of talks by people who are changing the world. Hear entrepreneurs, CEOs, storytellers, scientists, and dreamers share their visions of how we can shape tomorrow.

[ByrdNews]

Malcolm Gladwell is unique. His way of explaining, comprehending and delivering highly advanced and difficult academic research to the common man never seize to amaze me. Cudos to you sir.

[nixtoshi]

This guy's extremely smart. I think what I can take with me from this is: Make everyone close to you feel capable of doing everything they wish to accomplish, because just making them feel this way is going to make them accomplish more.

[PietroSperonidiFenizio]

Being a top student works both ways. Not only you shine, but you also get all the attention from the teachers. The teachers prefer to speak with top students, suggest ideas to them, in practice you are part of the closed club of the people who publish. It's not that students get discouraged, it's that the professor's time is a scarce resource

[patriciadobkin]

This is my personal story - my PhD degree was NOT the Ivy league university but now 128 peer reviewed papers, 12 book chapters, Ed-in-Chief of a journal, 1 edited book and 1 co-authored book behind me, I know he is right.

[bonniederby]

Finally, a validation of what I experienced all my life. He doesn’t mention the necessity of working while in school when from low income families which prevents the science labs, and language labs as well as music activities required too after classes.

[TheCollegedoc]

So, here we have a very real explanation for why it can be very hamful for college applicants to "shoot to high." I've thought this for years, but I've never seen it this well articulated. Thank you, Malcolm.

[nebula]

"Man should ascend to knowledge, and descend to work." Descartes said a lot with this one.

[Mike_]

I quote Malcolm Gladwell every time I see EICD or Relative Deprivation Psychology in the real world. His understanding and speech on the subject are brilliant! When I found this video, I only had to write one research paper during my freshman year on whether it were worth going to an ivy league school. It's almost poetic that I'm currently attending a lower-end institution that hardly anyone has heard of. I did poorly in middle school to where I was nearly held back a grade, and my high school transcripts aren't much better. Now, I'm making dean's list every semester; not because people in my school are not smart, but because having the opportunity to succeed when I'm usually a slow learner has provided me the confidence to really appreciate my education.

Thank you, Malcolm, for helping me understand how academia really works; and for making my paper easier to write!

[money]

Malcolm Gladwell is one of those rare sparks that enlightens us in this maddeningly irrational world.

[srimansrini]

One of the the finest thinkers of our time, Malcolm Gladwell makes a strong case against the popular perception through this thoughtfully demonstrated education pattern study conducted in the elite and non-elite schools of America. Highly recommended for everyone.

[craigscott]

Wow. Very interesting. I can apply this to many things in my life, not just in the classroom - music, athletics, the workplace. And, as we all know, we're hungry for theories that will explain why our lives turned out as they did. Mr. Gladwell is a brilliant man.

[weblivz]

He could tell a story about watching paint dry and i'd probably still find myself watching the whole thing. Genius story teller.

[analoglibra]

He's pretty brilliant in his knowledge base and ability to make observations that nobody else is making. He has the data to back up everything he says. He's kind of loud in this presentation, but he's quite charismatic most of his others. I suggest you watch them. BTW he's the Author of "Outliers" and "David and Goliath"

[WillyWZSouza]

He used that presentation on his amazing book David and Goliath underdogs misfits and the art of battling giants.

Great great book! What a mind.

[Jo-Anne.Clarke]

Malcolm accepted the invitation to speak at Google b/c he wanted society to hear this message. Google offered him a platform for his message to be heard.

I graduated an undergraduate science degree in ‘79. In my first year of study I intuited my marks and class ranking would be inconsequential unless I was in the top 1 percentile upon graduation. That everyone from 99%-50% would be lumped into one large group: “Not First”. Similar to the Olympic Games. One Gold medal equals a corporate endorsement offer, esteem and financial gain. Five silver medals is rewarded with obscurity.

43 years since I was graduated with Honours: here are the numbers to support my position.

[gerardtyson]

Counterpoints brought up by a Quora user Russel Huang, answered on April 7, 2015

Which dropout rate, exactly? Is it:

- the proportion of students who declare a STEM major and then do not graduate within X years in that major (out of all students who declared STEM)? (I think this is the 90%, or rather, 10%, figure.)

- the proportion of students who declare a STEM major but switch to another major (out of all students who declared STEM)?

- the proportion of students who wanted to declare a STEM major when they started college, but eventually don't (out of all students who said they wanted to do so)? (I think this is what Gladwell is trying to get at.)

Gladwell's argument appears to be that many of the people who don't go into STEM at Harvard could or would have done so at another university. In other words, he posits that your "chance" of getting a STEM degree isn't based on your absolute ability but rather your relative ability compared to your peer group. He then conflates that with the idea that the relatively-lower ability students are "dropping out" of a STEM field. That's not really what his data shows. All his data shows is that, for whatever reason, people with a 700 Math SAT (or whatever) are less likely to major in a STEM field if they go to Harvard rather than Hartwick.

This explains high school situation. When I changed my lousy high school and go to a private, academically flying high school, I became one of the worst students there. However, when I was at that lousy high school, I was more motivated and "relatively" better.

[tomasbossi]

This must explain why self taught foreign language students progress way more as opposed to those who attend language classes at some institution or study it at school where they constantly compare their poor pronunciation or vocabulary with some other peer. THAT IS WHY, some kids that went to public schools in Latin America with poor language teachers sometimes end up speaking better English than those who went to bilingual schools that cost a hell lot of money. Even though they were getting better chances to succeed their inferiority in relative terms to their peers and it’s effects on their psyche outpaced the quality of the education they were getting. In Argentina we say or at least I say and assume I heard it from somebody : “Would you rather be a lion
‘s tail or a mouse’s head” The worst of the best or the best of the worst. And might also explain why some people, like elite families in Latin America, having the chances to live a better life somewhere else just choose to don’t do so in order to stay on top of the curve. Why people some people choose to stay in small towns and so on. Hierarchy an it’s effects on the human mind are extremely interesting.

[claudiolener]

This man is something else. Smart, charismatic and funny!

[rahulnath]

Really wish I saw this before picking my school. I made the mistake of choosing the best school I got into instead of the second best that I would rather have gone to and would have done really well at. I lost confidence in myself, didn't understand why I was not performing as well as I had in high school, and ended up being worse off academically, intellectually, socially, and holistically. It's not an understatement to say it was the worst decision of my life to go with the "number one" school in the country over a top 25 with less prestige.