Outliers

This chapter is about the phenomenon of Asian students generally doing better in math than students from Western cultures, which is shown by standardized tests given worldwide. Part of this, Gladwell argues, comes from language. Linguists have pointed out that learning English vocabulary for math is more rote because it doesn’t follow a strong pattern, while Asian languages are logical and patterned. For instance, there are different words in English for each group of ten: ten, twenty, thirty, and so on. Likewise, the teen numbers are especially tricky, using unique words (eleven, twelve, etc.). By contrast, for example, Chinese builds solely on the concept of ten and has a strict pattern: “one-ten-five” means fifteen, “two-tens-five” means twenty-five, and so on. Thus, children make more headway early on, and it’s estimated that Asian children are a whole year ahead of English-speaking children in math by age five.

The difference, however, runs deeper than that. Gladwell goes back in history to describe in depth the amount of labor required in rice-producing cultures found in Asia versus cultures in Europe, where other crops were grown. Rice is much more labor-intensive, requiring constant work. Peasants in southern China also produced two harvests and engaged in other tasks during the short winter season, thus spending more time actively working than European peasants did.