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Public Zone 公開區 => Bookwyrm 書蟲天地 => Topic started by: chin on 01 August 2009, 00:28:52

Title: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 01 August 2009, 00:28:52
I read the book review few months ago, and finally got the book earlier this week.

It was a page turner, and I finished the book in two sittings. A good book, and an easy light reading. I will writing some more comment later.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 11 September 2009, 05:36:08
Just grabbed this book from the airport book shop and read half of it during my flight to Budapest. I think I will finish it on my way back..........

Really an interesting book.....
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 13 September 2009, 02:12:04
Yes, it's an interesting light reading. I picked up two of his books (Outliers & Tipping Point) at the recent promotion. Outliers is more interesting reading for me than the other one.

The book sort of dispelled some romantic believes that someone somehow can change the world sole with his/her own determination and ability. Bill Gates was smart, but if were not born at the right time at the right place.... etc...

The general theme should not be too surprised for people bought up in traditional Chinese culture. The Chinese long ago say that 時勢做英雄 (the era/environment makes the hero) or 謀事在人成事在天 (planning/preparation by people, success by the "heaven") or the idea behind 孟母三遷.

The above statement is by no mean to take any credit away from the author. He's putting the idea in modern context and reinforce the idea - that smart and diligent people still need to be in the right time at the right place to achieve greatness.

The second half of the book went great length to examine how culture & family affect one's achievement and behaviors. I wonder if these observations had any survivor bias?!
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 13 September 2009, 11:48:28
Well, finished it on my way back from Berlin.

This book is particularly useful for some parents, I would say.....

People may not think that  孟母三遷 matters much but this book gives them a qualitative view.

I like the chapter about the three lessons of the lawyer much. Not because it talks about legal profession, but because it states a very true principle of "meaningful work".
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: kido on 28 September 2009, 18:23:15
Haven't read the book, but because of this thread, I wiki the book and read the sort of preface.  Later I encounter this article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125356566517528879.html) which seems telling the same story as "why elite hockey player born in the first few month of the calendar".

It seems the more we dug from the statistical data, the more inclined in believing to the Chinese ancient wisdom 風水/命運.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 28 September 2009, 18:59:48
Haven't read the book, but because of this thread, I wiki the book and read the sort of preface.  Later I encounter this article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125356566517528879.html) which seems telling the same story as "why elite hockey player born in the first few month of the calendar".

It seems the more we dug from the statistical data, the more inclined in believing to the Chinese ancient wisdom 風水/命運.

Depending on what you mean by 風水/命運 and how people relate & react to 風水/命運 as told by the 'masters'.

It's one thing to appreciate & accept the randomness in life, it's different story to resign one's fortune entirely to 風水/命運, especially the more superstitious, deterministic view of life.

In the former case, you will still need to prepare yourself to take advantage of the opportunity arised. You still need to be smart, work hard, and willing to take risk. At the same time, you need to fully prepare for failure even though you are smart, worked very hard and took risk, simply because of wrong timing or a bad sequency of event happened. 
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: wongyan on 28 September 2009, 23:18:20
there is a book called "Good Luck".  A tale written by two Spanish that really gave me a different aspect on "good luck" versus "luckiness". 
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: kido on 10 October 2009, 10:34:03
there is a book called "Good Luck".  A tale written by two Spanish that really gave me a different aspect on "good luck" versus "luckiness". 

Any explanation? 試舉例加以說明之。
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: wongyan on 12 October 2009, 11:02:35
as it is written in a tale format, it is hard to explain as different people may have different interpretations.   I can borrow the book to you if you like. It is also very light that you can finish it 1-2 nights.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 10 January 2010, 03:18:55
My daughter really liked this book that she subsequently purchased all the other Gladwell books.

The latest one is What the Dag Saw. It's a collection of his essays, instead of a specially written book with a coherent theme. I am reading the part about minor heros - people who are obsessed with what they do and innovated greatly in their little corner of the world.

Since the book is really just a collection of unrelated essays, they can be read in a piece meal fashion without much problem. I am most fascinated sofar by the interview with Nassim Taleb, the author of Black Swan (http://chinman.com/index.php/topic,93.0.html). I have read two of Taleb's books and knew that he's a fund manager. But he never talked about his exact strategies in his books, but hinted that he's not predicting the market, and cashing in one extreme events.

In this interview, it was revealed that the trading strategy involves buying (and only buying, not writing, or selling in layman term) varies out-of-money extreme event puts and calls. The basic idea is that other option traders are presumably pricing options contracts using normal distribution to predict extreme events. Whilst Taleb believes black swan events happen far more frequent than what normal distribution predicts - the tails are much fatter than assumed. With this strategy, which I assume the extreme event options are dirty cheap, he will constantly losing small amount of money every single day, hoping to make a killing in the extreme events.

If the financial markets are getting more and more volatile, which seems to be the case with more frequent market crashes, this strategy could work well. (It did worked well reportedly for Telab.)

The question on the option pricing is how cheap is cheap enough? And if he's not predicting the market, how does he assign probabilities to the extreme events and size his bets?
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 12 January 2010, 13:01:29
Well...whatever the strategy people are using, I think the most important thing is where to put the line and this makes everyone has different strategies....
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: wongyan on 13 January 2010, 05:41:22
so it is really similar to the "counting strategy" people used when playing blackjack in casino.  i.e. when they found the number of 10s in the deck is higher than normal, they wager more.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 23 January 2010, 01:37:16
Referring to my post of Taleb's strategy, I wonder if he was playing the equivalent of 末日輪 in the HK markets?

Using the terminology in The Greatest Trade Ever, this strategy is Negative Carry like buying the CDS on US housing 4 years ago. And negative carry generally makes us uncomfortable psychologically.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: kido on 03 September 2010, 11:54:32
Yes, it's an interesting light reading. I picked up two of his books (Outliers & Tipping Point) at the recent promotion. Outliers is more interesting reading for me than the other one.


Due to this thread I bought the 'Tipping Point' few months ago. Not until few days ago I started turning the pages.  Glad to find that it's sort of a magazine-style light reading, some opinions are worth to look deeper academically. [I don't know whether it's my problem or not, I feel the book should have some pictures/illustrations to ease my effort to understand his descriptions ]

Overall the book is a story telling style and it gave you much of his viewpoints, for example relaying(relating) unrelated events.  But it's this style sometimes make me uncomfortable: he just laid out the facts without further supports.  And the most serous problem of his judgement was I think he misunderstood the cause and effect by using statistics inappropriately : 2 high correlated events don't imply one is the cause of the other, or vice versa.

Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: wongyan on 03 September 2010, 12:25:27
2 high correlated events don't imply one is the cause of the other, or vice versa

well said. 

e.g. people weigh inversely proportional to temp in winter

but we cannot say people's weight changes the temp. 
lower temp may also lead to big-eating or heavier clothes so it is not conclusive neither.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: q on 03 September 2010, 13:23:20
Yes, it's an interesting light reading. I picked up two of his books (Outliers & Tipping Point) at the recent promotion. Outliers is more interesting reading for me than the other one.

Overall the book is a story telling style and it gave you much of his viewpoints, for example relaying unrelated events.  But it's this style sometimes make me uncomfortable: he just laid out the facts without further supports.  And the most serous problem of his judgement was I think he misunderstood the cause and effect by using statistics inappropriately : 2 high correlated events don't imply one is the cause of the other, or vice versa.

I've read some of Malcolm Gladwell's articles, and heard him on the Radio Lab podcast (a very interesting popular science podcast).  His stories are very interesting, and engaging, but I think he sometimes falls into the trap of what Nassim Taleb calls the Narrative Fallacy.  But, then again he wouldn't sell millions of books if the stories he told were rigorously academic :)
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: kido on 05 September 2010, 01:42:46
I've read some of Malcolm Gladwell's articles, and heard him on the Radio Lab podcast (a very interesting popular science podcast).  His stories are very interesting, and engaging, but I think he sometimes falls into the trap of what Nassim Taleb calls the Narrative Fallacy.  But, then again he wouldn't sell millions of books if the stories he told were rigorously academic :)

Agree, wiki'ed Narrative Fallacy.

That sounds interesting that we come across Teleb's name several times when we discuss Gladwell's book(s).  Chin mentioned that Gladwell interviewed Teleb, but then Gladwell himeself fell into the Narrative Fallacy which the term was invented by Teleb.  :)  [ maybe I should read the Black Swan sometimes later... ]
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 03 February 2013, 23:17:43
Went to HMV to buy a few DVDs and found that they are selling books too.

Then I bought another book from Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point. It is just HKD49. Now it is on my reading list......  ;D
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 04 February 2013, 01:48:44
Went to HMV to buy a few DVDs and found that they are selling books too.

Then I bought another book from Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point. It is just HKD49. Now it is on my reading list......  ;D

Cheap now.
Is HMV going under?
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 04 February 2013, 08:38:19
Cheap now.
Is HMV going under?

I would say they need cash, desperately need cash. They are selling their inventory at discount up to 50%, some local movie DVDs are selling at even higher discount.

I bought a few DVDs too, none of them costs me more than HKD35.

It may be a good time to enrich your collection.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 02 March 2013, 15:38:54
Start to read Tipping Point last night. To me, this one is easier to read than Outliers. I finished 1/3 of the book in 3 hours or so.

It is really a page turner.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 18 October 2013, 22:59:49
Got his new book, David and Goliath. This one talks about how a small business can beat a big giant of its industry. Will queue on my next reading.

That is a epub version, so.......  ;D
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 25 October 2013, 20:58:57
Read one third of the book. still a good read and it keeps its style and standard. It will not disappointed you if you like his previous books.

Book starts by telling the story of David vs Goliath and analyze why David won. The chapters follows start to elaborate how underdog can beat giant.

It is full of sociology studies as example, particularly if you have kids and are scratching your head about your kids' schooling, you may need to read the first few chapters. It talks about the studies of Class size, Money to kids, How to pick school / university, etc.....

I am still working on it and may write more later......
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 04 November 2013, 18:47:59
Finished.

Quite a good read and it just happened that the last part of book talked about the legitimacy of power, which I think the government of Hong Kong should take a look (and I noticed that a newspaper article has the same view too).

Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 12 April 2014, 16:14:48
Just finished reading Blink. This one talks about that sometimes our instant decisions are better than our deep thought.

The book has almost the same style, full of stories and examples, it is a good light reading.

I found that this book is almost a book of psychology, which gives a few good account of how our mind work on different things, which makes us come up with different instant decisions. Some decision may be bad but this could be explainable but most good instant decisions are mainly due to our own knowledge, experience and skill.

This book is also good for those who are interested in marketing, especially on the chapter about Pepsi Challenge and New Coca Cola.

Interesting and I found that I had read four of Gladwell's books, but not in his chrono order. I like this one more than tipping point.
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: hangchoi on 29 July 2015, 12:46:51
Maybe I quite like the style he writes, I just finished reading "What the Dog Saw". Then I found that I bought the whole series of his books: Outliers, Blink, Tipping Point and What the Dog Saw.

This book collects the articles he wrote on the newspaper, again they are easy to read and yet quite inspiring. Loads of social phenomena to contrast some views that we take for granted. Too many intelligence will lead to wrong judgement, the difference between panic and choke, plagiarism, criminal profiling, and the wrong of generalization, etc., all these topics gives a different view to some of the nowadays principles that we use to agree that's truth.

Interesting read. I like particularly the chapter about panic and choke, which gives a good analysis of the difference of these two by using professional tennis player and golfers. It explains totally about my behaviour when I play golf  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Post by: chin on 14 September 2015, 17:18:22
I have all his books, but have not yet read What the Dog Saw