『天才！ 成功する人々の法則』（マルコム・愚ラッドウィル著、勝間和代訳、講談社、２００９年）
旧刊ですが、縁あって参加している読書会の２月の課題図書『GRIT やり抜く力』の関連本。以前に読んだことがあり再読です。
原題は"Outliers The Story of Success"。で必ずしも「天才」だけを扱っているわけではなく悪例もあり長寿の地域の特徴もあり、語義では「外れ値」と訳されています。
日本の統計学では「異常値」「外れ値」の二語を充てています。
https://www.weblio.jp/content/outlier
統計学用語辞典統計学用語辞典
外れ値 outlier
他の測定値から飛離れた観察値。外れ値は，常に異常値であるとは限らない。飛離れた観測値は，転記ミスや入力ミスによる場合もあるが，そうでない場合には外れ値が発生した原因をよく考察する必要がある。単に他とかけ離れた値だからといって，分析から除外するのは正しいデータ解析とはいえない。飛離れた値が実際に存在し得るならば，そのような値に影響されない統計手法を選択するようにしなければならない（例えばノンパラメトリックな手法）。
異常値 outlier
データ解析上の異常値とは，他の測定値から飛離れた値を意味する。異常値は，測定，記録，データ入力のそれぞれの過程で発生する可能性がある。しかし，飛離れた値が必ずしも「異常」であるとは限らない。このようなデータの発生した原因をよく確かめる必要がある。確たる根拠がないのに異常値を削除してデータ解析を行うのは誤りである。飛離れた値が実際に存在し得るならば，そのような値に影響されない統計手法を選択するようにしなければならない（例えばノンパラメトリックな手法）。
外れ値も参照のこと。
著者の主張は「すべての人々に好機を与えよ」ということに尽きます。近著ではなぜか東京大空襲を扱った『ボマーマフィアと東京大空襲 精密爆撃の理想はなぜ潰えたのか』（櫻井裕子訳、光文社、２０２２年）があります。著者はジャーナリストで学者ではないので科学的な裏付けは必ずしもあるわけではないようですが「外れ値」から法則を導き出し、それに的を得た法則名（勝間和代さんはフレームワークと呼んでますが）を付けるのが秀逸。ここではスポーツ界で学年で区切った場合は（日本の場合）４月生まれが有利だと言う「マタイ効果」の例。
＜著者プロフィール＞アマゾンより
著者 マルコム・グラッドウェル
Malcolm Gladwell
1963年イギリス生まれ。米国誌『ニューヨーカー』のエースライターとして世界中にファンを持つ。ある製品やメッセージが突然、爆発的に売れたり広まったりする仕組みを解き明かした『The Tipping Point』、人間は長時間考えてたどり着いた結論よりも、最初の直感やひらめきによって物事の本質を見抜くという仮説を検証した『Blink』など、これまで発表してきたユニークな著書はいずれも世界で200万部を超える大ベストセラーになっている。2013年10月に上梓された新刊『David and Goliath』は、2014年春に邦訳『弱くても勝てる技術』(仮題)として講談社より出版予定。
要約はWikipediaから。
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
Synopsis
In his introduction, Gladwell discusses the
Roseto effect which enabled a small, close-knit town in Pennsylvania to have
almost no history of heart disease, substance abuse, or societal ills,
seemingly due to the supportive, comforting social environment of its
Italian-descended population. The remainder of Outliers has two parts:
"Part One: Opportunity" contains five chapters, and "Part Two:
Legacy" has four. The book also contains an Introduction and Epilogue.[7]
Focusing on outliers, defined by Gladwell as people who do not fit into our
normal understanding of achievement,[4] Outliers deals with exceptional people,
especially those who are smart, rich, and successful, and those who operate at
the extreme outer edge of what is statistically plausible.[3] The book offers
examples that include the musical ensemble the Beatles, Microsoft's co-founder
Bill Gates, and the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. In the
introduction, Gladwell lays out the purpose of Outliers: "It's not enough
to ask what successful people are like. [...] It is only by asking where they
are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who
doesn't."[3] Throughout the publication, he discusses how family, culture,
and friendship each play a role in an individual's success, and he constantly
asks whether successful people deserve the praise that we give them.[3]
The book begins with the observation that a
disproportionate number of elite Canadian hockey players are born in the
earlier months of the calendar year. The reason behind this is that since youth
hockey leagues determine eligibility by the calendar year, children born on
January 1 play in the same league as those born on December 31 in the same
year. Because children born earlier in the year are statistically larger and
more physically mature than their younger competitors, and they are often
identified as better athletes, this leads to extra coaching and a higher
likelihood of being selected for elite hockey leagues. This phenomenon in which
"the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is dubbed
"accumulative advantage" by Gladwell, while sociologist Robert K.
Merton calls it "the Matthew Effect", named after a biblical verse in
the Gospel of Matthew: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he
shall have abundance. But from him, that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he hath."[8] Outliers asserts that success depends on the
idiosyncrasies of the selection process used to identify talent just as much as
it does on the athletes' natural abilities.[8]
A man speaks into a microphone.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell interviews
Bill Gates and focuses on the opportunities given to him throughout his life
that have led to his success.
A common theme that appears throughout
Outliers is the "10,000-Hour Rule", based on a study by Anders
Ericsson. Gladwell claims that greatness requires enormous time, using the
source of the Beatles' musical talents and Gates' computer savvy as
examples.[4] The Beatles performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from
1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time, therefore
meeting the 10,000-Hour Rule. Gladwell asserts that all of the time the Beatles
spent performing shaped their talent, and quotes a Beatles' biographer, Philip
Norman, as claiming "So by the time they returned to England from Hamburg,
Germany, 'they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.'"[4]
Gates met the 10,000-Hour Rule when he gained access to a high school computer
in 1968 at the age of 13, and spent 10,000 hours programming on it.[4]
In Outliers, Gladwell interviews Gates, who
says that unique access to a computer as early as 1968 when they were not
commonplace helped him succeed. Without that access, Gladwell states that Gates
would still be "a highly intelligent, driven, charming person and a
successful professional", but that he might not be worth US$50 billion.[4]
Gladwell explains that reaching the 10,000-Hour Rule, which he considers the
key to success in any field, is simply a matter of practicing a specific task
that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years. He also
notes that he himself took exactly 10 years to meet the 10,000-Hour Rule,
during his brief tenure at The American Spectator and his more recent job at
The Washington Post.[3]
A photo of a man in a suit
Gladwell argues that J. Robert
Oppenheimer's affluent background helped give him the skills necessary to
become successful.
Reemphasizing his theme, Gladwell
continuously reminds the reader that genius is not the only or even the most
important thing when determining a person's success. Using an anecdote to
illustrate his claim, he discusses the story of Christopher Langan, a man who
ended up owning a horse farm in rural Missouri despite having an IQ of 195
(Gladwell claims that Einstein's was 150).[3] Gladwell points out that Langan
has not reached a high level of success because of the destitute, dysfunctional
environment in which he grew up. With no one in Langan's life and nothing in
his background to help him take advantage of his exceptional gifts, he had to
find success by himself. "No one—not rock stars, not professional
athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses—ever makes it
alone", writes Gladwell.[3]
Gladwell notes how many of the richest men
in history were fortunate to come of age during decades of technological boom,
or be born at times of low birth rates when universities and job opportunities
were more open to applicants. Later, Gladwell compares Langan with Oppenheimer,
the father of the atomic bomb. Noting that they typify innate natural abilities
that should have helped them both succeed in life, Gladwell argues that
Oppenheimer's upbringing made a pivotal difference in his life. Oppenheimer
grew up in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, was the son of a
successful businessman and a painter, attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston
School on Central Park West, and was afforded a childhood of concerted
cultivation.[8] Outliers argues that these opportunities gave Oppenheimer the
chance to develop the practical intelligence necessary for success.[8] Gladwell
then provides an anecdote: When Oppenheimer was a student at the University of
Cambridge he attempted to poison one of his tutors. He avoided punishment, and
continued his studies by using the skills gained from his cultivated upbringing
in his negotiation with the university's administrators, who had wanted to
expel him.[8]
In the next chapter, Gladwell explains the
fact that Asians are good at mathematics by correlating it to rice agriculture,
particularly the fact that rice cultivation requires more work ethic,
discipline, and longer hours than Western wheat agriculture, and East Asian
school systems have shorter summer recesses than Americans. The pattern of
words for counting numbers is more logical in Asian languages than western
languages.
Gladwell discusses how airline crashes can
result from miscommunication between pilots and the control tower. The
deferential culture of some ethnic groups can make those pilots reluctant to
convey imminent danger to ground controllers. In chapter nine, Marita's
Bargain, Gladwell advances the notion that the success of students of different
cultures or different socio-economic backgrounds is in fact highly correlated
to the time students spent in school or in educationally rich environments. He
describes the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) which helps students from about
50 inner-city schools across the United States achieve much better results than
other inner-city schools' students and explains that their success stems from
the fact that they simply spent more hours at school during the school year and
the summer. Gladwell also analyzes a five-year study done by Karl Alexander of
Johns Hopkins University, demonstrating that summer holidays have a detrimental
effect on students of disadvantaged backgrounds, who paradoxically progress
more during the school year than students from the highest socioeconomic group.
Gladwell discusses how Appalachian and Scottish culture both have a history of violent
feuds. This is caused by the need for constant vigilance to guard livestock
from rustlers – something not required of lowland farmers who grow mostly crops
instead of livestock.
Before the book concludes, Gladwell writes
about the unique roots of his Jamaican mother, Joyce, a descendant of African
slaves.[2] Joyce attended University College in London, where she met and fell
in love with Graham Gladwell, a young mathematician. After moving together to
Canada, Graham became a math professor and Joyce a writer and therapist. While
Gladwell acknowledges his mother's ambition and intelligence, he also points
out opportunities offered to his parents that helped them live a life better
than those of other slave descendants in the West Indies. Gladwell also explains
that, in the 18th century, a white plantation owner in Jamaica bought a female
slave and made her his mistress. This act inadvertently saved the slave and her
offspring from a life of brutal servitude.[9] As one of the slave's
descendants, this turn of luck led to Gladwell's relatively successful position
in life. Summarizing the publication, Gladwell notes that success "is not
exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and
inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain
lucky",[9] and at the end of the book, he remarks, "Outliers wasn't
intended as autobiography. But you could read it as an extended apology for my
success."[3]
