My only post about the new Malcolm Gladwell book, I promise

As Lucy's comic suggests, I'm a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan.  I could blog my thoughts on almost every chapter in his latest book, Outliers, but I'm not sure I'd be able to curb my desire to just copy the book into my blog verbatim in an attempt to expose more people to his fascinating socio-economic hypotheses, so I'll try to keep it brief.  Here are a few points of interest from his recent writings.

• Convergence tests & divergence tests

Many of the tests we take in school can be categorized as a convergence test.  For example, on a multiple choice test, a list of possibilities are presented for each question, and you have to converge upon the correct answer.  A divergence test, on the other hand, requires your mind to move in as many different directions as possible.  In the example used in Outliers, students are asked to write down as many different uses as they can think of for two objects: a brick and a blanket.  Gladwell discusses these testing methods while writing about different kinds of intelligence, and uses them to explain why affirmative action graduates of Michigan's law school, who didn't perform as well academically as other students, enjoy careers that are every bit as successful as their white counterparts.  In the same chapter, he convincingly suggests that Harvard should introduce a lottery structure to its admissions process.

• Unconventional comparisons

In Gladwell's latest New Yorker article, he likens the selection of public school teachers to the selection of NFL quarterbacks.  Blogging about the response to this article, he espouses the value of drawing parallels between seemingly unconnected things.

"...non-symetrical comparisons are far more interesting and thought-provoking than symetrical comparisons. If I wrote a piece about how finding good point guards in the NBA was a lot like finding good quarterbacks in the NFL, the comparison would be exact. And as a result, it would be relatively useless.  What new light does the addition of a second, identical example shed on the first?"

This pretty well summarizes why I find Gladwell's work so interesting: he's good at combining ideas in previously unrecognized ways.  Would that I had such insight.  When I was younger, I was amazed at how musicians, scientists, and other creative minds were able to produce brilliance seemingly out of nothing.  The older I get, the more often I see that breakthrough discoveries or artistic achievements are the result of (or the combination of) many preceding accomplishments & influences.  My definition of creativity has been reshaped with time.