Outliers: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

1. Rice is part of China’s cultural legacy, and building a rice patty is demanding, exacting, and complicated work. This was also work that many lives depended on. In southern Chinese villages, rice is a crucial facet of society.

2. Gladwell moves from his brief discussion of rice paddies to a discussion of the Chinese numbers system. It is highly regular, following simple rules without exceptions. As a result, Chinese children can learn to count to 40 two years earlier than American children on average. The system is what psychologists call “transparent.” The rules are clear enough for very young children to understand counting, addition, and multiplication much more easily. Children who grow up speaking an Asian language have a built-in advantage. But what if that isn’t the only advantage Chinese students have when it comes to math? Could the rice paddies make a difference in the classroom?

3. Rice farmers have had to work harder than every other farmer. Growing rice requires perfectionism and constant vigilance. There are no vacations. The days are long with no exception. And the harder a farmer works to optimize his rice paddy, the more rice that paddy will produce. Some estimate that the average workload of a wet-rice farmer in Asia is three thousand hours a year.

4. This, like the garment work previously discussed, is meaningful work. It is difficult, requires a great deal of dedication and problem solving, and effort is directly linked to reward. In order to be a rice farmer, you have to care deeply about your work. Chinese peasant proverbs underscore this fact: proverbial wisdom in Chinese history repeatedly comes back around to the idea that hard work leads to a better life, that persistence is key, and that sacrifice is necessary.

5-6. Researchers have found that one of the most reliable predictors of whether or not a student will be good at math is not their IQ or the quality of their schooling. It is their willingness to complete tasks carefully. In one study, when students were given a long and tedious questionnaire, the students who rushed through and skipped questions along the way performed consistently worse on mathematical exams than students who carefully completed the questionnaire without taking shortcuts. In a country shaped by wet rice farming like China, where “doggedness is not the exception but a cultural trait,” perhaps it is not surprising that students tend to be better at math.