Chris

Chris

**SUMMARIZE**
This role will be completed with each entry and should be posted on your personal page. Your job is to prepare a brief summary of the day's reading. The summary should be a quick statement that conveys the main highlights, key points, essence of the day's reading assignment. This should be a short paragraph. This is also where you will highlight thoughts regarding connections between the reading and the essential question for your book.

(Don't Forget the Date!)


 * Summary for Pages 1-35 5/3/2010**

The first 35 pages are used as a hook to get the reader interested in the author's ideas. It involved three stories of how certain elements of the world are effected by much smaller occurrences. It talks about how the best hockey players in Canada are born in January, February, and March because the cut off for the age group is January 1st. This means that the children born very close to the cut off date will have much more time to mature and grow and become the bigger kids on the team. This will then lead to the top coaches picking them to get the best training and practice to get even better. And slowly the difference in age becomes to have a very big affect on the skill level on the player. He also uses other sports and compares them because many other sports have similar patterns. Also, the author compares this cut off date to schooling and compares the older and younger children in grades on test scores and finds that a very similar pattern occurs, and at the top level of university graduates, the younger population is misrepresented by 11%.


 * Summary for Pages 35-91 5/6/2010**

In these pages, the author took his ideas and opinions and added them to a completely new context. Instead of sports he took a look at some of the smartest people in the world, and some of the most successful people in the world. He found that being extremely smart did not directly correlate with being successful. But instead, it appeared that it was much more valuable to find yourself handed extremely unique and beneficial opportunities take advantage of them to benefit yourself. He came to the conclusion that in fact, you don't have to excessively smart, but instead you have to be smart //enough// he has yet to still define the term enough in more objective terms but he does make it clear that there is a certain threshold that one must reach to make the situations around them much more beneficial. This does go back to the final question do individuals make history or does history make individuals, and more the most part it seems that it is a distinct mixture of both the individual's ability and the surroundings he stumbles into.


 * Summary For Pages 91-116 5/10/2010**

This section was devoted to specifically proving that no one by themselves can become successful, it took the example of one genius Chris Langan, and described his entire life. It began with him coming from a very broken and problem ridden childhood and family, with multiple fathers and he was very poor. He got a scholarship eventually but his mother forgot to fill out the paper work and it was not renewed, and he was kicked out of college. He then worked hard to get back into college, once he did, on morning the transmission of his car fell out and he was going to be late to his classes, he called and asked if his morning classes could be shifted to the afternoon, he was refused the request and soon after kicked out of school again. This man was genius and had no issues with school, but he grew up alone and did not learn the social skills to appease the egos and opinions of the people he tried to learn from. Instead, in most cases he actually offended them without realizing it. This lead to him being viewed and pompous and ignorant, and no one actually viewed him by his intelligence because his outward actions got him labeled negatively. This is another point that proves that individuals do not make history but instead the circumstances that they are handed have a much more important affect.

This section was completely devoted to the idea of a trough generation, or the idea that multiple generations were very large and following this trend came a small generation. This generation itself was a set of outliers because these set of circumstances created a world that was prepared for an enormous generation, but got a small one. This make jobs more abundant, and schools easier to get into. This also links back to the final question on do individuals make history or does history make individuals. It still seems that both are important parts and neither make a deciding factor, but circumstance that the person are given have a much greater affect on their outcome than those individuals being extremely smart. In fact, in almost all cases it has been found that being extremely smart does not help at all if the other circumstances to play out in your benefit. But once a person comes along that is a genuine genius, and is met with those rare and extremely beneficial circumstance, we will find some one that can truly change the world. **
 * Summary for Pages 116-158 5/13/2010

There was a lot of reading this time around and learned a lot going through it. It first began with stories from Harlan, Kentucky were families were forced to always defend their honor in a very physical and violent way. This meant that there consistently shootings and attacks in this town over name calling. The author then took this and compared it to the people of current day that are also from the south. He found some scientists that ran tests on sets of people from different areas of the US and ran tests by treating them in certain ways and testing the scientific aspects of their reactions. These scientists found that even though people in current times no longer reacted so violently, mentally and scientifically they got angrier and more violent. But in contrast, the people in the north that did not have to always defend their honor physically did not really react to the circumstances and brushed them off without much acknowledgment. This really says a lot about the final question does history create individuals or do individuals create history. With this test for sure it proves that past history has a huge impact on how people act today and the author continues this discussion by doing more research on plane crashes and what details truly affect why they occur. He found that the people who originated in countries where the hierarchy in social status completely affected the way they interacted with the captains during high stress environments. He saw that these people did not feel assertive enough to question the captain on how he was handling a situation. This also meant that there was no real conversation occurring in the cockpit during these situations which is impossible to help alleviate these issues. This again supports one side of the essential by supporting the point that depending where you grew up, how society worked, and how you ancestors acted all affected the way people interact and assert themselves in situations. This also makes it very apparent that history makes individuals and not the other way around.
 * Summary for Pages 158-224 5/18/2010**

In the very end of this book, the author dealt with the touchy issues of the racial assumption that Asians are better than the other races at math. His reasoning for this is actually quite solid and interesting to hear. He hypothesizes that, first of all Asians a long time ago primarily worked in rice paddies, where the more effort put into farming rice, the better off the family is. This hardworking attitude is coupled with the fact that any human brain can quickly memorize anything that can be stored in a two second span of time. Since the way Asians say number takes only one quarter of a second versus the English way which takes a third, they can memorize more. This means school children learn math more quickly, this slowly becomes a bigger and bigger gap because the school children have more time learning math at a young age that they get more skillful at it as they grow. He also used proof by researching a world wide math test and comparing the results. After this, he describes and anecdote of his own life and how is mother came to marry his father by getting out of south Africa and attending a boarding school in Canada were she met him. He finished this story with describing how his mother became one of the few to receive a scholarship to attend that school to get out of Africa. This was a very interesting ending but it left me wanting more of a description and idea on the real qualities of an Outlier, it really shows that, in fact, the people who are actual Outliers do not have any control how they got there, instead it is a combination of beneficial circumstances that weave together to create a very helpful life in which one individual is lucky enough to be in the correct place at the right time and be aware enough to take advantage of the that specific circumstance. This completely answers the original question by proving, at least to me from reading this book, that without a doubt, history makes individuals, individuals do not make history.
 * Summary for Pages 224 to End Due 5/21/2010**

I was the discussion director for ** the Weekend of May 1-2 5/2/2010** Here are my questions. Why did the author use such detailed stories in his writing? What did you think the story was going to lead to? Did the information benefit the authors point or take away from it? Do you like the author's style of using detailed stories to convey his ideas? Do you think the book is organized skillfully, even though it jumps around in its topics.

1. The different birth dates that were looked at and how they correlate with the people success. Page 68, This was some of the most important information in this section of reading and it will be very valuable to review. 2. The IQ tests that the book included Page 86. This will be useful to get a better idea on how multiple people score on these tests. 3. The final sections of review and personal speculation that the author included will also be very helpful to review and think about in a group, page 89-90
 * I was the Passage Master for ** **Tuesday-Thursday May 4-10 Pages 36-91 here are my passages.

I was the Connector for Wednesday, May 10th Pages 91-116** ** Here are my connections What I curious to see, is how the learning about the trough generation applies to the current generations. A trough generation is the point at which the generations before it where large and their parents were prosperous, but the economy went bad and the generation following it was much smaller. All the planning before this generation had been prepared for a larger generation that was not create, instead there is a smaller one. This creates a high demand for jobs creating circumstances where this smaller generation will have an easier time getting a job. I would like to do some research in class and see the differences in the current generations to see how this "trough" idea connects to the current populations today.

I was the Researcher for pages 116-158 Here is my research which is due May 13th I went and found a website that has all of the years cataloged with the number of births that occurred. we can use this for our discussion to get an idea on what our generation is compared to those before and after us. Also we can use this to see if we have one of those circumstances given to us that will help us become outliers as well. Also, during class we can use this chart and find which set of dates would be best to be born in and than see if anyone extremely successful was born during the different years that we picked. Here is the website: [|http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html]

**I was the Discussion Director for May 18th **Do you think that the circumstances that you are immersed in upon birth truly affect the way you conduct your life?** Yes, some cultures are completely based around respect elders and authority. Versus other countries which condone equality throughout society creating a balance in how people treat people in a position of authority. But it also has a lot to do with how you are brought by your parents and how you are taught to treat others. It makes sense that this can occur because larger issues will be noticed and dealt with quickly and sensibly, but if multiple small problems occur that are stretched across multiple people, they will not attract attention until they slowly become a serious issue. What did you think about the conversations that took place in the cockpits moments prior to the plane crashed? It was surprising to see that the american pilot can easily deal with foreign people, a strange airport, and landing heavy, he communicated well a clearly and dealt with the issue extremely well. But the Columbian pilots who are much more afraid to question authoritative figures tried to shy away from issues and not cause problems, that resulted with the death of about 80 people. How do you feel about the US being one of the top most assertive and questioning of authority nations?** **Why do you think it is so assertive?** It made a lot of sense because instead of firing everyone and restarting, they sent Americans to the countries that were less assertive and began teaching them how to question authority in a confident manner by removing the proper ways of speaking and creating an equal environment. How does this new evidence and ideas affect your opinion on the essential question?** **Has it changed as the reading has progressed?** This book has really proved that people must be given great circumstances that can be used, and be smart and willing enough to take full advantage of them and be aware of what options that they have. This also means that the essential question is completely right, individuals make history, but they must be given some of the history to make it happen. It is a mix of both.
 * Do you believe that most accidents do not occur from one major problem, but instead multiple compiling upon each other into a catastrophe?
 * It makes a lot of sense because our democratic system condones people expressing their own opinions to vote a certain person into power. This gives people a feeling of power and the realization that they can express their ideas without getting in trouble. This also makes sense because people are all expected to be treated equal regardless of their stature in society, furthering peoples confidence.**
 * How do you feel about the way airline companies have reworked the way in which they operate?


 * I was the Passage Master for ** **Friday May 21st Pages 224 to the End here are my passages:

1. I selected page 227 where he uses the set of numbers to prove his theory about the two second memory span. I think it will be fun to review this concept and see what my fellow group mates think. 2. I picked 236 where the book talks about that when people care about what they are working on they put more effort in. I think it will be interesting to see if this also pertains to effort put into schoolwork. I know it holds the same for me but more opinions will be good to compare. 3. 238 has multiple quotes from rice farmers that were very important and should definitely be reviewed. 4. Page 250 begins the story of Marita, i think it will be very humbling to compare our experiences for schooling to a 12 year old who had to get up at 4 every morning and then take a subway ride all by herself. 5. 285 is the final ending which I did not think really fulfilled my expectations for the conclusion. I would like to see what my group mates thinks and ask them how the final chapters affect their opinions on the essential question. **