1. In my GT class we are reading the novel Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The premise and purpose of the book is about people who are "outliers". This means that they are different than others. This book talks about people who are different in ways than most people. It also talks about many famous and successful people such as Bill Gates for example. It also talks about different theories and explanations for things that we would have never figured out.
2. Chapters 3 and 4 were about Chris Langan and also had some other information in them. Chris Langan has an IQ of 195, the average human has an IQ of 100 and Einstein's IQ was 150! This shows that Chris Langan is a complete genius! He started talking at six months of age, in school he could walk into a test in a foreign language class, not having studied at all, and if he there were 2 or 3 minutes before the instructor arrived, he could skim through the textbook and ace the test! When he was fifteen he could match Jim Hendrix on the guitar. He didn't attend school at all. He would just show up for tests and ace them and the teachers couldn't do anything about it. Gladwell also stated that once your IQ is above 120 it doesn't matter if someone else's is 130 or 140 because that range isn't as big as 60-70. When your two people have an IQ that high they both have the same chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Gladwell also showed 2 questions from a typical Raven's intelligence test, one question was easy, but the other was very hard and nobody in the class could figure it out. Gladwell compared IQ levels to basketball heights which I agreed with and also didn't. He said that if you aren't six feet or six one you can't play at that level which isn't true. There were an abundance of good basketball players who were under six feet tall. If you know about basketball there are and were many good players under six feet in height. Examples are Nate Robinson, Spud Webb, Jameer Nelson, Mugsy Bogues, Chris Paul, and Allen Iverson. There are others too, but these are some really good ones, Nate Robinson is only 5'7" and he won the dunk contest three years in a row and blocked Yao Ming who is 7'6"! You need to be able to jump high rather than height, because shorter people can jump higher than taller people so they can reach the same height so it doesn' matter. It does matter on some positions, if you are playing center you need to be at least 6'11", if you are forward around 6'3"-6'10", and if you're playing guard you don't need to be tall. I do agree with the statement that just because a guy is 6'8" doesn't mean he is better than someone who is 6'5". He also talked about different colleges that produced people who won the Nobel Prize. Overall I think this chapter had an immense amount of information which was very interesting to me!
3. I personally think that Chris Langan in a way was successful, but in a way also wasn't successful. Our class definition of successful was to maintain a balance between financial stability and happiness with self and others and to accomplish the goals you want to achieve. He achieved his goal which was to live on a farm. He also is happy with his life. This does make him successful. I don't think he was that financially stable. He was average or less than average in the video we saw about him. He lives on a farm in a small house. This isn't that financially stable. I feel that if he wanted to he could have done much more with his life, he is a complete genius and if he went into a company or opened up a business I honestly feel that he could have been rich. He is very smart and would be able to work well and make good money. He also flunked out of college, if he went back and got a better education he would have been extremely smart and definitely would have been able to make good money.
4. I will take away many things from these two chapters. I learned that once your IQ is at 120 it doesn't matter if it's higher than that or not, so now I won't be like oh his IQ is 130 and your IQ is 125 so he is smarter! I also love what Gladwell said on page 83. He said "To be a Nobel Prize winner, apparently, you have to be smart enough to get into a college at least as good as Notre Dame or the University of Illinois. This changes my viewpoint on being able to win the Nobel Prize! I always thought you had to be super smart and go to an Ivy League college to even have a slim chance of winning a Nobel Prize, but now I have hope and will definitely try to go on a path that will help me win a Nobel Prize!
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