FYI: this is a work in progress. I’m waiting to get copies of the books (that’s going to take 2 months since I’m overseas and I’m not willing to pay an arm and a leg in shipping)…
Feedback for draft 1….
I did read it. It’s definitely the post of yours that’s closest to being a real article — something that could be linked to and passed around online.
I think your basic point is that the mathematical perspective on the phenomenon that Gladwell describes in TP is actually pretty narrow relative to the range of related mathematics.
Are you trying to persuade a layperson fan of TP that the possible mathematical perspective is broader? Or are you trying to persuade a mathematically literate reader of the mathematical point that TP is narrow relative to the rest of the field?
Either way, to improve it I’d suggest
- reading the rest of the book (or at least taking out your mention that you haven’t finished the book)
- changing the title of the blog entry to show that you’re talking about TP rather than the rest of his oeuvre
- showing with actual quotes from the book your mathematical point
- showing how related mathematical phenomena have real-world implications
(draft 1)
As a statistician, I have several contradictory feelings about Malcom Gladwell’s books (Tipping Point, Blink, Outlier). The main two contradictory feelings I have are, from a mathematical standpoint, the small, tiny topic he discusses, and from a writing standpoint, how well he is able to explain mathematical concepts to his less technical readers. While I have only read a small portion, I have heard lots of chatter from my peers not trained in mathematics, and read several reviews. So perhaps it is unfair to write about all of his books.
I read a few chapters of the Tipping Point. First, it is common of me to put down books after reading just a few chapters, so it’s nothing against Mr. Gladwell. From a mathematical perspective, all I could think about was that the whole book was devoted to one small part of queueing theory, which is one small part of Markov processes, which is one small part of stochastic processes which is one small part of… The etymology of queueing theory is from queue, the British version of waiting in line- like standing in line at McDonalds.
And I will make an analogy to tetris here, and claim that if he had just spent one chapter explaining one aspect of the popular video game tetris from a mathematical perspective, it would have been much more concise, and a lot less interesting. I wouldn’t call it pandering to his readers, as he is a writer that wants to be read, and he is teaching the concept. That’s his objective, to have his readers make it through the book- to present the material from a boring 500+ page operations research book (think Winston here) in a way that keeps the reader excited. As a writer, that’s the thing that’s really beautiful.
From a mathematical perspective, the whole idea of the tipping point is analogous to tetris in the following way. It’s all about arrivals and departures. Pieces in tetris, and memes in Tipping Point. In Tetris, the pieces arrive at a constant rate at each level (the part about different pieces isn’t relevant to this point), and the pieces depart when the player aligns them correctly and the ordered lines disappear. Just as tetris has a limited sized playing area, your mind has a limited number of things it can be thinking about at any given time. In the Tipping Point, the memes in your mind are like tetris pieces and the tetris playing area.
The tipping point is when the speed of arrival goes from less than to greater than the speed of departure. Thus, in tetris, the tipping point is when you lose, and all the pieces stack up. With hush puppies, it’s the time when more people are acquiring the meme for hush puppy acquisition than forgetting about/discarding them.
Mathematical Aside: I’m making a statement that Tipping Point is a special case of Markov processes (stochastic processes). To be more specific, it is the birth/death part of queueing theory. In stochastic process speak, the tipping point is when we go from having an arrival rate, (
Perhaps my explanation is lacking a bit. One could extrapolate my argument and make the analogy that playing tetris is like the opposite of being a marketer. A marketer’s job is to, in the words of the mathematical aside, take the situation where the meme for his product in people’s minds has
I will say that I greatly enjoyed his story on the moth. (It was free on the podcast, but has since been archived and is now available for sale- I might have a personal copy somewhere to share, though). I’d check his blog for his take on the experience. The moth is an urban storytelling site in NY, and they record the candid (no notes allowed) stories told by all people. Their podcasts are usually pretty good, but some can be a little much for virgin ears.
To get back to the contradiction I started with, the really great thing about Mr. Gladwell is his writing. Obviously – as he tells us in his moth story- he cut his teeth at the Washington Post as a science writer. And that time, writing about science for laymen – definitely not for Lehmann- really honed his skills. Perhaps I’m a little jealous that he has this amazing ability to communicate these little pieces of the mathematical trade better than myself. It’s a little frustrating that being a relative master of one domain in no way affects your ability to communicate that to others. Mr. Gladwell is an inspiration to me- that I can write about mathematics in a way that engages the reader and has real world consequences (in addition to making large sums of money, of course). Hopefully the world will use more data and scientific rigor in the making of decisions because of his work.
