Rashed's View

I have recently read Malcolm Gladwell‘s book The Tipping Point. It is a very interesting book, and one of the more engaging ones I have read recently. I find both the topics of epidemics and networks independently very interesting. Seeing them combined in this way was thought provoking. I am also a fan of his writings in The New Yorker that you canfind on his blog. He writes on a variety of topics, including finance, health care, psychology, marketing, and science. His analysis is always very thought provoking, whether I happen to agree with him in the end or not. I have yet to read his second book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking.

In The Tipping Point, I found the following particularly to my liking:

• The thesis itself is interesting. Actually, what I find more interesting is that he creates a framework within which to think about epidemics. The interesting thing here is not whether the framework is correct or not but that, like an analogy, it helps the analysis, exploration and improved understanding of a topic (at least for me) – much like the way analogies are used in Physics classrooms to explain certain phenomena. Usually, a good instructor will inform the students of the limits of the analogy also. Gladwell does not.
• The story-telling is very engaging. I picked up the book one evening and could not put it down until I finished it the next morning. The topics he chose to illustrate his points seem gripping in their content. [I am an avid fan of Blues Clues.]
• The build up of the thesis is well laid out. Gladwell describes, step by step, the anatomy of an epidemic. He uses compelling examples for each of the steps. And the steps (almost) naturally lead from one to the next.

One thing Gladwell always goes back to is numerical limits. For example, 150 is the ideal size of a team to work with so that every interaction is optimal; 15 is the number of people you can love dearly; 7 is the number of thoughts you can keep in your head at any one time. It makes me wonder: what is the optimal number of kids for a family to have (and why)?