Does Luck Matter?
The Matthew Effect and Unfair Advantages
This article follows the ideas shared by Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘outliers’ and ‘The Unfair Advantage’ by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba.
“success = work x luck x unfair advantages”
THE MATTHEW EFFECT
Some may feel the successful, are just born smarter, faster and stronger.
That may be true to some extent, but there are other factors that come into play.
Gordie Howe one of the greatest hockey players of all time was born on the 31st of March 1928 and played in the NHL from 1946 to 1980, he played for the Montreal Canadians which again was a very successful team which would quite obviously only pick the cream of the crop.
Malcolm in his book takes an excerpt of commentary from a game and replaces the names of the players with the months they were born and It goes somewhat like this -
where were those born in October, November and September?
This is where the relative age effect comes into play…
The birthday cutoff for placing players into specific teams in many sports is the 1st of January, meaning that if you were born on the 1st of January you’d be the eldest and if you were born on the 31st of December you’d be the youngest player.
The differences or changes that can occur in that extra year of learning, eating, maturing, growing and practicing would give the person born nearer to the 1st of January an advantage over the person born nearer to the 31st of December.
And this is where the theory of “selection, differentiation and streaming” comes into play..
This basically means that a stronger, more mature and more experienced player, which in most cases would be the person with the upper hand of the extra year is more likely to be selected into a good team based on his presumed abilities.
The better team or the team full of the “January” kids and the bottom team or the team full of the “December” kids are likely to be favoured differently. The better team is likely to have more funding and better coaching which as a result would allow them to become a successful team in the future.
The fact of the matter is the December kid could have become much more successful had he been born just a few days later.
The data above of some junior sports teams supports the same, where in the jan-apr born are more abundant in the teams and those born in sep-dec are much less abundant.
UNFAIR ADVANTAGES
Chris Langan is considered one of the smarter people in the world with an IQ between 195 and 210 for comparison Einstein had an IQ of 150. Chris didn't have a great childhood and couldn’t do too well at school, however, he got a scholarship to Reed College for which his mother forgot to fill out the form which led to a lost opportunity, later, he got into Montana state college where his classes where held in the morning, his car had broken down and he had no way he could make it into classes in the mornings by foot, so he asked his coordinator to change his schedule to one more suitable to his needs, they refused…
Chris now works manual labour at his farm, even though he is possibly the smartest person in the world, the challenges he faced led to him not achieving his potential.
On the other hand, Evan Spiegel, the co-founder of snapchat and one of the youngest self made billionaires in the world, grew up in a multi million dollar house in Los Angeles, went to an expensive private school and was born to rich, well connected and powerful lawyers.
Evan in comparison to someone like Chris was highly advantaged.
“TO MANUFACTURE YOUR LUCK, YOU MUST PUT MORE OUT INTO THIS WORLD”
🔗 The Weekly Link-Up
Links to things I’ve enjoyed this week and think you might enjoy too:
https://lifelemons.substack.com/p/10000-hours-or-10000-iterations
https://anasnuurali.com/blog/shoedog-review
https://aliabdaal.com/time-vs-money/#howwemightgrow
📖 Must Reads
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba
I'm advantaged, born in Jan☺️