Outliers

[Marvin the Martian]

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he discusses how birth month impacts performance. If there is a cutoff date for kids, those born immediately after the cutoff date have an advantage. In a league for 9-year-olds, there can be 364-day difference between kids. At that age, the kid 364 days older actually has an incredible advantage. And it is reflected in youth travel teams. It was first noticed in Canadian hockey, but now more have found it in basketball and swimming. Holding tryouts for 9-year-olds for an elite team is going to find 9-year, 11-month-olds far more represented than 9-year-1-month-olds.

That book was written 14 years ago, so he has done a video updating his ideas on the subject. He mentions in the video that parents took note and started holding younger kids back a year, which then resulted in parents holding older kids back a year. He wonders if we are creating an arms race where no one will ever graduate high school because they are being held back.

In the interview he talks to seniors at Wharton. Kids should be a college senior at 22. Only a couple are 22 and single digit months. Most are at least 10 months past, and many are over 20 months. His thought is that we still are seeing this phenomena, that kids are being rewarded educationally for being 10 months older.

Now to be fair, I am not sure how much this helps/hurts by college. But in elementary school, maybe a lot. First, younger kids may get frustrated from doing worse. They may get tracked away from gifted programs simply because they are 10 months younger. Their lower maturity may label them as troublemakers when they literally are just less mature. A lot of things can happen that can negatively impact the younger kids who might otherwise catch up and pass the kids later.

Here is the video, it really was interesting to me.



Now there is a side to this he didn't mention. The real super performers, that cutting-edge group, appear to be in the younger cohort (at least athletically). Gretzky and LeBron are two examples. In the story below it is theorized among some young high-achievers the competition against the older kids drives them more.

Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star

If you want to be a professional athlete in most sports, it helps to be born at the right time of year. In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in …

fivethirtyeight.com

I think the idea deserves merit enough that schools should consider half grades. Kids born Jan-June start 1st in August, and kids born July-Dec start in Jan. Of course this would work better with a year-round system.

I know most won't watch the video, Australian swimming agrees this is an issue and has an algorithm. So in meets there are two placements, how you finished in the pool and how you finished vs your maturity level. I don't know how to effectively do that in education, I suspect it could be done with a similar algorithm but I also expect enough pushback it would never be allowed.

The subject interests me partly because my two oldest were early admitted to school. I thought being introduced to school early would help them more than another year of daycare and watching Barney. But it appears likely I was wrong.

 

[Univee2]

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he discusses how birth month impacts performance. If there is a cutoff date for kids, those born immediately after the cutoff date have an advantage. In a league for 9-year-olds, there can be 364-day difference between kids. At that age, the kid 364 days older actually has an incredible advantage. And it is reflected in youth travel teams. It was first noticed in Canadian hockey, but now more have found it in basketball and swimming. Holding tryouts for 9-year-olds for an elite team is going to find 9-year, 11-month-olds far more represented than 9-year-1-month-olds.

That book was written 14 years ago, so he has done a video updating his ideas on the subject. He mentions in the video that parents took note and started holding younger kids back a year, which then resulted in parents holding older kids back a year. He wonders if we are creating an arms race where no one will ever graduate high school because they are being held back.

In the interview he talks to seniors at Wharton. Kids should be a college senior at 22. Only a couple are 22 and single digit months. Most are at least 10 months past, and many are over 20 months. His thought is that we still are seeing this phenomena, that kids are being rewarded educationally for being 10 months older.

Now to be fair, I am not sure how much this helps/hurts by college. But in elementary school, maybe a lot. First, younger kids may get frustrated from doing worse. They may get tracked away from gifted programs simply because they are 10 months younger. Their lower maturity may label them as troublemakers when they literally are just less mature. A lot of things can happen that can negatively impact the younger kids who might otherwise catch up and pass the kids later.

Here is the video, it really was interesting to me.

View embedded media

Now there is a side to this he didn't mention. The real super performers, that cutting-edge group, appear to be in the younger cohort (at least athletically). Gretzky and LeBron are two examples. In the story below it is theorized among some young high-achievers the competition against the older kids drives them more.

Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star

If you want to be a professional athlete in most sports, it helps to be born at the right time of year. In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in …

fivethirtyeight.com

I think the idea deserves merit enough that schools should consider half grades. Kids born Jan-June start 1st in August, and kids born July-Dec start in Jan. Of course this would work better with a year-round system.

I know most won't watch the video, Australian swimming agrees this is an issue and has an algorithm. So in meets there are two placements, how you finished in the pool and how you finished vs your maturity level. I don't know how to effectively do that in education, I suspect it could be done with a similar algorithm but I also expect enough pushback it would never be allowed.

The subject interests me partly because my two oldest were early admitted to school. I thought being introduced to school early would help them more than another year of daycare and watching Barney. But it appears likely I was wrong.

We red-shirted The Kid Down The Hall. He’s a September baby. In fact, tomorrow is his birthday. We thought it would be better not to be the youngest in his class.

 

[Noodle]

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he discusses how birth month impacts performance. If there is a cutoff date for kids, those born immediately after the cutoff date have an advantage. In a league for 9-year-olds, there can be 364-day difference between kids. At that age, the kid 364 days older actually has an incredible advantage. And it is reflected in youth travel teams. It was first noticed in Canadian hockey, but now more have found it in basketball and swimming. Holding tryouts for 9-year-olds for an elite team is going to find 9-year, 11-month-olds far more represented than 9-year-1-month-olds.

That book was written 14 years ago, so he has done a video updating his ideas on the subject. He mentions in the video that parents took note and started holding younger kids back a year, which then resulted in parents holding older kids back a year. He wonders if we are creating an arms race where no one will ever graduate high school because they are being held back.

In the interview he talks to seniors at Wharton. Kids should be a college senior at 22. Only a couple are 22 and single digit months. Most are at least 10 months past, and many are over 20 months. His thought is that we still are seeing this phenomena, that kids are being rewarded educationally for being 10 months older.

Now to be fair, I am not sure how much this helps/hurts by college. But in elementary school, maybe a lot. First, younger kids may get frustrated from doing worse. They may get tracked away from gifted programs simply because they are 10 months younger. Their lower maturity may label them as troublemakers when they literally are just less mature. A lot of things can happen that can negatively impact the younger kids who might otherwise catch up and pass the kids later.

Here is the video, it really was interesting to me.

View embedded media

Now there is a side to this he didn't mention. The real super performers, that cutting-edge group, appear to be in the younger cohort (at least athletically). Gretzky and LeBron are two examples. In the story below it is theorized among some young high-achievers the competition against the older kids drives them more.

Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star

If you want to be a professional athlete in most sports, it helps to be born at the right time of year. In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in …

fivethirtyeight.com

I think the idea deserves merit enough that schools should consider half grades. Kids born Jan-June start 1st in August, and kids born July-Dec start in Jan. Of course this would work better with a year-round system.

I know most won't watch the video, Australian swimming agrees this is an issue and has an algorithm. So in meets there are two placements, how you finished in the pool and how you finished vs your maturity level. I don't know how to effectively do that in education, I suspect it could be done with a similar algorithm but I also expect enough pushback it would never be allowed.

The subject interests me partly because my two oldest were early admitted to school. I thought being introduced to school early would help them more than another year of daycare and watching Barney. But it appears likely I was wrong.

I listened to this podcast yesterday (it's not a video ).

I have a late August birthday. If only I had been held back a year I'd probably be a CEO or President now. Or, I'd at least have made the Olympics in swimming.

As for Australian swimming, they do not actually use Mat-Caps in meets. They don't have "two placements" with one based on "how you finished vs your maturity level." Rather, some researchers have simply tested the application of a Mat-Caps algorithm to the meet results of 700 swimmers. One thing that was not explained is how they determined maturity levels. You obviously cannot determine that simply on the basis of, say, height and weight. I could not find any explanation online. https://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440(20)30782-9/fulltext

I do think I did far better in law school because I worked for a couple of years after undergrad (and I was 23 when I finished undergrad). But that had nothing to do with some disparate treatment I received because of my biological age.

Interesting topic.

 

[UncleMark]

We red-shirted The Kid Down The Hall. He’s a September baby. In fact, tomorrow is his birthday. We thought it would be better not to be the youngest in his class.

I was one of the oldest in my class. Didn't help.

 

[mcmurtry66]

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he discusses how birth month impacts performance. If there is a cutoff date for kids, those born immediately after the cutoff date have an advantage. In a league for 9-year-olds, there can be 364-day difference between kids. At that age, the kid 364 days older actually has an incredible advantage. And it is reflected in youth travel teams. It was first noticed in Canadian hockey, but now more have found it in basketball and swimming. Holding tryouts for 9-year-olds for an elite team is going to find 9-year, 11-month-olds far more represented than 9-year-1-month-olds.

That book was written 14 years ago, so he has done a video updating his ideas on the subject. He mentions in the video that parents took note and started holding younger kids back a year, which then resulted in parents holding older kids back a year. He wonders if we are creating an arms race where no one will ever graduate high school because they are being held back.

In the interview he talks to seniors at Wharton. Kids should be a college senior at 22. Only a couple are 22 and single digit months. Most are at least 10 months past, and many are over 20 months. His thought is that we still are seeing this phenomena, that kids are being rewarded educationally for being 10 months older.

Now to be fair, I am not sure how much this helps/hurts by college. But in elementary school, maybe a lot. First, younger kids may get frustrated from doing worse. They may get tracked away from gifted programs simply because they are 10 months younger. Their lower maturity may label them as troublemakers when they literally are just less mature. A lot of things can happen that can negatively impact the younger kids who might otherwise catch up and pass the kids later.

Here is the video, it really was interesting to me.

View embedded media

Now there is a side to this he didn't mention. The real super performers, that cutting-edge group, appear to be in the younger cohort (at least athletically). Gretzky and LeBron are two examples. In the story below it is theorized among some young high-achievers the competition against the older kids drives them more.

Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star

If you want to be a professional athlete in most sports, it helps to be born at the right time of year. In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in …

fivethirtyeight.com

I think the idea deserves merit enough that schools should consider half grades. Kids born Jan-June start 1st in August, and kids born July-Dec start in Jan. Of course this would work better with a year-round system.

I know most won't watch the video, Australian swimming agrees this is an issue and has an algorithm. So in meets there are two placements, how you finished in the pool and how you finished vs your maturity level. I don't know how to effectively do that in education, I suspect it could be done with a similar algorithm but I also expect enough pushback it would never be allowed.

The subject interests me partly because my two oldest were early admitted to school. I thought being introduced to school early would help them more than another year of daycare and watching Barney. But it appears likely I was wrong.

Really interesting. My daughter is one of the oldest kids in her class. i haven't seen a benefit yet. thus far she appears to be not showing off yet not falling behind.

in the sports world it definitely makes a difference in the younger years. it's always better to play older kids over the long haul. also over the long haul i'm not sure birth year makes all that much difference as compared to puberty, by way of example. we all know kids who peak early. things seem to even out at the end.

one of my best buds since we were five was a man child. had back hair in 5th grade. played varsity as a frosh and was the best on the team. played national pool. olympic team overseas etc. but he relied so much on his physical dominance he didn't nurture his skills enough and peaked early. took a full ride to dayton, which was a bit of a let down given where he started, and ended up quitting before his senior season.

 

[IUINSB]

Really interesting. My daughter is one of the oldest kids in her class. i haven't seen a benefit yet. thus far she appears to be not showing off yet not falling behind.

in the sports world it definitely makes a difference in the younger years. it's always better to play older kids over the long haul. also over the long haul i'm not sure birth year makes all that much difference as compared to puberty, by way of example. we all know kids who peak early. things seem to even out at the end.

one of my best buds since we were five was a man child. had back hair in 5th grade. played varsity as a frosh and was the best on the team. played national pool. olympic team overseas etc. but he relied so much on his physical dominance he didn't nurture his skills enough and peaked early. took a full ride to dayton, which was a bit of a let down given where he started, and ended up quitting before his senior season.

Are you channeling IGW? Capitalization Is your friend.

 

[Univee2]

Are you channeling IGW? Capitalization Is your friend.

When he blames Comcast and moneyed interests then he’ll be there.

 

[zeke4ahs]

Love this topic. Don’t have time for video now but I will. At the beginning of the school year, I never looked at kids’ info from previous teachers unless they had an IEP. Wanted to form my own opinions. In second and third grade, I could almost always tell those who were younger. By the time they were fourth graders, it started to even out and it wasn’t so obvious. It makes sense because in the early grades so much of learning boils down to maturity and some kiddos can’t sit still, have the attention span of a gnat, etc. We actually did have both a kindergarten and a prekindergarten, as that was the most obvious problem. Most of those kids did pre and then kindergarten, but every once in awhile a kiddo did so well in pre they jumped to first grade.

 

[Ohio Guy]

I listened to this podcast yesterday (it's not a video ).

I have a late August birthday. If only I had been held back a year I'd probably be a CEO or President now. Or, I'd at least have made the Olympics in swimming.

As for Australian swimming, they do not actually use Mat-Caps in meets. They don't have "two placements" with one based on "how you finished vs your maturity level." Rather, some researchers have simply tested the application of a Mat-Caps algorithm to the meet results of 700 swimmers. One thing that was not explained is how they determined maturity levels. You obviously cannot determine that simply on the basis of, say, height and weight. I could not find any explanation online. https://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440(20)30782-9/fulltext

I do think I did far better in law school because I worked for a couple of years after undergrad (and I was 23 when I finished undergrad). But that had nothing to do with some disparate treatment I received because of my biological age.

Interesting topic.

I also have a late August birthday. I was one of the youngest kids in my class - I will say I think that hurt me a bit athletically. One of the best athletes in the class behind me had a birthday within a week of mine. That said, I don't think an extra year to catch up was ever going to do too much for me. I was probably always destined to ge a good, not great athlete. That said, I do think confidence was probably an issue for me as a kid.

I lived just outside of DC in Maryland for a good bit and I know 4 boys from my son's grade who still live there that repeated 8th grade. Apparently that is just mostly accepted. On a visit back there those boys seemed unfazed. They were likely regurgitating what their parents told them, but they said that they just didn't feel ready for high school yet.

They're all going to be some of the oldest kids in their freshman class. One kid will very likely get a lacrosse scholarship, though it isn't clear to me if the extra year will make a difference in that or not.

 

[vesuvius13]

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he discusses how birth month impacts performance. If there is a cutoff date for kids, those born immediately after the cutoff date have an advantage. In a league for 9-year-olds, there can be 364-day difference between kids. At that age, the kid 364 days older actually has an incredible advantage. And it is reflected in youth travel teams. It was first noticed in Canadian hockey, but now more have found it in basketball and swimming. Holding tryouts for 9-year-olds for an elite team is going to find 9-year, 11-month-olds far more represented than 9-year-1-month-olds.

That book was written 14 years ago, so he has done a video updating his ideas on the subject. He mentions in the video that parents took note and started holding younger kids back a year, which then resulted in parents holding older kids back a year. He wonders if we are creating an arms race where no one will ever graduate high school because they are being held back.

In the interview he talks to seniors at Wharton. Kids should be a college senior at 22. Only a couple are 22 and single digit months. Most are at least 10 months past, and many are over 20 months. His thought is that we still are seeing this phenomena, that kids are being rewarded educationally for being 10 months older.

Now to be fair, I am not sure how much this helps/hurts by college. But in elementary school, maybe a lot. First, younger kids may get frustrated from doing worse. They may get tracked away from gifted programs simply because they are 10 months younger. Their lower maturity may label them as troublemakers when they literally are just less mature. A lot of things can happen that can negatively impact the younger kids who might otherwise catch up and pass the kids later.

Here is the video, it really was interesting to me.

View embedded media

Now there is a side to this he didn't mention. The real super performers, that cutting-edge group, appear to be in the younger cohort (at least athletically). Gretzky and LeBron are two examples. In the story below it is theorized among some young high-achievers the competition against the older kids drives them more.

Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star

If you want to be a professional athlete in most sports, it helps to be born at the right time of year. In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in …

fivethirtyeight.com

I think the idea deserves merit enough that schools should consider half grades. Kids born Jan-June start 1st in August, and kids born July-Dec start in Jan. Of course this would work better with a year-round system.

I know most won't watch the video, Australian swimming agrees this is an issue and has an algorithm. So in meets there are two placements, how you finished in the pool and how you finished vs your maturity level. I don't know how to effectively do that in education, I suspect it could be done with a similar algorithm but I also expect enough pushback it would never be allowed.

The subject interests me partly because my two oldest were early admitted to school. I thought being introduced to school early would help them more than another year of daycare and watching Barney. But it appears likely I was wrong.

I was early in school; it didn't stop me being in the upper level of school, so I don't think going early hurt your sons. It is an interesting topic though that impacts many things in life if shown to be true.

 

[Krafty97grad]

I was early in school; it didn't stop me being in the upper level of school, so I don't think going early hurt your sons. It is an interesting topic though that impacts many things in life if shown to be true.

Just bought this book for my 13 year old last month.
He is in 8th grade, but just turned 13. He recognized he was the outlier of the outliers (pushed ahead vs normal year 7th grade vs held back 6th grade).

His younger brother has a January birthday which has aligned well for hockey, soccer, lacrosse that all work on calendar birth year for teams.

Personally, my younger son who is small for his age (despite the calendar advantage) has benefited from 2 other factors more than his birthdate (1. Having an older brother - hazing builds aggressiveness 2. Having a mom who was a college athlete - genetics).

I will look for a Swedish study about holding back children vs being younger, but it came to an opposite conclusion. Children held back or repeating a grade, enabled the ability to coast early on but still succeed which resulted in difficulty in later grades (lack of perseverance and not use to learning on how to learn). Whereas, younger kids may struggle early, but develop the perseverance and the skills for learning how to learn which enables success in later grades as concepts/assignments become more complex.

I think the difficult part to control for are (affluence/school district, birth order, parent education, parent involvement, etc) which would dramatically impact results.

 

[outside shooter]

I was born in September and was the youngest in my class. The rule at the time was that you had to be 6 by the first day of school, then the day after Labor Day. I turned 6 on that very day.

 

[snarlcakes]

Just bought this book for my 13 year old last month.
He is in 8th grade, but just turned 13. He recognized he was the outlier of the outliers (pushed ahead vs normal year 7th grade vs held back 6th grade).

His younger brother has a January birthday which has aligned well for hockey, soccer, lacrosse that all work on calendar birth year for teams.

Personally, my younger son who is small for his age (despite the calendar advantage) has benefited from 2 other factors more than his birthdate (1. Having an older brother - hazing builds aggressiveness 2. Having a mom who was a college athlete - genetics).

I will look for a Swedish study about holding back children vs being younger, but it came to an opposite conclusion. Children held back or repeating a grade, enabled the ability to coast early on but still succeed which resulted in difficulty in later grades (lack of perseverance and not use to learning on how to learn). Whereas, younger kids may struggle early, but develop the perseverance and the skills for learning how to learn which enables success in later grades as concepts/assignments become more complex.

I think the difficult part to control for are (affluence/school district, birth order, parent education, parent involvement, etc) which would dramatically impact results.

Did the people surveyed pay for daycare in the Swedish study or did the government? One of the main reasons for sending kids early, in the U.S. , is money. Not to mention the less money you have the more incentivized you are to send them early. Daycare is not cheap.

 

[NPT]

When he blames Comcast and moneyed interests then he’ll be there.

Especially Vanguard and Blackrock