Industrious people Malcolm Gladwell claims that the traditional cultural differences plays a crucial role in people™s intelligence in math. According to some research, Gladwell supposes that the cultural of paddy rice planting influences people™s math ability. So in order to approve this claims, Gladwell study it from the next parts.
At first, Gladwell shows that people™s social status was decided by how many grain you own in ancient China which displays the importance of rice in traditional society. But as Gladwell says that rice planting is a very complex work, you have to pay many efforts to it. Not like some western countries, there are no advanced farming equipments. So what the farmers have to do is to work hard and be diligent enough all the time. The traditional agricultural culture helps Asian form the characteristic of diligence and industriousness.
Just as Gladwell emphasizes in his Outlier, the harder you work a rice field, the more it yields. Gladwell believes that the attitude is especially important and the success is mostly decided by people™s persistence by taking the example of Renee. It is found that Asian students are very diligent and they always use their spare time to learn. So they have higher ability in math than others. What™s more, Gladwell asserts that the internal culture of language also influence people™s ability in math.
The simple Asian language structures and the regular digital system can help Asian remember numbers easily and builds more interests in math. Finally, Gladwell ends this chapter by noting that people from the places where rice is planted more are more intelligent in math because these people have the special characteristic of diligence and persistence, which the farmers who planted rice also have.