In chapter eight of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell addresses the difficulty of rice farming as related to why Asians excel at mathematics. Countries such as China and Japan are “shaped by the tradition of wet-rice agriculture and meaningful work” (pg.248-249), meaning that they invest great effort into farming, thus allowing them to realize that hard work is worthwhile. Not only that, hard work comes with great returns, and this description matches “so perfectly as in the case of mathematics” (pg.239) for Asians. To go into detail, the endless efforts to accomplish something bounces back as rewards, in this case the elongated hours of studies (hard work) pays off by rewarding excellent math skills. This is a didactic posed by Gladwell to teach
