In the short story “Outliers: The Story of Success,” author Malcolm Gladwell claims that to become a successful musician, practice plays a bigger role than talent. First, Gladwell supports his claim by adding in statistics from a survey taken in the early 1990’s by a psychologist named K. Anders Ericsson. The survey consisted of three groups of violinists. The first group was made of stars who had the potential to become “world-class soloists.” The second group contained “merely ‘good’” players. Lastly, the third group consisted of students who were “unlikely to ever play professionally and intended to be music teachers in the public school system.” The three groups of violinists were asked the same question: “Over the course of your entire
