Gladwell: Age Bias in Hockey

Anyone read Gladwell's new book yet - Outliers?
He has an interesting observation on why there is an overwhelming amount of professional hockey players that were born in January/ Feb March.

 

Meaning to get this, but here's a Q&A he did with ESPN.com's Jeff Merron about the topic.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=merron/081208

 

James Mirtle, one of hockey's best bloggers, had something on this the other day.

http://www.fromtherink.com/2008/12/10/688210/malcolm-gladwell-and-hocke#comments


It's simple really. You're placed in hockey by your year of birth; however, an eight year old born in January is going to be physically stronger and more developed than one born in December. As a result, they'll likely be better hockey players AND more likely to be streamed into an elite level.


And Gladwell didin't discover this. As one of the commenters on the blog says, Ken Dryden mentioned this in his book Home Game, published in 1989

 

jr - always looking to discredit

Actually a psychologist by the name of Roger Barnwell put forth the theory in the early 80's. Gladwell makes this clear in book.

One thing that Gladwell does not seem to account for is multiple age league where a say a player who turns 11 in December and is forced to play up in a league with older 11's and 12's. The kid who does not turn 11 until January stays in younger league against many 9 and 10 year olds - huge difference

 

Boom, please try harder. I wasn't trying to discredit anybody.

Anybody who's been involved in hockey for any length of time knows this month of birth theory but a lot of the media accounts are reporting it like it's Malcolm's idea.

I'd suggest that the reason Gladwell may have used hockey as an example in his overall theory in Outliers is because he was raised in Canada--he grew up in SW Ontario and graduated from University of Toronto. So, he would have already been familiar with the theory as it relates to hockey players, as opposed to someone born in Arkansas.

I don't understand your "multiple age league" scenario.

Up here an eleven year old will either play Peewee hockey (11 & 12 year olds, if it's a small league) or Minor Peewee (exclusively 11 year olds). Peewee is for 12 year olds only.

I don't know of a league where 11 year olds would play with 9 year olds

 

Is there a manner in which this might apply to education?

I know when I was growing up, since school started in late August, early September, I think the cutoff for school years was August 15. The schools I went to had multiple streams for higher or lower achieving students.

 

Nor I. And I was on the minor hockey beat for a long time.

 

One of our own tackles this:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/juniors/2008/12/01/joyce_column_numbers/

 

As much as "one of our own" wants to discredit Gladwell the numbers for this season's crop of NHL players support the theory:
Birth Month Players
January 51
February 46
March 61
April 49
May 46
June 49
July 36
August 41
September 36
October 34
November 33
December 30

Jan/ Feb / Mar/ April 203 players

Sept / Oct/ Nov/ Dec 133 players

 

Gladwell has a piece in the new New Yorker that touches on how difficult quarterbacks are to evaluate because of the spread in college. He ties it into the difficulties evaluating teachers. Chase Daniel is his example.

If nothing else, it's pretty funny to read a New Yorker story aimed at foofy art types with basic football words put in quotation marks. It's very much football writing at a second-grade level.

 

Story in the New Yorker follows along the lines of his book.

Overall theory on difficulty of evaluating spread O QBs is accurate but agree that explanations from football standpoint are pretty basic.

The gold standard still for New Yorker articles out of their element is a story done a few years ago on NASCAR.

 

You're really just not that bright, are you?

JR isn't refuting the theory. He's refuting that Gladwell was the originator of the theory.