As If It Matters

Tonight I traveled to Maryland (gasp!) to attend a little talk by Malcolm Gladwell about his newest book, Blink. I haven’t read the book yet, although thanks to Tim’s gift of a Powells certificate, I have purchased it. But in his talk, Gladwell summarized the book by saying that he thinks we have to completely re-evaluate all of our methods and metrics for assessing people — for everything from college admissions to compatibility for marriage. The book is apparently primarily about snap judgments — and how sometimes they are infinitely more perceptive than any tests administered, but sometimes blinded by bias (gender and race to name a few). He was a fascinating speaker and offered most of the session up to questions, which was about perfect. I took a few photos in my new Flickr feed. Soon I’ll read the book and let you know if it’s worthwhile.

This entry was posted on February 2, 2005 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.