Outliers Part 7

In chapter 7 of outliers Gladwell talks about plane crashes in the 1990’s in Korea. He says that there are far to many crashes that statistically should happen. Also since Korea was having way to many crashes other countries started to say that they were not going to let Korea fly over them or use their airports if they did not turn themselves around. With this threat Korea began to investigate the reasons for the plane crashes.
They first tried to us common sense by saying it was the condition of the plane, the pilots were not trained properly and so on, but what they found out was that everything was up to code. So then they had to investigate deeper and look at other things and what they found out was it was the culture. The plane crashes were happening because Korea had a high power index, this meant that no matter what the pilot said everyone would agree with him and not question him.
So int the end common sense doesn’t always give you the answer you sometime have to look more deeply into the situation. Also it’s sometimes good to question authority. Its not always good to have a high power index and then again it’s not always good to have a low power index. One occasion that it is good to have a low power index is in a hospital. This is good because even though doctors have much more experience nurses are right out of school so that means that they would know more about new technology and newer ways of doing different operations.

Doctors may also be used to doing an operation one way but the nurse who is just out of school may now of some newer way of doing the same operation that has been proved to work better. Also since the nurses are with the patients more they may now something the doctor doesn’t know that may affect the operation. It’s also sometimes good to have a high power index, it would be more beneficial to have a high power index in a family because the kids should respect their elders. The parents and grandparents know more than the kids do and the kids can always learn something from older people.