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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why dose Gary Cohn say he left school?

2. What will be the consequence for the loser’s people, in the single combat of David and Goliath?

3. What percentage of wars were won by weaker countries, when the weaker countries use guerilla tactics, according to Ivan Arreguin-Toft?

4. What does Gladwell say is the range of an experienced slinger?

5. What is the one factor Gladwell seems to measure college success by?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gladwell say is the advantage David has over Goliath?

2. What was the strategy Ranadivé used so effectively?

3. What is Vivek Ranadivé’s qualification to coach basketball?

4. What does Gladwell say about Gary Cohn’s relationship with failure?

5. What does Gladwell say is Gary Cohn’s emotional relationship with the daring leaps he took, to get himself into trading, from selling aluminum siding?

6. What is the lesson Gladwell wants us to take from his parable of David and Goliath?

7. Where were the Philistines expanding into, when they encountered the armies of the Israelites?

8. What does Gladwell say caused the changing demographics of Shepaug Valley Middle School in Connecticut?

9. What is the chart Gladwell uses, to describe the phenomenon of “diminishing marginal returns” (49)?

10. Why does Gladwell say that Caroline Sacks should have gone to University of Maryland instead of Brown University?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In many cases, you have to step back to a certain distance to share the values Gladwell espouses, overlooking, for instance, the sufferings of children with cancer, in order to see the value of Freireich’s cure, or to say that “You could kill André Trocmé” but “another André Trocmé would rise in his place” (274). How would you characterize the distance one has to have from things in order to see what Gladwell sees. Is it the distance of a scientist? An anthropologist? A statistician? A historian? What are the advantages and disadvantages of that intellectual/emotional distance?

Essay Topic 2

In many of Gladwell’s stories, Gladwell attributes a person’s success to the one trait he (Gladwell) is talking about—but this approach blinds us to the thousands of other variables that affect people’s careers and decisions, which in many cases are tied to other factors like the times, or simple luck, or the privileges of class and race that kept Dr. Freireich from being jailed for DWI, for instance (137).

How are Context and Privilege eclipsed in Gladwell’s stories, how does he try to account for them, and how successful is he? Does his refusal to include compounding variables ultimately compromise his examples to two-dimensionality?

Essay Topic 3

Identify the most important points in David and Goliath. How is the book organized? How does this differ from how a novel is organized with plot points?

(see the answer keys)

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