Malcolm Gladwell's Igon Values
Steven PInker in the NYTBR
An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.:
Elsewhere in the review PInker calls Gladwell a “minor genius”. HIs take is just about right: Gladwell is a very interesting journalist and engaging public speaker who is in no way the Great Thinker Kottke and others make him out to be.
