David and Goliath: Successful French Art and Unsuccessful Female Scientists (Chapter Three)

(This is the third part of a chapter by chapter review of David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell, a review of the first chapter is here)

The third chapter of the first part begins with an explanation of French Art History, something I've never been interested in.  As I see it, Gladwell is telling a very abridged version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged with the Impressionists as the good guys.  Perhaps I would have found this chapter more intriguing if Gladwell had included Impressionist artwork in it like the previous chapter had visual representations of the relationship between class size and student success.  Oh well, I guess the thought of including pictures didn't occur to Mr Gladwell or his publishers couldn't get the rights to any reproduce impressionist works because the impressionists seek to create an exclusive vibe which appeals to snobby art dealers...

The rest of the chapter is dominated by a story of a young woman who wanted to be a scientist when she was younger but failed to do so when she got to college and high level analysis of what causes college students to major in science.  Women who considered majoring in science may find this story therapeutic but I am more concerned with the data.  He uses the metaphor "a Big Fish in a Little Pond" or "a Little Fish in a Big Pond" about two dozen times in this chapter.  Gladwell shows that there's a relationship with how well students do on their Math SAT relative to other students at their college predicts whether they will major in science better than their SAT score alone.  His brilliant female potential scientist did well in most of her classes at an ivy league school, but got a B in Organic Chemistry and decided to stop pursuing science.  He shows there's a similar effect in the number of papers PhD's publish, only the very top students have a chance of getting published and the top students at the top school will get published much more than the top students at mediocre schools.

He ends with another personal story about a lawyer who was interested in science's educational experience.  This person went to Harvard and ended up becoming a lawyer.  Based on the lack of a real name for this person, I believe Gladwell is refering  to Barack Obama.