David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Gladwell introduces Vivek Ranadivé, who committed to two principles when he decided to coach his daughter’s basketball team: he would never raise his voice, and his team would play a full-court press during every moment of every game when they did not have the ball. His team was full of girls (including his daughter, Anjali) who had never played basketball before, and he had never coached. But his intuition about the full-court press—referring to pressuring the other team for the entire length of the court, rather than letting them dribble down easily to where the defenders were waiting—was insightful. His team went to the national championships, and his daughter remarked on the success: “It was really random. I mean, my father had never played basketball before” (20).

Gladwell then asks the reader to add up the wars fought over the past 200 years as long as they were fought between large and small countries. He provides statistics showing that “just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins” (21). When a weaker country uses unorthodox tactics, as David did, the win rate reaches to “63.6 percent” (21). If this is true, then underdogs win more often than might be assumed, and the outcome of the David and Goliath story should not be shocking.

The story of T.E. Lawrence—popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia—is presented. Lawrence led the Arab revolt against the Turkish army as World War I was ending. Lawrence’s troops were untrained and unskilled. Many had never fired a gun. But they were able to travel lightly through the desert and were skilled at finding water, so they rarely needed to carry the extra pounds water containers would have required. Lawrence was skilled at surprising enemy forces and attacking from unexpected directions. During a pivotal battle, his tough, mobilemen were able to kill or capture 1,200 Turks while losing only two men. Their secret was coming at the Turks from directly out of the desert, which no one could have anticipated and so had not planned for: “Movement, endurance, individual intelligence, knowledge of the country—and courage—which Lawrence’s men had in abundance—allowed them to do the impossible” (24). However, Gladwell asks why it was thought to be impossible. The Arab force had advantages, they just were not as heavily armed or trained as the Turks: “We have, I think, a very rigid and limited definition of what an advantage is” (25).

Gladwell returns to the Ranadivé story. Because he had never coached, he hired two experts to help him instruct his Redwood City team: Robert Craig and his daughter Rometra, who had played college basketball. One of his strategies was to make inbounding the ball difficult. After a basket, a team has five seconds to inbound the ball. Typically the other team goes to the other end of the court and waits. Ranadivé had his players pressure the inbound passes and were often able to prevent the pass from being made within five seconds, thereby getting possession of the ball. When the other teams managed to inbound the ball, Ranadivé instituted similar pressure during the 10 seconds a team has to get the ball across the half court line before a penalty. Because they were often able to steal the ball shortly after an inbound, they found themselves already near the opponents’ basket, which gave them access to easier shots. The team used the same strategy as Lawrence did in his war with the Turks: he attacked the other teams where they were vulnerable.

Gladwell continues with the example of basketball: “In January of 1971, the Fordham University Rams played a basketball game against the University of Massachusetts Redmen” (29). The Redmen had not lost a game in over two years. UMass was a highly skilled team featuring Julius Erving, who would later be known as Dr. J in the NBA. Fordham was not as good and their tallest player was only 6’5”, but they were tough and inexhaustible. Their weapon was the same full court press that the Redwood City girls’ team would use later under Ranadivé. Gladwell asks why every team doesn’t use the strategy if the press is so effective: “All an opposing team had to do to beat Redwood City was press back. The girls were not good enough to handle a taste of their own medicine” (31).

When an underdog employs an unorthodox strategy like David, their chances of winning increase greatly: “But most of the time, underdogs didn’t fight like David” (31). Gladwell suggests that one of the reasons why an underdog’s strategy is not often used is because it is typically hard and exhausting. One of the players on the UMass team during that fateful game was Rick Pitino, who would later become a college basketball coach famous for his use of the press. His team became the epitome of one of Gladwell’s principles: “To play by David’s rules you have to be desperate. You have to be so bad that you have no other choice” (33).

Other coaches were angry at Redwood City when their strategy became apparent and they started winning games. Their issue was that all of the girls on the teams were beginners, and they were not learning rudimentary basketball skills, which should have been the priority at that age and stage of development: “When the game becomes about effort over ability, it become unrecognizable: a shocking mixture of broken plays and flailing limbs and usually competent players panicking” (35).

When they played at Nationals, the Redwood City girls won two games, and then, in the third, ran into an unsympathetic referee who did not like their style. He began calling constant fouls when they would execute the full court press. Eventually, all of Ranadivé’s players were in danger of fouling out, and he had to stop the press: “They played basketball the way basketball is supposed to be played and in the end they lost—but not before proving that Goliath is not the giant he thinks he is” (37). 

In Chapters 2 and 3, Gladwell applies two questions regarding advantages and disadvantages to education. The first involves Shepaug Middle School. It was initially a crowded school, but various factors in the economy and development of the community eventually led to a drastic decrease in class size, which provided a more intimate experience. Gladwell asks the reader if this sounds like a school they would want to send their children to, and it is clear that the obvious answer is yes: “Virtually everywhere in the world, parents and policymakers take it for granted that smaller classes are better classes” (40).

At Shepaug Valley, the class size is sometimes as low as 15. Students get more private attention from their teachers, and it is logical to assume that they should be doing better than when Shepaug was crowded: “It turns out that there is a very elegant way to test whether this is true” (40). An economist named Caroline Hoxby studied the Shepaug situation along with similar schools in Connecticut. After studying class sizes and academic performance, she determined that, based on the data, class size has no statistically significant effect on performance. Across hundreds of other studies done since Hoxby’s initial observations, it is shown that “[f]ifteen percent find statistically significant evidence that students do better in small classes” (42). An almost identical amount appears to do worse in small classes. Twenty percent seem to have no effect: “The evidence suggests that the thing we are convinced is such a big advantage might not be such an advantage after all” (44).

Gladwell recounts a conversation with “one of the most powerful people in Hollywood” (44). As a 10-year-old in Minneapolis, he began running a snow-clearing business in which he managed and paid other children. In college, he started and oversaw a laundry service. After graduating from a New York law school he went to Hollywood. He was promoted rapidly through a succession of lucrative jobs and, at the time of Gladwell’s conversation with him, is at the height of his powers and riches. He says that what drove him to work so hard was a desire for more freedom.

The man recognizes that there is a contradiction when he discusses his love for his children. Because he is rich, his children will not have to learn the same lessons of hard work and self-created independence that he learned. He says that people can be “ruined by wealth because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-worth” (47). The man from Hollywood says that he might have less success raising his children as a multimillionaire than his own father had raising him in Minneapolis where they had to be frugal.

Gladwell introduces the principle that “more money is not always better” (48). Poverty makes parenting harder. If a parent has to work so much to pay the bills that there is little or no time to spend with the children, this is not ideal: “Money makes parenting easier until a certain point—when it stops making much of a difference” (49). Happiness researchers have posited that after someone is making $75,000 every year, diminishing returns begin to appear. A psychologist named James Grubman frames the challenges of parenting and money as an issue of setting limits. A poor child will stop asking for a pony if he understands that a new pony simply can’t happen due to lack of money. But a rich parent who tells their children that they can’t have a pony has to say, in Grubman’s formulation, “I won’t” instead of “I can’t” (50). It is harder to say “I won’t.”

Gladwell returns to the discussion of class size and introduces Teresa DeBrito, the principal of Shepaug Valley Middle School. DeBrito is concerned about the falling class sizes and what they might mean for the performance of the students. Gladwell returns to Hoxby’s observations and asks: “Why isn’t there much of a difference between a class of twenty-five students and a class of eighteen students?” (55). Smaller classes are easier for teachers but would also require instructors to alter their teaching style to help smaller classes, rather than simply seeing it as an opportunity to have a lower workload and fewer assignments to grade: “The evidence suggests that teachers don’t necessarily do that. They just work less. This is only human nature” (55).

Gladwell asks what he considers to be the crucial question: “Can a class be too small, the same way a parent can have too much money?” (56). After polling teachers in Canada and the United States, he states that the answer is yes. A smaller class presents unique challenges, such as creating an environment in which every student feels more exposed and easier for bullies to find. Teachers of small classes have to now deal with the potential intensity of interactions rather than the sheer number of interactions. Gladwell quotes a teacher as saying: “The students start acting like siblings in the backseat of your car. There is simply no way for the cantankerous kids to get away from one another” (57).

Another teacher describes the problem as being one of discussion: “If the numbers get too low, discussion suffers” (57). In a large class, the chances of someone being willing to start a discussion are higher. Small groups can suffer from a lack of energy that is often useful to start a conversation or debate. An economist named Jesse Levin says that students learn not just from the teacher, but from one another; fewer students means fewer opportunities to learn.

These are the reasons that worry DeBrito when she thinks about the future of Shepaug Valley. She had been a math teacher and says that her favorite class had 29 students. It was difficult, but stimulating. But she also admits that 29 is not an ideal number for Shepaug Valley classes, and that not every teacher feels as she does.

Gladwell turns to a nearby, premier boarding school call Hotchkiss, where“[t]uition is almost $50,000 a year” (60). The average class size is 12 students, which Hotchkiss’s marketing department describes as its greatest asset. The marketing also focuses on Hotchkiss’s lakes, hockey rinks, Steinway pianos, and golf course: “Hotchkiss has fallen into the trap that wealthy people and wealthy institutions and wealthy countries—all Goliaths—too often fall into: the school assumes that the kinds of things that wealth can buy always translate into real-world advantages” (61). As has been shown in this chapter, they do not. 

Édouard Manet was the oldest member of a group of painters who met every evening at the Café Guerbois in Paris, 150 years ago. The group included Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Renoir, and Claude Monet. Despite their future as artistic masters, they were poor and had only each other for support. They were impressionists, and in the 1860s impressionism was not taken seriously. They often discussed the Salon, “the most important art exhibition in all of Europe” (65). Paintings at the Salon had to be voted in by a jury of experts, and the Salon jury was notorious for rejecting the Impressionists, who had “an entirely different idea about what constituted art” (67). They were untraditional and painted indistinct figures.

If the group wanted their paintings to be accepted, they would have to make art that had no meaning for them. They argued about whether they should persist at the Salon or stage their own exhibits for themselves: “We strive for the best and attach great importance to getting into the finest institutions we can. But rarely do we stop and consider—as the Impressionists did—whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interests” (68).

Gladwell introduces Caroline Sacks, who grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Sacks was interested in science as a child. As she finished high school—her performance had been exemplary—her father helped her tour American universities. She was most excited about Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. But she had also toured Wesleyan, Yale, Boston College, and other prestigious universities, in addition to the smaller, but respectable, University of Maryland.

Gladwell ponders Sacks’s academic options: “Did Caroline Sacks make the right choice?” (70). He compares her choice to that of the Impressionists. They framed their choice not as between a better option and a worse one, but simply of different options, each of which had advantages and disadvantages. The Salon was like a selective Ivy League school. It could provide greater exposure for artists but was not without its downsides. Four thousand paintings were accepted each year and hung in a large building in rows that stretched to the ceilings. Only the paintings at ground level presented a clear view. The crowds were also immense.

In 1873, Pissarro and Monet set up an artist collective in which “every artist would be treated as an equal” (72). It opened in 1874 and gave a showing that lasted for one month. All paintings were hung in a way that ensured they could be seen. Thousands would attend over the course of the month and most of the attention was positive: “Off by themselves, the Impressionists found a new identity. They felt a new creative freedom, and before long, the outside world began to take notice” (73). The exhibit would eventually be known as the most important in the history of modern art. By going to the Ivy League school Brown University, Caroline Sacks would choose the Salon: “She ended up paying a high price” (74).

As a freshman, Caroline struggled in chemistry. She retook a chemistry class in her second semester and her grade did not improve. The other students were so competitive that no one talked or shared information. No matter how hard she worked, nothing helped. She found an organic chemistry class particularly difficult and contemplated leaving science altogether. She came to believe that her brain simply couldn’t handle chemistry. Gladwell points out that her scores still would have put her in the 99th percentile among all the students in the world who were taking organic chemistry, but “Sacks wasn’t comparing herself to all the students in the world taking Organic Chemistry. She was comparing herself to her fellow students at Brown” (76).

A sociologist named Samuel Stouffer refers to what Sacks was facing as “relative deprivation” (77). In World War II, Stouffer was tasked with examining the morale and attitude of American soldiers. One surprising finding was that “Military Policemen had a far more positive view of their organization than did enlisted men in the Air Corps” (77). This confused Stouffer because the Military Police had a terrible record of promoting people of ability. The Air Corps was the opposite, always seeming to promote based on merit. But it turned out that Military Policemen only compared themselves to others in their specific field. Each man knew that if he didn’t get promoted, almost no one else was either. In the Air Corps, when promotions were frequent, not receiving one caused stress for the people left behind: “We form our impression not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible context, but locally—by comparing ourselves to people ‘in the same boat as ourselves’” (78).

When “relative deprivation” is applied to education, it is called the “Big Fish-Little Pond Effect” (80). Students in the lower ranks of an elite university will judge themselves more harshly than if the same scores placed them near the top of the ranks in a small university. Gladwell states that Sacks’s experience is common. American students in science, tech, engineering, and math programs (STEM) have a greater than 50 percent dropout rate after their “first or second year” (81).

By choosing Brown University, Sacks actually increased her chances of dropping out of science. Gladwell cites a study finding that “the likelihood of someone completing a STEM degree—all things being equal, rises by 2 percentage points for every 10-point decrease in the university’s average SAT score” (85). When they finish their conversation, Sacks tells Gladwell that if she had gone to the University of Maryland instead of Brown, she would still be in science.