The Myth of Averages

This is the time of year that I normally slow down and try to do some "casual" reading.  One genre that I like to catch up on is books about the technology business (Yes, its sad, I know I need to get a life.)  Thanks to Chari, I am currently reading Robert Cringely book "Accidental Empires." 

Early on in the book Robert talks about how some people have such off the chart skills around programming that they are 1000 times more productive than the average programmer.  He then makes the somewhat non obvious point that rather than worrying about what the average math scores for 8Th graders are in America we need to be more focused on how we can make sure that we have "off the chart" skilled people in our country.  I call it non obvious because every time someone announces average math/science scores around the world, people start lamenting that America is somewhere in the middle and not as smart as the Koreans/Japanese/Chinese.  Don't get me wrong.  It will be nice if our average scores are higher.

However the true barometer of our success is tied not to averages but rather to how many "off the chart" people we have in our country.  It is these people, 3 standard deviations away from the norm, that make the orders of magnitude difference in outcomes.  I would any day have 3 genius programmers than 100 better than average programmers.  What we need to do is to make sure that our schools and society are structured in a way that these "off the chart" individuals can grow and thrive