Don't Play Hockey if You Were Born in the Summer

We are surrounded by successful people every day. Their image, routines and methods are screamed at us from all directions. Constantly, hope is driven into our minds, hope that we can one day be like them by taking the same paths they did. Joe and I have produced satire on the past on this matter, claiming to teach others “How to be Successful”. What I am increasingly discovering through reading and conversation is that success is not intelligence, success is not strength, and it certainly has nothing to do with using Old Spice (unless you’re grandpa Seiderman). Success’s genesis lies with opportunity, opportunity comes upbringing, upbringing comes from birthplace.

In the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell shares many anecdotes delineating the lives of some of the most successful individuals in recent history. One of the more notable examples was illustrated by the distribution of Canadian hockey players by birth date.

The following is a table showing the birth dates of the members of the 2007 Medicine Hat Alberta hockey players:

Source: Hockey players' birth months from Gladwell (2008)

Clearly, the above demographic data shows that an unusual amount of players are born within the first quarter of the year (Jan-April). A chi-squared statistic suggests this kind of result would be expected approximately 1/4^th of the time if the birth months were random. This was clearly done without efficacy.

How did those born in the first quarter of the year have such a clear advantage over those who were born in the preceding three? As it turns out, Canadian junior hockey leagues have a hard cut-off on January 1^st for league age groups. So for example a person born on January 2^nd of a certain year plays in the same age group as a person born on December 17^th of the same year. As a result, those four, five, six, etc. year olds who are born earlier in the year are slightly older than those born later in the year. This subsequently results in them being slightly faster, stronger, smarter, and so on; and these slight advantages compound over time, similar to financial interest compounding, turning into larger advantages. By the time these players reach the teenage years when they start being considered for more serious leagues, the slight age difference has compounded enough to make a noticeable difference. In these Canadian leagues with the January age cut off, success is a result of talent, but talent has to do with one’s birth date. The factors that are normally attributed to successful people are important, but those factors are a result of something that pretenses the beginning of the factors.

This idea is evident elsewhere. Bill Gates dropped out of college and became a billionaire; quite an extraordinary accomplishment. But what is not so obvious regarding his success is the fact that prior to founding Microsoft Gates had around 10,000 hours of programing experience due to his proximity to the University of Washington. As a young person, Gates would sneak out of his parents’ house to spend long hours using the University’s computers. This, in combination with his birth date (1955), put him in the best possible position to enter the technology revolution in the late 1970’s. His birth date put him at the age of 20 when he founded Microsoft: historically the most optimal time for a computer-driven analytical mind to be produced. How many other teenagers were given the opportunity to have unlimited free computer access time in the early 1970’s? Bill Gates has said “If there were 50, I’d be stunned”. 

Who else was born at the same time?

Billy Joy: 1954; Sun Microsystems, UNIX, Java

Steve Jobs: 1955; Apple

Eric Schmidt: 1955; Google, Apple, Novell

Tim Berners-Lee: 1955; World Wide Web

Sandra Lerner: 1955; Cisco

Similarly to Canadian hockey players, the above individuals can certainly attribute their opportunity to acquire their profession-related skills due to their birthdate. And in Bill Gate’s case, it also had a lot to do with his proximity to the University of Washington, a school that was a pioneer in the programming field.

Hockey players work incredibly hard to become professional athletes, and computer programmers spend thousands upon thousands of hours writing code and perfecting their skills to fill voids in the world of technology. Hard work is important to become successful; but the opportunity to work hard is just as important. The successful individuals we see as a result of our survivorship bias possess skills that appear to be essential contributors towards their great fortune. However, these skills are often simply results of events or opportunities that were completely and utterly out of their direct control.

-Luke