Comparing Levitt and Dubner to Gladwell, my response to Outliers and Freakonomics

After reading Outliers and Freakonomics, I see a strong connection between Gladwell, Levitt, and Dubner. The three authors all have a similar curiosity about them, in that they each have persistence in asking questions about the data behind the data and asking why things are the way that they are. For instance, Levitt and Dubner did agree with most of the given reasons for the 1990’s crime drop, but they did not rest there. They continued to dig deeper and search for other possible answers to the crime drop, leading them to the Roe v Wade abortion decision.
Gladwell displayed his idea of the road to success through software innovators like Bill Gates and Bill Joy, along with industrial entrepreneurs like Rockefeller and Carnegie. Gladwell almost entirely shot down the idea of rags to riches besides few cases like Andrew Carnegie. It is encouraging that people do not need to be geniuses to be successful. Outliers showed that one must be an opportunist (among other things) to be successful. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing then you will not have the motivation to practice for 10,000 hours in order to achieve success. One also needs the motivation from others in order to push to continue to make strides toward a goal. What if Bill Gates had never met Paul Allen? Would he still have enough motivation and support to work those long evenings in the computer labs?