The Tipping Point Essay

The tipping point: a book full of new ideas and theories

Lulu Rhodes 4/10/23

The book I read was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is non-fiction and tells many different stories about how brands, companies, and even TV shows hit a tipping point and the many reasons why. The tipping point is defined as “critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible.” Yes, this definition may seem long and confusing but, when reading The Tipping Point you get a simplified answer with many examples. Some of my favorite tipping points described in the book include the Sesame Street stickiness factor and the

Though I don’t usually like non-fiction books, this book was able to keep me engaged and I found myself thinking about it even when not reading it. One part of this book that was engaging is how it used real-life stories about topics that I was already familiar with. For example, I learned a lot about how Sesame Street and Paul Revere used the law of the few. This book shows many examples of science in ways that you may not expect. There are many factors that go into making or having a tipping point. The main ones described in the book are the stickiness factor, the law of context, and the law of the few. The stickiness factor is the idea that if something can stay in your attention and keep it, then it can tip and become very popular. Sesame Street and Blues Clues are prime examples of this factor because the writers of these shows were able to “tip” and get these shows to stay in kids' heads. They did this by doing many tests. During these tests, they would put kids in a room with toys and then turn on the shows and write down every time the kid pulls his attention away from the tv and onto the toys. This way they were able to see which parts engaged and disengaged the kids. Another

One quote from the book states, “As soon as the sun went down their radios (referring to the police) exploded with chatter.” The police weren’t able to catch all of the people committing petty theft such as stealing, because of how many people were committing larger crimes like murder every night. Over the next five years, the murder rate dropped drastically by 64.3% and the rate of petty theft more than halved. Everyone was shocked about what was happening. The law of context, however, can help to explain what we think happened. Though most police officers have settled on the idea that crime rates dropping was due to the aging population. Another theory is the broken window theory which is basically the same thing as the law of context. This is a theory that when a window is left unrepaired, people will walk by it and assume no one cares about it and they will break more windows because crime is contagious. This relates back to the crime rates because in the mid-1980s Dabid Gunn was hired to help with police and remake subways. They told him to not worry about graffiti and worry more about the train's