Tipping Point

• On page 7 Gladwell talks about how ideas and products, as well as messages and behaviors can spread in the same manner as viruses.
• Pages 7 through 9 talk about the 3 characteristics of epidemics as being contagiousness, little changes and big effects, and a dramatic moment of causation.
• Page 8 talks about little changes having big effects, and things happening in a hurry as opposed to building steadily and slowly.
• On page 9 Gladwell says that the idea that epidemics have the ability to rise and fall in a single dramatic moment is the most important trait.
• On page 11 Gladwell talks about epidemics as an example of geometric progression.
• Page 11 also talks about how people are trained to think that what goes into any system or relationship must be directly related to its outcome.
• Gladwell relates the tipping point to the idea of critical mass, or a threshold or boiling point on page 12.

I thought that the most important part of the article was the description of the 3 characteristics for epidemics that Gladwell gave. We also spent a good amount of time in class discussing those 3 characteristics. I think that they are important because it is very easy to realize that they apply to many real life situations of making decisions on products to purchase and trends to follow. Contagiousness is important because an idea or fashion spreading and becoming more available to other people is what ultimately lets other people know about it and gives them to opportunity to decide if they want anything to do with it. The idea of little things causing big changes also relates to the butterfly effect that we had previously talked about in class, and it's important to see how what we learned earlier about that theory of the butterfly effect can be applied to economics. And also the most important point Gladwell made was of the tipping point, that one dramatic moment that can cause massive changes. I thought the most interesting part about this point from what we talked about in class was the pregnancy rate in low income areas and how it almost doubled when it reached that tipping point value.