Statistician William M. Briggs does a top-down analysis of writer Malcolm Gladwell’s success:
The best explanation for Malcom Gladwell’s (Blink, Tipping Point) success is provided by the Annals of Improbable Research in its Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.
The editors of that esteemed journal posit that “The public loves to see and applaud scientists who have luxuriant flowing hair.” The club originated after researchers wondered after Stephen Pinker’s meteoric rise in scientific circles, whose hair had “long been the object of admiration, and envy, and intense study.”
Everybody can immediately bring to mind that greatest of all 20th century scientists, Einstein, whose hair was wildly out of control, a condition which we thus associate with genius. Compare, for example, the locks of Pinker and Gladwell.
The soundness of the theory is obvious.
Briggs goes on to analyze the arbitrary power of the number 10,000 (see his essay for details).