The Lure of The Number 10,000 is Irresistible

Two debunked theories with the number 10,000 continue to sway us

Nothing can match the precision of numbers. Numerical exactitude lends credibility to theories. Statistics can never lie, isn’t it? Numbers facilitate an easy understanding of complex ideas. When Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”, he captured our attention and imagination about the need to work hard to achieve anything.

“Show me the numbers”, is a taunt and challenge we throw at people whose views we challenge and disbelieve. Theories, when they ride on numbers, appear more plausible than they would if presented as a mere fact.

Mathematics, the queen of sciences, enjoys high credibility with the people that no other scientific discipline can match. No wonder, every expert in every discipline wants to co-opt maths to bolster their arguments.

The number 10,000 has a strange magical appeal. It is a round remember and easy to remember.

The Washington Post reported that former US President Donald Trump uttered over 10,000 false or misleading claims. Why 10,000? He could only have spoken 9999 falsehoods. Because 10,000 sticks in the mind whereas people forget odd numbers easily.

You reach a milestone when you gather 10,000 Instagram followers.

Even Bruce Lee will fear you if you practise one kick 10,000 times. He said:

“I fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times.”

In various East Asian languages, the phrase “ten thousand years” is used to wish long life. The English translation for this phrase is “Long live”.

Let’s examine two discredited theories that captured the public imagination by tagging their formulas to the number 10,000.

10,000 hours of practice as the gateway to expertise

“Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”

Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell introduced the 10,000-hour rule in his book, “Outliers”, based on a study conducted by psychologist Anders Ericsson.

In 1993, Anders Ericsson, who studied expert performance for three decades conducted a study of violin students at the Music Academy of West Berlin. He wanted to find out what distinguished the best violinists from the good violinists.

He asked the students and the teachers how many hours they practised alone. Based on their feedback, Ericsson concluded that:

“…two things were strikingly clear from the study: First, to become an excellent violinist requires several thousand hours of practice. We found no shortcuts and no ‘prodigies,’ who reached an expert level with relatively little practice. And, second, even among those gifted musicians — all of whom had been admitted to the best music academy in Germany — the violinists who had spent significantly more hours practicing their craft were on average more accomplished than those who had spent less time practicing.”

Flaws in Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule

• Ericsson mentioned no magic figure like 10,000 hours required to master a discipline.
• Ericsson refuted the 10,000-hour rule in a three-page paper:

“Our original study estimated that one of four groups of expert violinists had only averaged around 5000 hours of solitary practice ( the activity most closely matching the criteria for deliberate practice) at age 20- as a consequence more than half of them had accumulated less than 5000 hours. The best group of violinists with estimated prospects for an international solo career had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours at age 20. In fact, even Malcolm Gladwell misconstrued this and claimed that the elite performers had each totalled ten thousand hours of practice.”

• Gladwell committed the statistical fallacy of conflating the average as the absolute.
• He mentioned nothing about the quality of practice. Deliberate practice- focussed practice under the guidance of a mentor- mattered more than the number of hours.

Faced with criticism, Gladwell tried to explain away his mistake but failed to convince his critics:

“There is a lot of confusion about the 10,000 rule that I talk about in Outliers. It doesn’t apply to sports. And practice isn’t a SUFFICIENT condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I’ll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest. Unfortunately, sometimes complex ideas get oversimplified in translation.”

Gladwell seems to own up his mistake but refuses to accept defeat. To be fair, writers refine their ideas subsequently. But once ideas take hold of popular imagination, even their creators cannot take back what they said. The 10,000 - hour panacea for becoming an expert refuses to go away.

10.000 steps a day makes you healthy

That walking 10,000 steps a day is a passport to achieving perfect health is an idea that refuses to die despite experts having written its obituary. It has an interesting origin. In 1965, a Japanese company, Yamosa Clock, sold a pedometer which it called “Manpo -kei” meaning “10,000 steps meter”. The company’s marketing trick gripped the popular imagination and soon the world picked it up as a daily health target.

In ancient Rome, people measured distance by counting steps. The Latin phrase mila passum which meant 1,000 paces (about 2000 steps) gave us the English word ‘mile’. An average person walks about 100 steps a minute. This would translate to about 30 minutes for an average person to walk a mile. To achieve the golden rule of 10,000 steps, they would need to walk between four and five miles a day.

Some studies have established the health benefits of walking 10,000 steps a day such as improved heart health, mental health, and lower diabetes risk,

Recent research from Harvard Medical School has shown that for women, about 4400 steps a day are enough to gain health benefits and to lower the risk of death.

There is nothing wrong with walking 10,000 steps a day though it seems to exceed the optimal range of walking required to reap health benefits. The idea is to develop the walking habit even if you manage only 5000 steps which kick in the health benefits.

Wrapping up

The axiom “numbers do not lie” is a general statement of fact. People use numbers to fabricate dubious theories.

The number 10,000 seems to possess an irresistible aura that no other number has. The human mind has an attraction for round numbers that convey an impression of certainty. One feels a sense of closure and conviction on seeing the number 10,000.

Tagging theories to the number 10,000 enhances their acceptability. It is a supreme irony that a perceived mathematical precision can lure people into believing irrational theories. Don’t rush to suspend disbelief when people use the number 10,000 as a prop to bolster theories or arguments. A dose of scepticism is the best antidote against numerical allurements.

The fault does not lie in numbers but in how we manipulate them to pad up questionable ideas.

Thanks for reading this story!

Reference: Article titled “Do we really need to walk 10,000 steps a day?” in bigthink.com