ROLE OF LUCK IN SUCCESS

ALS PROJECT, CLASS XII, 2021-22

SUBMITTED BY

KRISHANG BALDI

DARSH KANSAL

SUBMITTED TO

MR. THOMSON VARGHESE

 INDEX

S.No Contents Page no.

1. CERTIFICATE 3

2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 4

3. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE 5

4. ACTION PLAN 6

5.. REPORT ESSAY 7-12

6. REFLECTIONS 13

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY 14
 CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Darsh Kansal and Krishang Baldi of Class XII B
have completed this project successfully for fulfilment of their English Core
ALS Project for the Session 2021-22.

Principal School Stamp

Internal Examiner External Examiner

Date of Viva
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project would not have been possible without the kind support and
help of many individuals of The Shishukunj International School, Indore.
We would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them.

First of all, we would like to thank Dr. Mrs. Lalita Singh, Principal for
giving me an opportunity to do this project.

We are highly indebted to Mr. Thomson Varghese, Educator, for his

guidance, constant supervision which was essential for completing the
project.

We owe our thanks to the entire English Department, our parents & every
member of The Shishukunj International School, Indore for their kind
cooperation and encouragement which helped us in completion of this
project.

Thanks are also due to our friends who helped me from time to time with
unconditional support.
 Statement Of Purpose
We came across an interesting article containing empirical evidence and
thought experiments related to common habits of successful people which
prompted us to investigate this subject more deeply and select it for our
project. A lesson from our Class XII English syllabus related to our topic is
The Enemy which featured some lucky instances which played an
important role in the protagonist’s life. It was the American’s luck that he
was discovered by a highly skilled and compassionate Dr. Sadao or he
may have been discovered by the enemies. It was his luck that the General
forgot to send the assassins. It was Dr. Sadao's luck that his role in
nursing the American back to full health and allowing his escape was not
discovered by the authorities. He was lucky that no one saw the American
escaping the island. Thus we can conclude luck played a great role in the
life of the people in the lesson The Enemy.

We have undertaken this project to understand the impact of luck in

shaping success in life. There are multiple reasons for choosing this topic.
We would like to understand the meaning of luck, its various dimensions
and the extent of control an individual has on his luck. We want to
investigate how certain people seem to always be lucky while others are
dogged with consistent ill luck. Finally, analysis of the theoretical aspect of
luck (probability) and its contrast with practical experience is another aspect
that we aim to explore through this project.
 Action Plan
The Action Plan for our project incorporates each individual’s contribution
and the way we will go about the same. It details the range of sources and
references we will be using in the course of preparation of material for this
project.

We will collect articles, mark videos and look up references and data points
relating to our topic to facilitate the process of research on the topic. We
would research the meaning of frequently used terms like luck, fortune,
success and probability. Also, we would watch videos and listen to
podcasts to understand the perspective of renowned speakers and
bloggers and form personal conclusions regarding the same. Reading
books and articles regarding the concerned topic will be an important
source of information. We will utilise examples from diverse fields like
history, business, sports etc. in order to substantiate our theories as these
topics are those in which we have common interest. Writing the draft report
after having studied the collected data and drawn our conclusions from the
same. Writing the final report for our project after making suitable
modifications to the draft report, if required.

Darsh will write the Statement of Purpose and Action plan after mutual
discussion.He will edit and format the document, collect articles related to
the topic, write a portion of the draft report and subsequently the final report.

Krishang will carry out the preliminary research, collect the base article which
prompted us to select the current topic and search out various related videos,
podcasts and articles. He would also be writing a part of the final report.
 REPORT
What does it take to succeed? What are the secrets of the most successful
people? There is a deep underlying assumption that we can learn from
them because it's their personal characteristics--such as talent, skill,
mental toughness, tenacity,emotional intelligence etc. that got them where
they are today. This assumption doesn't only underlie success magazines,
but also how we distribute resources in society, from work opportunities to
fame to government grants to public policy decisions. We tend to give out
resources to those who have a past history of success, and tend to ignore
those who have been unsuccessful, assuming that the most successful are
also the most
competent.

People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and

patronage. Successful people are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden
advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow
them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others
cannot. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our
forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin
to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, it is only
by asking where they are from can we unravel the logic behind who
succeeds and who doesn't.

Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism, the tallest oak in
the forest the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is
the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it
was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no
lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful
people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight
that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the
rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?

S.No. Player Birth Date

1 Marcel Gecov Jan 1,1988

2 Ludek Frydrych Jan 3,1987

3 Petr Janda Jan 5,1987

4 Jakub Dohnalek Jan.12,1988

5 Jakub Mares Jan.26,1987

6 Michel Held Jan 27,1987

7 Marek Stresnik Feb 1, 1987

8 Jiri Valenta Feb. 14,1988

9 Jan Simunek Feb. 20,1987

10 Tomas Oklestek Feb. 21,1987

11 Lubos Kalouda Feb 21, 1987

12 Radek Petr Feb 24, 1987

13 Ondrej Mazuch Mar 15,1989

14 Ondrej Kudela Mar. 26,1987

15 Marek Suchy Mar 29, 1988

16 Martin Fenin Apr. 16,1987

17 Tomas Pekhart May 26,1989

18 Lukas Kuban Jun. 22,1987

19 Thomas Cihlar Jun 24, 1987

 In the above table we observe 16/19 of the players are born in the first
quarter, an unusually high percentage. In Canada the eligibility cutoff for
age-class football is January. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then,could
be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the
year—and at that age, in pre-adolescence, a twelve-month gap in age
represents an enormous difference in physical maturity. In the beginning, his
advantage isn't so much that he is inherently better but only that he is a little
older. But by the age of thirteen or fourteen, with the benefit of better
coaching and all that extra practice under his belt, he really is better, so he's
the one more likely to make it to success. Thus the month of birth ( an
element entirely up to luck) which the player has no control over emerges as
a major determinant of the chances of success.

Following is the Indian squad list for the 2011 ICC One Day International
World Cup which the Indian team won. This table reflects a similar trend
but in the opposite direction. Notable is the number of players born in the
second half of the year (13/16) and even more striking is the no. of players
born in the last quarter(10/16). A similar pattern is observed with regards to
the 1983 WC Indian team (8/11) and T20 WC Squad(14/15) players in the
latter half of the year and many other Indian teams across the eras. What
might this suggest? For us the following conclusions ought to present
themselves-
1) This is an example of how luck favours a different set of people as we alter
geographies and cultures. Even as it privileges athletes born in the first
quarter of the year in European and American team sports, the opposite
case is observed in India.
2) The Indian cricket season begins in Sep-Oct and rolls through till
March-April. This might suggest the same effect (better initial physical
 development leading to focussed attention of coaches and better training)
as in the previous example working in apparently the opposite direction.

S.No Player Name Date of Birth

1 S Sreesanth 6 Feb 1983

2 Sachin Tendulkar 24 April 1973

3 Asish Nehra 29 April 1979

4 Harbhajan Singh 3 July 1980

5 Mahendra Singh Dhoni 7 July 1981

6 Munaf Patel 12 July 1983

7 Ravichandran Ashwin 17 September 1986

8 Zaheer Khan 7 October 1978

9 Gautam Gambhir 14 October 1981

10 Virender Sehwag 20 October 1978

11 Virat Kohli 5 November 1988

12 Yusuf Pathan 17 November 1982

13 Suresh Raina 27 November 1986

14 Ravindra Jadeja 6 December 1988

15 Yuvraj Singh 12 December 1981

16 Piyush Chawla 24 December 1988

These examples show that people conventionally thought of as the most

talented by society in their respective fields have a massive element of luck
which allows them to combine their talent with the right opportunities to
advance in their fields. Parental lineage, financial condition of one’s
household, village, city , state and country,political and social environment,
social mobility, caste/racial privilege are massively important factors that go
into the making of successful people but these often get overlooked or
obscured to the eye of the common person.

We would like to give an another example to emphasise our topic,

Bill Gates’ benefited from a healthy dose of luck in his early years. He went
to a private school which gave students access to computer programming
terminals where you could build computer programs and get them running
in real time. Most colleges didn’t have computer clubs at that time. Others
had to go through convoluted processes which added days and weeks to
what could take Gates hours to complete. Gates himself estimated that
there might have been 50 other students in the world who could have done
the same thing at that time.

He was the beneficiary of a series of lucky opportunities. Lucky

opportunity number one was that Gates got sent to Lakeside. How many
high schools in the world had access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968?
Opportunity number two was that the mothers of Lakeside had enough
money to pay for the school’s computer fees. Number three was that,
when that money ran out, one of the parents happened to work at
C-Cubed, which happened to need someone to check its code on the
weekends, and which also happened not to care if weekends turned into
weeknights. Number four was that Gates just happened to find out about
ISI, and ISI just happened to need someone to work on its payroll
software. Number five was that Gates happened to live within walking
distance of the University of Washington. Number six was that the
university happened to have free computer time between three and six in
the morning. Number seven was that TRW happened to call Bud
Pembroke. Number eight was that the best programmers Pembroke knew
for that particular problem happened to be two high school kids. And
number nine was that Lakeside was willing to let those kids spend their
spring term miles away, writing code.

An important historical example is that of the Second battle of Panipat

fought between 13 year old Akbar (helped by regent Bairam Khan) and
Hemu. The latter appeared to be headed for a decisive victory but a
chance arrow- a piece of total, pure luck- struck Hemu in the eye, sent his
army into directionless tatters and culminated in decisive victory for the
Mughal empire which was a significant step in consolidation of their power
over North India and decisively changed the course of Indian history as the
entirely probable prospect of defeat then would have hobbled the Mughal
empire .

These examples tell us that our notion that it is the best and the brightest
who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic. Yes, the people who
make it to the top are more talented than you or me. But they also got a
big head start, an opportunity that they neither deserved or earned and
critical pieces of luck which equally or more talented people did not get.
Luck that played a critical role in their success.
 REFLECTIONS
We feel doing this project was a mixed bag for us as it involved a lot of hard
work, different pieces of research and extensive editing, all of which took up a
lot of time and effort and was punctuated with regular arguments and
disagreements but on the other hand we managed to learn new things
discover new facts and deepen our knowledge base which naturally
broadened our outlook. It also helped us cultivate a spirit of discussion and
debate and decision making by mutual consent.

Working in a group of 2 was what made this project unique from our point of
view as projects in other subjects are made on an individual basis. Group
projects, in our opinion, pose different challenges as they can lead to us
pulling in different directions due to differences in opinion. I feel we were able
to take it as an opportunity to bang our heads together and work in a spirit of
cooperation which lessened the workload on each member and enhanced
the quality of the final draft.

We did not take examples from certain fields mentioned in the action plan as
including them would lead to a situation in which we would breach the word
limit and compromise the structure of the broader format of the project.

Learning from this project will definitely help our English writing and listening
skills as we listened to different videos and podcasts in the course of
researching for the project to bolster our understanding of the topic.

We also relied on reading different books and articles which improved our
knowledge base and enriched our vocabulary which will definitely help us
with our written English.

Finally, we would like to conclude by saying that doing this project was an
unforgettable experience which we we deeply enjoyed and would love to do
something like this again
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

● Outliers book by Malcolm Galdwell- It was an immensely helpful book

and we referred to it in the bill gates and hockey players examples.
● www.scientificamerican.com
● https://youtu.be/pMWvlYXiWcc- TED talk Is success also a matter of
luck?
● https://youtu.be/F5FYYV59Eew- TED talk The reality of luck
● www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com