In this article Scott Barry Kaufman give the following example studies to display the role of luck factors in success.
- Half of the differences in income can be explained by peoples country of residence and by the income distribution within that country,
- Scientific impact is randomly distributed, with high productivity alone having a limited effect on the likelihood of high-impact work in a scientific career,
- Our chance of becoming a CEO may be influenced by our name or month of birth,
- CEOs born in June and July is much smaller than the number of CEOs born in other months,
- People with last names earlier in the alphabet are more likely to receive tenure at top departments,
- Display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people’s intellectual capacities and achievements,
- Individuals with easy to pronounce names are judged more positively than those with difficult-to-pronounce names,
- Females with masculine sounding names are more successful in legal careers.
