Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance · chapter 7 · id grit-c7-03-ericssons-original-1993-violin
“Ericsson's original 1993 violin study involved only 30 student violinists divided into three groups of 10 at the Music Academy of West Berlin, yet became the basis for the widely cited '10,000 hours' rule.”
TRUE, BUTconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
MacNamara & Maitra (2019), Royal Society Open Science - Revisiting Ericsson et al. (1993)paywalled · manual check queued
Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) recruited 30 student violinists divided into three groups of 10 from the Music Academy of West Berlin.
David Epstein - Remembering Ericssonsource alive
Ericsson himself hated the '10,000 hour rule' label. The 10,000 was an average for the top group at age 20, not a universal threshold.
Violinist.com - 10,000 Hour Rule Debunkedsource alive
A 2019 replication attempt found that while the best violinists did practice more, the differences between groups were smaller than originally reported and the variance within groups was large.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us. Corrections are loud here.