I agree, the "igon value" thing was a more revealing error than a minor typo. Gladwell is a talented quick study, by necessity. In the New Yorker article, he

I agree, the "igon value" thing was a more revealing error than a minor typo. Gladwell is a talented quick study, by necessity. In the New Yorker article, he was just using "gaussian" and "igon value" for color, to give a sense of the mathematical sophistication of the quants. In this case, the ploy was obvious to people with a modicum of a math background, because "eigenvalues" and "gaussian distributions" are not particularly obscure topics - they're something almost any undergrad in a quant-ish field will encounter (early, in lower division classes). Furthermore, by mis-spelling it, Gladwell does suggest that he implies a greater understanding of a field than he actually has (something quick studies are good at, including many progrmmers, which is probably why folks on this board are so attuned to it). That said, it was a minor part of the article. This shouldn't have made it past the editors.