It Was About Bloody Time that I Read Freakonomics
Oct 22nd, 2007 by Alex
I just finished reading Freakonomics, subtitled A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Very neat, clean, and approachable, this is not your typical economics book. But then again, Steven Levitt doesn’t appear to be a typical economist. The man attempts to answer simple questions using economic datasets. Such as (quoted from the book’s promotional page)…
“Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?”
The answers to each of these questions is addressed and answered, but not always how you would think. Some of the questions would seem somewhat mundane if the results weren’t so damned interesting. I liked how they did the number crunching and then talked about the results, rather than droning on and on about the actual numbers themselves. Anyone really interested in the numbers themselves can go dig up the reports and studies out of the appendices.
The authors acknowledge that you might walk away not believing a word of what they have to say, or maybe believing every word; the goal is to put the conventional — and often misleading or outright incorrect — wisdom aside and think about things in a new light. It’s may not be a page-turning thriller, but I’d still recommend this one.
If you didn’t know the authors also have a blog over at the NY Times:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/