A great book. You will love it if you like to question how and why things are what they are. How new names are being introduced to our newborns? How trends are being set? What is the relationship between teachers and sumo fighters? Why drug dealers (despite presumably being rich) still live with their moms? Why crimes get lowered?

If you like deep answers to great and silly questions like these, then you have to give it a go.

The authors emphasize on using "economics" tools to explore various fields in this world.

هذا الكتاب الجنوني تم بيع 4 مليون نسخة منه وتمّت ترجمته إلى 35 لغة. الكتاب لا يتحدّث عن موضوع واحد معيّن، ففي كل فصل يتحدّث عن موضوع آخر ولكن ما يجمعهم هو ان كل ما يفعله الفرد غالباً يكون لوجود باعث/حافز معيّن (قد يكون بارز أو غير بارز) ولكن في كل الحالات هناك حافز للأفعال والقرارات التي تصدر من البشر. أيضاً ما يميّز الكتاب الطريقة المثيرة للكاتبان في دراسة وتحليل معمّق بعض الأسئلة الغريبة المثيرة في هذا العالم. الكتاب سيثير كل من لديه حب للإستطلاع بشكل جنوني . يجمعون جبال من المعلومات الغير منسّقة و من ثم يسألون سؤال (قد يكون مضحك) ولكن لم يُسأل من قبل. إنها فعلاً لطريقة مثيرة.

في احد الفصول مثلاً، تطرّق الكاتبان لقضية تسمية المواليد الجدد وكيفية يتم اختيار المجتمع لتلك الأسماء. قاموا بدراسة كل التسميات منذ الستينات ومقارنتها بأسماء اليوم و رسم الاتجاه/الميل طوال فترة الدراسة. ثم درسوا إن كانت هناك علاقة بين الأسماء والمستوى الأكاديمي والمهني للفرد لاحقاً من باب هل الأسماء تلعب دور في التأثير على شخصيتنا ونجاحنا العلمي والعملي. وأيضاً قارنوا الفروقات في التسمية بين الأعراق المختلفة وذكر الملاحظات العجيبة الغريبة في طريقة التسمية عند الأعراق المختلفة.

في فصل آخر، يسئلون هذا السؤال المثير "هل هناك وجه شبه بين مصارعي السومو اليابانيين و المدرّسين؟" طبعاً هذا الفصل سيكون مثير جدّاً لأساتذتنا الأفاضل في المدارس والجامعات حيث يتطرّق لقضية كيف ولماذا قد يغش هؤلاء المصارعين والمدرّسين وكيفية اكتشاف ذلك الغش بطرق عجيبة غريبة قام بها الكاتبان! الكل يتحدّث عن غش الطلاّب ولكن الكتاب يجعل المسألة أكثر إثارة ويُثبت وجود غش بعض المدرّسين وخصوصاً في الدول التي تُكافأ المدرّس على مقدار تفّوق طلبته (كما هو الحال في الولايات المتّحدة).

وماذا عن متاجرين المخدّرات؟ (أعاذنا الله وإيّاكم منها)، لماذا هؤلاء المتاجرين في أمريكا (على الرغم من الفكرة السائدة انّهم يطلّعون ذهب) مازالوا يعيشون مع أمّهاتهم؟؟! هل هناك ثمّة عامل في المسألة لم نتوصّل إليه. الكتاب يجيب على ذلك بطريقة عجيبة حيث تسلّل احد طلاّب الجامعة آنذاك (حالياً بروفيسور علم اجتماع في جامعة كولومبيا) "سودير فينكاتيش" إلى احد العصابات وخاطر بحياته ولكنه نجا ودوّن كثير من الملاحظات وعمل دراسات أجابت الكثير من المسائل الغامضة في عالم العصابات والمخدرات.

لماذا الجرائم في نيويورك انخفضت دراماتيكياً وبشكل مفاجئ؟ أي أخطر حوض السباحة أم المسدّس؟ هل فعلاً تربية الآبائ تؤثّر في سلوك الأبناء؟ وغيرها من الأسئلة التي يجيب عليها الكاتبان ستيفين ليفيت (اقتصادي) و ستيفين دوبنر (صحفي).

__________________________
“An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.”

Well that was a big surprise. When I arrived at page 7, I discovered that, among other things, the authors of Freakonomics were writing about something I had worked on in the early 2000s. I was an editor for a major educational publisher at the time and was specializing in the development of achievement tests. I am not ashamed of it. And you can’t prove a thing, see.

A major metropolitan school system happened to be looking for an achievement test to administer as part of a high stakes, No Child Left Behind testing program in their elementary schools and had decided to purchase one of the tests published by my company. It was an excellent, reliable, valid, and highly praised test of student achievement authored by some of the leading educational testing experts in the U.S. My job for this particular adoption was producing a custom version of the tests for the school system. It was a simple task for me, or should have been. All that needed to be done was to develop some new covers with the school system’s name and logo, add a forward by the school district. Then the school found a paragraph in the original test administrator’s instruction that they did not care for and insisted that I delete it. It was a very short paragraph, a mere baby, barely a dependent clause, but it offended the school system. The test’s original instructions––the instructions used around the entire country––stated that the test should NOT be used to evaluate teachers, principals, or schools and the school system fully intended to use the student’s test scores to evaluate teachers and principals.

Now here is another big surprise. A few teachers and principals cheated on the test; that is, they “corrected” answers on the No. 2 pencil scannable answer sheets before sending them out for scoring. Because, they didn’t want to be fired, that’s why. The authors of Freakonomics use this case as an example of incentives gone bad.

Learning should be this enjoyable more often!

FREAKONOMICS is a refreshing, thoroughly enjoyable, easy reading, fast paced, witty and cynical breath of fresh air! Levitt and Dubner offer up a series of pointed, thought provoking essays composed in jargon-free layman's language that are loosely connected through a theme revealed in the book's sub-title - the hidden side of everything!

Incentives, or disincentives and deterrents, are examined as to their effectiveness in achieving the outcomes anticipated by those people, corporations or government organizations who designed them. We quickly learn that when incentives are applied in the context of our own philosophies and objectives, the outcomes may not be precisely as might have been originally intended.

The power of information, disinformation, information symmetry or asymmetry, perceived or real, and information hoarding in the form of secrecy is looked at from the point of view of determining its effect on our reliance on and opinions of "experts" and on our own strength in the process of negotiation or development of a contract. The authors' use of the KKK, real estate agents and the Internet as enormously disparate examples of information hoarders or disseminators is, in a word, inspired and informative.

The rather contentious issues of abortion vis-à-vis US crime rates and the relationship between race, economic status, parenting and scholastic achievement are used to demonstrate the enormous pitfalls in distinguishing between causality relationships as opposed to simple correlation.

I believe my personal background in mathematics and physics has allowed me to appreciate the deeper meaning of these essays from a scientific point of view. But, I'm concerned that in doing this, I may give rise to the profoundly mistaken impression that FREAKONOMICS is some turgid economics exposition that's as dry as a Death Valley dust storm. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Read it! Enjoy it! Laugh at it and think about what you've just read. If you never again look at a social phenomenon and accept it at simple face value without a raised eyebrow and a little more questioning attitude, then I believe that Levitt and Dubner will have achieved their goal.

Paul Weiss

Well,this is the most terrible book I have ever seen,it was too terrible to read.It’s so terrible that I just want to burn it as fast as I can,and it cost me 58RMB.That was 58RMB,it was to expensive for me to afford.At first.I thought it was a good book,and I spend all my money on this book.And I was pretty annoyed about this I don’t have any other money for my breakfast,lunch,and even dinner.I haven’t drink juice for the whole year.Reading this is a waste of time,no one want to see this book again.It was just rubbish,and smelly book.It tells my nothing.I even want to sell this to the writer,and ask to return my money and some extra.It cost me too much time,and too much money on it.I prefer to see a movie instead!!!

I think I forgot to mention that I finished Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I haven’t started the sequel “Superfreakonomics” yet but the first one, well, it started out really interesting but I kind of lost their logic at the end. The book is a collaboration between a “rogue” economist, Levitt, and a writer, Dubner, about trying to discount “common wisdom” and idées reçus with economic analysis and they reach some interesting and also bizarre conclusions. It starts out interesting about cheating which links teachers – perhaps the most interesting study in the book – and sumo wrestlers. The irony here is that in Japan just this year (several years after the publication of the book), the sumo match-fixing has come public and they have even been reduced to giving tickets away for free because the Japanese were so disillusioned with the revelations of corruption and links with the yakuza. Anyway, there are also interesting articles about drug dealers and real estate agents. They also talked about the Klu Klux Klan and mentioned an interesting person, Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated that organization way back when. What they forgot to mention about him is that he actually ran for president once on an independent ticket for justice – I know that because Billy Bragg and Wilco covered the Woody Guthrie song about Stetson Kennedy on their Mermaid Avenue album (an absolute must if you don’t have it!). Then you hit the controversial section where they blame the sudden drop of crime in the 90s to abortion. I suppose that they could be right and the hypothesis is certainly interesting but I think they were going more for shock value than literary or economic value in the “1 baby equals 8 abortions” – at least I couldn’t really see where they wanted to go with that. Towards the end also, I felt that it starts to wander a bit. I didn’t know what the point they wanted to make actually was in belittling the names that african-americans give to their kids and couldn’t really see the link they were trying to make with grades and stuff. While it is a fascinating read – particularly the first three chapters – the end was a bit, well, confusing to be honest. I hope that Superfreakonomics will keep a more even rhythm.



OK so enough blather. I think Burn Notice might be the funnier alternative here with perhaps a dose of Episodes or Shameless thrown in. Enjoy your weekend, dear reader

I'm a bit of a late comer to this book. Wish I had read it years ago! Some parts of it felt overly developed (especially the chapter on baby names), but for the most part, I really enjoyed being challenged to revisit causation on a lot social issues that might have previously been assumed - like where increases in crime rates really come from (hint - it has less to do with law enforcement than you might think, evidently) and where c-sections are most likely to occur.

With every new US President, I am often frustrated because they all seem to blame their predecessors for inheriting faltering economies and take credit for soaring ones. Economic health is a lagging indicator of all that happened in the time before the measurement is taken, so it was really frustrating to me that so many people voted against Biden because of inflation, even though his administration had actually done A LOT to combat it, and especially because he had taken over the ever-increasing class gap 45 had handed him. Now that 45 is 47 (I refuse to say his name), I fear we'll regress and undo all that hard work. I feel like if more people had either read this book or done some soul-searching critical thinking, that maybe they would've voted differently and this country's outlook would be a little less scary to me.

I bought this book halfway through the library copy. I knew I'd want to reread it even before finishing it. I only wish there were an updated version, since it's been almost a decade from the time of its last publishing.

What a fun random read! Coming into this with no prior knowledge of what it's about is probably what made this so enjoyable. This book will make you think... think about things that may never have crossed your mind before. Once a concept is mentioned it's almost like a "a-ha!" moment leaving you pondering why that thought never popped into your head before. I loved the quirky analysis packed with statistics (who doesn't love stats?). I think the last topic covered was the least enjoyable, but that at moment the author already has you hooked. I'll definitely be checking out more books in the series.

The book is totally different than ordinary books on this topic. It will bring out those facts that we don't want to eve look or discuss. It has provided many examples with those are unbelievable. It has used to comapre sumo wrestlers and school teachers. IT goona freak you all the time.
May the style of the wrtitng book is different but he delivers the information that is valuable to all. It will change the way you think about the modern world.

I found this book to be really fascinating. Chapter 3- Why do drug dealers still live with their moms, was very illuminating. I like the questions they posed and the connections they came up with. I was quite surprised about the American school system, especially the fact that teachers often used cheating methods to make sure their students scored well in standardized tests.The section about how given names may influence one's future was quite gloomy in some ways, especially as there's evidence that we are judged based on our names, not on our abilities. All in all, a lot of great information.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Freakonomics), Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. It was published on April 12, 2005, by William Morrow. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. By late 2009, the book had sold over 4 million copies worldwide.
The book is a collection of articles written by Levitt, an expert who had gained a reputation for applying economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by "traditional" economists. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives. The book's chapters cover:
Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo wrestlers, as well as a typical Washington, D.C.–area bagel business and its customers
Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents
Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
Chapter 4: The role legalized abortion has played in reducing crime, contrasted with the policies and downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," written with John Donohue.)
Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on education
Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children (nominative determinism)
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هفتم ماه آگوست سال 2008 میلادی
عنوان: اقتصاد ناهنجاری‌های پنهان اجتماعی؛ نویسنده: استیون لویت، استپان‌ دابنر؛ مترجم: سعید مشیری؛ تهران: نشر نی‏‫، 1386؛ در 269 ص؛ شابک: 9789643129507؛ چاپ دوم 1392؛ موضوع: اقتصاد از نویسندگان امریکایی - جنبه های روانشناسی - سده 21 م
عنوان: اقتصاد، علم انگیزه‌ها؛ نویسنده: استیون دی‌. لویت؛ مترجم: امیرحسین توکلی؛ تهران: سبزان‏‫، 1385؛ در 197 ص؛ شابک: 9789648249674؛ عنوان روی جلد: اقتصاد علم انگیزه‌ها: مهارت‌های لازم برای کشف ابعاد پنهان پدیده‌ها؛
‬کتاب «فریکونومیکس» در باره ی اقتصاد، از اقتصاددان دانشگاه شیکاگو «استیون لویت» است، که نخستین بار در روز دوازدهم ماه آوریل سال 2005 میلادی منتشر شد. این کتاب تا پایان سال 2009 میلادی، بیش از چهار میلیون نسخه فروش داشته است. کتاب با عنوان «اقتصاد ناهنجاری‌های اجتماعی» توسط نشر نی و با ترجمه ی جناب «سعید مشیری»، و با عنوان: «اقتصاد، علم انگیزه‌ها»؛ با ترجمه ی جناب «امیرحسین توکلی»، منتشر شده است. کتاب چندین فصل دارد: درباره حقه زدن در شغل‌هایی مانند معلمی و کشتی‌گیران سومو؛ شباهت‌های کوکلوس‌کلان‌ و افراد معاملات ملکی؛ سیستم اقتصادی کارتل‌های مواد مخدر؛ تاثیر قانونی‌سازی سقط جنین در کاهش جرایم چندین سال بعد؛ نقش بسیار کم تربیت خوب کودکان توسط والدین در بهتر شدن آموزش و پرورششان؛ و الگوهای نامگذاری کودکان در یک جامعه. ا. شربیانی

The most interesting part of this book was the introduction. Sad, but true.

Four stars for presentation. The prose is nearly invisible, which I suppose in this genre is preferable to the alternative. And the content is mildly interesting, in a "Huh. Wouldja look at that" sort of way, as though you saw a duck waddling through your back yard with jam on its head.

But insofar as it's meant to be the vehicle for a larger framework for viewing the world, this book is old news. You mean shit's connected in weird, roundabout ways? Get out. Conventional wisdom is often wrong? Superficial analyses are lazy and innacurate? My head...is spinning.

Read some good poetry, you hipster fucks.

Everything I hate about popular science - alternating between over-simplified, patronising, naive or simply annoying, but worst of all, blatantly refusing to take account of the political and social implications of its findings, and being proud of it.