Levitt and Dubner's ground breaking look at the world through the eyes of collated data that tells a story in itself, like their shocking discovery of what caused a huge drop in crime in America in the 1990s. Reading this a decade on I still find this so absorbing and interesting which is just as much as a result of their writing style as their great content.
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Just remember assume nothing... question everything! 8 out of 12.

I initially gave this book a high score because it is entertaining, but:
-1. I must agree with other people who point out that the whole pretense of "freakonomics" as an amazing new science is completely bogus. Some economists keep trying to appropriate other fields like sociology, epidemiology and psychology and then pretend they invented something.
-2. I did not go look up facts from this book, but I did for the sequel and found that the authors were playing fast and loose with reality, so their credibility as scientists goes way down.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005)

There are intriguing elements in this book but when it comes to the larger picture, I find it sorely lacking. Levitt is a young star in the economics profession who enjoys playing games with interesting questions. For example, he assembles data to demonstrate that Roe v. Wade was critical to the drop in the crime rate in the 90s. On p. 125 he notes "So it wasn't capital punishment that drove crime down, nor was it the booming economy. But higher rates of imprisonment did have a lot to do with it." Also, on p. 139, he says "Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness, unwantedness leads to high crime, legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime." He also addresses the old nature vs. nurture argument or environment vs. genetics when he says, on pp. 175-176, "Parents who are well educated, successful, and healthy tend to have children who test well in school, but it doesn't seem to much matter whether a child is trotted off to museums or spanked or sent to Head Start....The reality is that technique looks to be highly overrated....adopted children test relatively poorly in school, any influence the adoptive parents might exert is seemingly outweighed by the force of genetics. But...the parents were not powerless forever. By the time the adopted children bacame adults, they had veered sharply from the destiny that IQ alone might have predicted. Compared to similar children who were not put up for adoption, the adoptees were far more likely to attend college, to have a well-paid job, and to wait until they were out of their teens before getting married."
Despite these insights, I would never want to write a book like this because it doesn't go after the betterment of the human condition in a broad sense in the fashion that Adam Smith tried with Wealth of Nations in 1776. Levitt may be rewarded for his fun puzzles by a best-seller, but does any of this really help society toward healthier, happier families in the future?

I loved the abortion cured crime theory.

The Basics:

Freakonomics isn’t really about any one thing, which makes it a bit hard to summarize. In essence, it’s economist Steven Levitt playing around with economic principles and basic statistical analysis to examine various cultural trends and phenomena. He tackles a variety of questions, from whether or not sumo wrestlers cheat (they do) to whether or not a child’s name determines his success (it doesn’t). He does this all through examining statistics and data, trying to find facts to back up various assertions rather than relying on conventional wisdom.

The Good:

As a person who is sick of the inability of most people to have a rational discourse on any even vaguely politicized topic, and a self-proclaimed skeptic, it’s nice to read anyone who endorses looking at hard data to make judgments about possibly controversial issues. Levitt does a nice job of not only proclaiming the advantages of this sort of rational outlook, but also of showing that when you actually examine the data, you sometimes get surprising results. Furthermore, he takes the time to point out that there is a difference between correlation and causation, and that many people mistake one for the other. Again, a nice touch.

The actual questions that Levitt asks are all fairly interesting, though some will appeal to certain readers more than others. In addition to cheating sumotori and strange names, Levitt also examines cheating teachers, the economics of crack dealers, and the effect of abortion on crime. Crime, in point of fact, seems to be Levitt’s greatest interest, and I wonder if he might not have been better served by writing an entire book on the relationship between economics and crime, as opposed to trying to touch on a number of different subjects that are all largely unrelated. It might have made for a tighter, more focused book.

The writing is solid; simple and easy, but solid. Despite being a book about economics, it’s not a terribly dense read, as witnessed by the fact that I finished it off in about two days. Granted, it was two days of heavy reading, but it was still two days.

The Bad:

For a book that’s so gung ho about statistics, there aren’t many statistics in here. Levitt claims that the numbers back up his research, but he rarely provides the data itself, which makes it difficult to tell how much he might be manipulating statistics to serve his own ends. It makes the book seem like it’s been dumbed down for the plebian masses, which will be very frustrating to any intelligent reader who wants to look at Levitt’s data themselves. Any reader who doesn’t feel like reading the numbers can do what most of us did in undergrad—skip the numbers sections. It’s just sloppy; I can’t imagine Levitt would do this in a formal economics paper.

The book also lacks much in the way of an unifying theme, a problem that is acknowledged within the text itself; that isn’t only sad, it’s sloppy. I doubt that a writer of Dubner’s skill and an economist of Levitt’s apparent genius (more on that below) are totally incapable of thinking of and describing some kind of unifying theme throughout this work. It just smacks of laziness, even more so when there’s a half-hearted “well, I guess you could say it’s this…” sort of thing in the epilogue. Again, I have trouble imagining that Levitt would submit a paper that was this disjointed to a serious economic publication; why should the general public be treated less seriously?

The Ugly:

The self-aggrandizement. Oh, the self-aggrandizement.

Every chapter is preceded by excerpts from an article about Levitt, which all tell us what a brilliant and unconventional economist this man is. In the introduction, we’re told that he really wasn’t that interested in writing a book, unless he got to work with this wonderful journalist who had written an article about him earlier. The cover promises that we will be “dazzled” by a “rogue economist” who explains “the hidden side of everything.”

For all of this talk of brilliance and dazzling explanations, the book doesn’t seem that brilliant. It seems like a transcript of some interesting dinner conversation with a smart guy, the sort that makes you go home and think, “hey, this stuff is interesting, I ought to go pick up a book about it.” Of course, the problem here is that you’ve already picked up the book.

The fact that Levitt wasn’t that interested in writing a book in the first place is telling; this book feels like something written by a person who needed to get the work done, but really wasn’t engaged in what he was doing. Maybe he should have waited until he was a little more motivated.

This book opens up intriguingly and ends disappointing. While sparks off with a very interesting introduction on what the book is going to deliver, you'll find the chapters intensely overloaded with unnecessary text and stories.

It p's got marvelous idea in mind which is thinking more in depth and with different perspectives but I found it utterly disappointing. Have the authors preserved a decent level of brevity to convey their thinking methodology, it would have been an astounding book.

This is very different and fantastic. If you appreciate counter-intuitive thinking and value approaches to discovering what's ACTUALLY true rather than what "common sense" tells us is true, then you will greatly appreciate Steven Levitt's methods. If you're after directly practical knowledge only, you will not value this much. If you are big into strictly traditional thinking, you will HATE this. Be ready to separate what you believe to be moral from what actually happens (they don't always agree, even when I don't like it). So assess yourself and decide accordingly.

If you want to know interesting truths and value things that are counter-intuitive even when it flies in the face of a deeply held belief, this is for you. Dr. Levitt's approach is so refreshing; ignoring what seems to be true and always wondering what actually is true, then leveraging data he finds to discover what it can reveal (not what he wants, not what you or I want, but what actually IS). He's a refreshing oddball that I wish I could know personally so I would gain more of that fresh look.

Interesting, random, unconventional findings! I think it would have been a bit better if the questions linked to a certain theme and he wrote several different books. It's similar to Malcolm Gladwell books.

Answer's questions like:
- 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 much does a child's name really matter?
Also information on:
The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

I found it interesting that when it really comes down to it; pretty much 80% of us would cheat/commit a crime if we knew that the odds were with us.

It's also interesting the fact of causality and correlations. What causes what? Maybe the cause is just an indication of something else.

Also he brought up it takes skill to ask odd, unconventional, yet logical questions.

James Altucher and Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner set up a daily podcast which has 177 Questions of the Day, which answers unconventional questions that is similar to the context of this book
Freakonomics Q of the Day link

For a book that so heavily relies on (mostly) untested assumptions, the repeated, passionate references to the distinction between causality and correlation is impressive if not audacious, to say the least.

Suffice to say, n  “"As Levitt sees it, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions".n

Exactly, Stephen. And that would work extremely well as an inside joke too. Unless you are implying that, in contrast with the usual textbooks, n  Freakonomicsn actually uses science to pose those questions. In which case, and given the absolute lack of evidence, statistics and insight on any methodological tools here, I can’t help wondering: Science? What science? Where? GIVE ME ONE PAGE.

The other unfortunate thing here is the n  “Revised and Expanded edition”n issue, which can generally mean a number of things, but in the case of n  Freakonomicsn in specific, it was, as we know, the result of a huge wave of negative feedback from reviewers due to:

a) the fact that the authors massively exaggerated some of their assumptions (because, obviously: when you think you’re using science when you really are not, that’s just bound to happen) and, as if this isn't enough already, the authors’ reliance on some quite noticeable mathematical monstrosities.

b) The self-praise:
“Hi. I’m Stephen J. Dubner. And I’m co-authoring this book. The other author is Steven D. Levitt and he’s such a genius, radical economist that we’re thinking we’ll stuff n  Freakonomicsn with tons of newspaper clippings on how awesome he is. And that’s gonna be all over the place. Yes! Oh, in case you’re wondering what a too-cool-for-school unconventional genius like Steven D. Levitt is doing writing books instead of just being a weird recluse in permanent scientific euphoria, worry not! He wasn't interested in writing anything, silly ones (as if)! Not unless it was with me, because, in case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a kickarse, amazing journalist too! So please read us. Please. We’ll make you feel important and scientific”.

So apparently they got the message and scrapped most of that out of the book, hence the n  “Revised and Expanded”n edition.

But honestly, when I found all that out, for a moment I thought I needed to double check that I was actually reading the revised thing.
I was? Really? REALLY? WHAT WAS THE FIRST VERSION LIKE THEN?

And it’s certainly not my fault that Nick Hornby has the answer to nearly everything. I don’t remember which issue of The Believer he wrote that in, but it was along the lines of: n  "Freakonomicsn was a cool book and it made me feel smart. But what was it about?”
Exactly, thank you.

Two stars, because some of the questions they pose have interesting political and social implications, even though all questions are always posed through prose (with the use of loose logic at best) and absolutely not through the use of science.

Oh. And the title is.. er.. misleading (Today I’m nice).

Palasot citu atsauksmes nojaušu, ka šis varētu būt gadījums, kad man patīk grāmata tikai tāpēc, ka tā ir pirmā kaut cik jēdzīgi sarakstītā no tāda tipa, ko esmu lasījusi - nu ka uzķeros uz ekonomikas Paulu Koelju vai Greja nokrāsām. Bet es tiešām biju patīkami pārsteigta, ka ar ļoti lielu interesi lasīju statistikas datos balstītu analīzi un pamācību par ekspertu viedokļa kritisku vērtēšanu (sevišķi ņemot vērā viņu mērķi viedokli paust). Atzīstu, ka patika droši vien tāpēc, ka metode te ir apspriesta maz, bet piemēri par cēloņu un sakarību nošķiršanu (kāpēc kreka tirgoņi dzīvo ar vecākiem; kāpēc afroamerikāņi izvēlas viņiem tipiskos bērnu vārdus; kas nosaka iespējamo bērna potenciālu; kā atklāt skolotājus, kas krāpjas bērnu vietā; kāpēc nenotika ASV paredzētais noziedzības bums 1990.gados utt) ir tiešām ļoti interesanti.

варто зізнатися, що ніщо так не заспокоює мене перед сном як такий нон-фікшн

This book has an apple on its cover, I like apples because of its good taste. However, the inside of the apple on the cover is an orange's flesh, what's the taste of it, maybe a little sour, or sweet? It is magical and unbelievable, I think it is changed in some technological ways. Anomalous