DNF @ 25%. Freshman year at college, I had the opportunity to take a writing seminar built around Freakonomics. Suffice to say, I dodged a fucking bullet. Freakonomics is a woefully misinformed, poorly written, disgustingly quirky "nonfiction" "economics" book that has very little to do with econ. The book's half-baked theories are presented poorly, but the concepts are so fantastic and dazzling that—to hell with academic research and facts! let's conflate correlation and causality, make a bunch of tables in excel, and bam! Freakonomics, baby! Instant bestseller!

Also, it contains perhaps the WORST description of Akerlof's Market for Lemons study that I have ever encountered (see page 63). The Market for Lemons, just so you know, is a well-known economics paper on market information asymmetry (which is essentially what Freakonomics is about). Akerlof's paper is far less exciting but far more important so if you're actually interested in "Freakonomics" then give that a read.

By the way, have these guys Levitt and Dubner ever taken a writing class? Have their professors never told them how to connect ideas when writing? They lack concision and focus. The writing in this book tends to spout off into tangents or quirky asides that make me want to die. How this book got to be so popular is BEYOND me.

(I am 100% convinced that Levitt and Dubner published this as a book of patchwork theories because no peer-reviewed journal would take them seriously.)

For a book that aspires to "redefine the way we view the modern world," the authors are supremely irresponsible. They put on a "freak" show of data (their term choice) to make a sensation and lull the lay economist into thinking they've learned something. I read several reviews of this book and it appears people who know about the subject are appalled by their poor analysis, contrived conclusions, and use of unreliable research to make sensationalized claims.

Maybe I'm stating it a little strongly, but it has been over two years since I read this book and I'm still angry about one of their premises. The authors proposed that crime rates went down due to the increase in abortions some 15 years earlier. Yes, they claim society is better off without the kids whose parents apparently didn't want them ever having a chance to grow up to be the miscreants they'd be destined to become. That may be a correlation but it is a huge stretch to claim it is a cause and effect. (The decreased crime rate is much better explained by Strauss & Howe in Generations , by the way.)

Why I gave this book 2 stars instead of 1 is because it does succeed in drawing interest to economics.

[3.5*]
Ποιο θα ήταν το αποτέλεσμα της συνεργασίας ενός οικονομολόγου που τον λένε Steven (Levitt) και ενός δημοσιογράφου που τον λένε Stephen (Dubner); Σίγουρα (οκ, σχεδόν σίγουρα) λίγο γιούχου.

Ε λοιπόν, το Freakonomics είναι το αποτέλεσμα μιας τέτοιας συνεργασίας, και είναι γιούχου. Με την καλή έννοια. Μάλλον. Τι εννοώ; Αν το πάρεις σαν οικονομικό βιβλίο, θα απογοητευτείς. Λείπει ο όγκος δεδομένων που θα υποστηρίξουν πλήρως τα γραφόμενα. Βασικά, είναι αρκετά πιθανό να σου φανούν αερολογίες αυτά που διαβάζεις.

Αν το πάρεις, όμως, σαν ένα βιβλίο που θέτει ερωτήματα που απασχολούν μια μερίδα ανθρώπων (ναι, και τους οικονομολόγους) με ζωντανό και αστείο τρόπο, τότε είναι μια χαρά. Οι δε τίτλοι των κεφαλαίων είναι για σεμινάριο. Σ' έναν βαθμό, το βιβλίο μπορεί να σε βάλει στο τριπάκι να σκεφτείς γιατί σκεφτόμαστε έτσι όπως σκεφτόμαστε, και ποιες είναι οι κοινωνικοπολιτικές επιπτώσεις αυτού του τρόπου σκέψης. Και να αναρωτηθείς αν οι γονείς σου έκαναν καλό parenting job. Και αν σου έδωσαν ταιριαστό όνομα.

Τελικό πόρισμα: Ναι, αξίζει να διαβάσεις το Freakonomics. Και μπορεί να ενθουσιαστείς. Ειδικά αν αρχίσεις να σκέφτεσαι τα κοινωνικοπολιτικά θέματα που Αν είσαι, βέβαια, και λίγο data afficionado θα πεις "γαμώτο, δεν με καλύπτει πλήρως". Προσωπικά το είπα, δεν το κρύβω.

Υ.Γ.: Ζήλεψα τους ευφάνταστους τίτλους και τη σύνδεση ανάμεσα στα κεφάλαια, δεν ξέρω αν το ανέφερα νωρίτερα.

At a cocktail party you don’t count on quant types to provide much entertainment. In rare cases a data-plying vector-head like me might talk about how some big swinging member at the trade desk got eviscerated when he messed up his numbers. A story like that can be marginally interesting if told in a gory way. But as relatable tidbits go, that had pretty much been the full gamut. Now, with Freakonomics, we dare to dream of audiences appreciating a new set of number-based anecdotes. They came up with examples where their quantitative forensics would yield something clever or fun, often exposing ironic, counterintuitive, or sordid behavior in the process. I suspect the less these examples had to do with economics, the more interesting they seemed. Be that as it may, it was gratifying to see that the modeling techniques quants rely on (like multivariate regression) have been brought to bear to tell these tales.

The Freakonomics formula is a smart one. It starts with sound research on non-traditional topics with results that were vetted in academic journals. That was Levitt’s part. Co-author Dubner is the writer. His job was to provide context, explain how results were uncovered, and sell us on why it’s all so cool. And who wouldn’t be at least mildly intrigued by patterns that show how teachers in Chicago cheated to raise their students’ test scores, and how that links them with Sumo wrestlers in Japan. They cited another example discovered in April of ’87. Evidently that year 7 million children in the US simply disappeared off the face of the earth. This was fully one-tenth of the dependent-age population. They speculated that maybe, just maybe, the new requirement from the IRS in ’87 to include a child’s SSN on the form had something to do with the massive decline in dependents.

The authors were careful to explain the methodological difficulties in making data confess. Researchers of this stripe are rarely given the luxury of a lab, where one variable at a time can be changed, holding everything else constant. Ceteris is almost never paribus in social science. I give the authors credit, too, for their interpretation of results. For instance, they explained how the old cliché in real estate that your first offer will be your best may have a lot to do with the incentive structures of the seller’s agent. Say they’re slated to get 3% of the sale price. If it’s a matter of getting 0.03 x $300,000 right now and no longer needing to show the home versus holding out for 0.03 x $310,000 at some unknown point in the future, the usual counsel is to take the first offer. They’re only foregoing a potential $300. The homeowners’ incentive is very different. Say they owe the bank $250,000. For them it’s a matter of netting $50,000 or $60,000. Not surprisingly, the data show that realtors selling their own homes keep them on the market for longer and get a higher percentage of the true value.

Some of their findings generated controversy. Read their account on the legalization of abortion and subsequent drop in crime rates 20 or so years later if you want an example. They were careful not to engage in moral calculus, but they had to know they were playing with fire.

All in all I thought their examples were interesting, but generally not the most important issues we confront today. Still, they may serve a purpose if you’re looking for cocktail party chitchat of a quantitative bent.

Предполагам, никой от вас не е дотолкова глупав, та да вярва, че това, което говорят по медиите и това, което повечето хора вярват, е всъщност фактическото положение на нещата. Но всички ние имаме определен начин на мислене, приемаме дадени твърдения за факти и някои изводи за очевидни, без да си правим труда да помислим върху тях…

Във Freakonomics, икономиста Стивън Левит и журналиста Стивън Дъбнър дават следния пример – вие имате две малки сладки дечица и съседите ви от двете страни имат деца на приблизително същата възраст. Едните съседи имат басейн и вие често пускате вашите деца да ходят на гости, за да се къпят в басейна. Не ги пускате да ходят у другите съседи обаче, защото бащата е бодигард и ловец и има в къщи пистолет и ловна карабина – и вие се страхувате, че децата може някой път да се изплъзнат от вниманието на родителите, да се заиграят с оръжието и да се наранят.

Защото огнестрелното оръжие е опасно, а басейните са безопасни, нали така? Грешка – всяка година в домашни условия 100 деца се самонараняват с оръжие, но над 500 се давят в басейни (в САЩ), при това басейни имат много по-малко хора – съвсем просто изследване на броя нещастни случаи с деца, разделен на броя на домакинствата с огнестрелно оръжие и домакинствата с басейни показва, че има 200 пъти по-голяма опасност детето ви да се удави в басейна, отколкото да се застреля при игра с пушката.

Само че хората не осмислят проблема по този начин – за повечето от нас басейните са всекидневни, слънчеви, приятни и желани – виждаме ги често и ги асоциираме с приятни преживявания. Докато пушките са метални, страшни, миришат странно – повечето хора виждат пушка рядко и я свързват със смърт и опасност.

Същото поведение наблюдавам и аз, когато практикувам две от хобитата си – стрелба с въздушна пушка и с лък. Хората се плашат от пушката и се принуждавам да излизам извън града с нея, но сами пращат децата си да ме молят да пострелят с лъка и нямат нищо против да го правя зад блока. Пушката е въздушна, не е мощна и е изключително точна – шансът да уцеля някого случайно докато стрелям в мишената си и да го нараня е практически нула. Лъкът от своя страна е реплика на 66 паундов прабългарски боен лък – може да пробие човек от 50 метра и не е прецизно точен, така че вероятността за нещастен случай е много по-голяма. Но, както казах, пушките са страшни, метални и по филмите убиват, а лъковете притежават определен забавен и екзотичен образ…

Подобен начин на мислене е съвсем естествен и се среща много често – един пример е страхът от ядрената енергия въпреки, че има повече смъртни случаи от перки, отколкото от избухнали реактори или изтекла радиация, както и страхът от ядреното оръжие, въпреки че то практически не е използвано и само наличието му предотврати Студената война да се превърне в трета световна. Но перките са „екологични“ и обичайни, разбираме как действат, докато ядрената енергия е мистериозна, навява мисли за филми с мутанти и бомби, войни и смърт.

Стивън Левит и Стивън Дъбнър са си поставили за цел да използват икономическия начин на мислене, за да дадат отговори на различни житейски въпроси от други области. Freakonomics не дава безкрайно много информация – само посочва десетина примера на изследвания на Стивън Левит, но те кара да погледнеш с други очи на най-различни проблеми, които ежедневието ти поставя и те кара да се замислиш по-дълбоко за причината нещата да се случват. Freakonomics е книга за любопитния ум, който не приема конвенционалните и общоприети отговори, а търси истината чрез нетрадиционното вглеждане във фактите.

This was a reread in preparation for a professional development workshop being conducted in my office. I don't remember when I first read it, but it had to have been shortly after the book was originally published in 2005/2006. I'm sticking with my original rating of four stars.

The book is well-written and has all the data you can imagine to back up the authors' claims. One area it fails at, however, is that the areas they are trying to tie together really have no relationship. I mean, Chicago teachers and sumo wrestlers don't have much in common, and there isn't a strong correlation between the two. Sure, they may cheat, but the "whys" are vastly different.

The one thing I was interested in finding for my workshop is the analysis of the data. Data can show almost anything if you look at it long enough. My job requires a lot of data analysis and asking questions, lots of questions. In this respect, the chapter about the young researcher living with the drug dealers appealed to me simply because he started asking questions instead of relying on the status quo or even wrong concepts. His research changed the views of a lot of politicians, and how they approached the gang/drug problem around the country.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in data analysis and asking, "Why?".

complete bollocks, un-referenced 'studies' being used to back up their meandering and un thought out claims. should've been able to tell by the cover what type of 'book' this was.

"Freakonomics," authored by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is a groundbreaking exploration of economics, psychology, and sociology as it intersects with everyday life, revealing the hidden forces and unexpected truths that shape our world. This book is a delightful and enlightening read, presenting complex economic theories in an accessible and engaging manner.

One of the main strengths of "Freakonomics" is its ability to transform seemingly mundane topics into fascinating case studies. Levitt and Dubner delve into various subjects, from crime rates to school performance and real estate to sumo wrestling, all through economic theory. The authors argue that conventional wisdom often falls short and that the incentives driving human behavior can yield surprising outcomes. This central theme challenges readers to rethink their assumptions and consider how incentives shape decisions.

The book's engaging style is another notable aspect. Levitt and Dubner use a narrative approach, weaving together stories, data, and analysis to present their findings. This storytelling technique makes the book not only informative but also highly readable, appealing to both economics enthusiasts and general readers alike. Their witty tone helps demystify complex concepts, making the subject matter approachable and enjoyable.

"Freakonomics" excels in illustrating the power of data and empirical research. The authors showcase how innovative and sometimes unorthodox methods can lead to profound insights. For instance, their analysis of crime rates and the impact of legalized abortion is both controversial and thought-provoking, demonstrating the boldness of their inquiries and the depth of their analytical skills.

However, the book is not without its drawbacks. Critics argue that some of the conclusions drawn by Levitt and Dubner are oversimplified and that the data presented can sometimes be interpreted in multiple ways. Additionally, the book's reliance on provocative and attention-grabbing topics may lead to sensationalism, overshadowing the nuanced complexities of the issues discussed.

In conclusion, "Freakonomics" is a compelling and intellectually stimulating book that challenges readers to view the world through an economist's eyes. While it may have its limitations in terms of depth and potential for sensationalism, its innovative approach and engaging narrative make it a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the hidden dynamics of our world. Levitt and Dubner successfully turn economics into an adventure, inviting readers to explore the unexpected and often surprising undercurrents of everyday life.

The overarching point of this book is absolutely correct: conventional wisdom and what we perceive to be logical often is not. Our society is wrapped up and smothered in incorrect, dysfunctional assumptions that continue to rule our world and ruin our lives. Bigotry, ignorance, prejudice, fear, and the way people in power use these tools to divide and conquer us is at the root of all of our problems.

That being said - everything else in this book is mediocre to bad. The writers make repeated assumptions and statements that are just flat out wrong. They make interesting points, and their comparisons are often thought provoking, but they could have used more of their own medicine.

This book is clearly written by economists. Economics is one of the most useless, garbage ideologies ever created by humans. This is, of course, my opinion - but this book, I feel, only serves to prove that opinion. Over and over again the authors try to narrow down causes to one thing or another. They try to find the factor that changed everything. The abortion/crime essay is the clearest - abortion being legal is NOT the only factor that led to crime going down. There are thousands of factors that all contribute to everything that happens. Economists like to boil things down to numbers - instead of looking at people, looking at the complexity of life, they want a simple answer. There are no simple answers.

In the book the authors do, occasionally, note that just one thing is not the cause - but they then go back on this again and again by making ridiculous statements, ie:

"What sort of woman was most likely to take advantage of Roe v. Wade? Very often she was unmarried or in her teens or poor and sometimes all three." This sentence gives the image of the typical woman getting an abortion to be a poor teenage girl. They don't say that's the majority, but the implication by choosing this example is that it's the norm. This is absolutely false - Planned Parenthood has plenty of information on this - the most common type of woman who gets an abortion is a woman who has already had a kid(s) and accidentally got pregnant and didn't want another kid. No stereotyping, no images of teenagers making bad choices, etc.

Then there's this gem:

"Black Americans were hurt more by crack cocaine than by any other single cause since Jim Crow"

I almost stopped reading the book there. That is so wrong, so offensive, so ignorant it is utterly ridiculous. There is NO SINGLE CAUSE of anything! This reductionist economist bullshit is exactly why I hate economics. And if there was a single cause - it wasn't fucking crack. It was racism, or structural racism, or criminalizing of young black people, or economic segregation, or reagonomics, or zoning laws, or re-districting, etc. etc. etc. Crack ruining black communities is, in actuality, a myth. Yes, it's a problem, yes, drug addiction in all forms is terrible, but this myth that crack just fell on black communities like a nuclear bomb leaving nothing behind but violence and death is just plain false. Additionally: the crackdown on drugs came BEFORE crack became an issue - it was a political device pre-dating crack used by Reagan to get votes from ignorant white people who feared black people. There are many books documenting this.

In short: there are interesting points in this book, and the overall point is absolutely true. We all fall into believing bullshit that feels like it's obvious but is not. It's up to us individually, and as a society, to always seek the truth. However - the truth is not provided in a 20 page article as a single answer. If only the authors took their own ideas further the book might actually be worth something.

If I could give this book less then one star I would. I tried so very hard to finish reading this book full of BS facts but eventually got so tired of hearing things that just are not true but the author "claims" to be fact, that I quit reading it. I almost finished but couldn't do it in the end. Some of the things the author talks about seem like they could be truths but the majority of it is not. Don't waste your time.

Update: I don't recall the specifics as this was over a year ago that I "attempted" to read the book. I don't remember how far I got through it before I stopped reading. I can recall that many of the data and ideas presented about crime statistics and correlations were not accurate. The book put claims on cause and effect in regards to violent crime. I knew that the correlations were no more then the Authors conclusion based on one view of statistical data use. The use of statistics is often (many times not on purpose) biased. I have studied and been in law enforcement since 1990 and have worked serious felony level crimes since 1999. I know from experience and studies that some of the ideas he presented as "fact" were not fact but more of an opinion that can be easily concluded when someone does not look at the entire data of violent crimes.

3 stars - It was good.

The authors make very interesting points and will have you challenging the way you think about different accepted cultural truths. For the most part they also do not repetitively reiterate their points, though the last chapter on names was a bit long in the tooth (otherwise the book would have scored higher).

I'm interested in reading other books by the author duo and hope they continue to keep tackling controversial topics while supporting a new way of looking at old debates. To me, their work is more sensical, intriguing and built upon stronger arguments with less repetition than the more popular author, Malcolm Gladwell. To be fair, I have so far only read one book by each, but it is a clear preference.

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Favorite Quote: Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.

First Sentence: Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner didn't impress me as much as I thought it would. A book about economics and finding correlations in things you wouldn't necessarily surmise, Levitt and Dubner seem to be really arguing that the defining indicator behind these studies is incentive. Perhaps it's my background in Psychology, but a lot of this seemed common sense to me. There were some parts I really enjoyed though. The two chapters I found to be the most interesting out of the whole book, were two towards the end. The chapter on What makes a good parent (i.e. What factors of the parent affect the child's success in life?) and A Roshanda by Any Other Name (i.e. Is black culture a cause of racial inequality or is it a consequence?).

The chapter on parenting is interesting, and in some ways, not too surprising. Kids that have a lot of books in their home tend to do better in school. Kids born of a low birth weight tend to not do as well. If we think about it, a parent with lots of books cares about and might be more invested in their child's education than one without books, which of course, would lead to the child having better test scores. If we think about it, the child with the low birth weight is probably one with a teenage mother or one who doesn't take of herself as much, maybe a smoker or drinker, thus leading us to believe that she doesn't care about the child as much either. Some of the other factors they looked at that I found interesting were whether the child was adopted, whether the mother was over 30 when she had the child, whether the child went to HeadStart, whether the child frequently watched television, whether the child was spanked, and if the parents were involved with PTA. Some of the results were surprising. I won't give them all away, but they were always what you might expect.

The chapter about racial inequality relating to names that parents give their children I found fascinating. They talked about a father who named one son Loser and one son Winner and how they turned out as adults. They talked about a young black girl named Temptress, how she got to be named, and how she ended up court. Were these children just living out their names or was there a bigger factor at play here? A black Harvard professor named Roland G. Fryer Jr. decided to dedicate his life to learning more about it. He looked at where the parents lived, how they paid for their hospital bills, and what their favorite T.V. shows were compared to white parents. They sent in the same resume to different companies with the only difference being names on the resume. The typical white name was more likely to get a call back for an interview. Why? Was it because the interviewer was racist or was it was because that the socioeconomic status of the person who typically had that kind of name tended to not be as reliable?

Fryer looked at how likely black parents were to name their kids another popular black name and how likely they would name them something completely different. He looked at the same for white parents. Even among very popular black names, there was little overlap with white. He found that the parent that was most likely to give a child a distinctive black name was an unmarried, low-income, under-educated teenage mother from a black neighborhood who has a distinctively black name herself. Fryer thought it was her choice in solidifying her position with the community. But think about it, how would a black child get treated if it was named something typical white? And think about how you view names when you first hear them? I have to admit I have preconceived notions about names as well. Before I met a member of my husband's family who had two children, I was told their unusual names were because the mother named them using a combination of the mother's and father's names. I immediately asked where they lived, because I wondered if I was going to a bad neighborhood. And I asked if her husband was black. I was right on both accounts, except that she wasn't married. Both of her children were from two different black fathers who were no longer around, and she lived in government housing. So am I racist? Or am I just basing my assumptions on statistics of past experiences? My husband said it was only because I haven't ever really been around black people. I said that wasn't true, I had dated some. He asked me where I had met them, I said college, and he said, well, those don't count, they're different. But why? Because they were educated? Are educated blacks somehow less black because they're educated? I just met black woman at a book club and we immediately hit it off because we both love books and because I found out she home schools her children, something I am doing as well. We immediately made plans to get the kids together. I don't know how educated she is, but she seems intelligent and she obviously cares about education. But is my experience with blacks biased because all the ones I know are educated?

I also noticed something else extremely interesting. In Fryer's study, he did surveys and for his sample found the top 20 "Whitest" Girl/Boy Names and the top 20 "Blackest" Boy/Girl names. I have three boys, and two of their names where on the "Whitest" boy names list, and my third, one with a slightly more unusual name, came very close to being called Colin, which was also on this list. Am I unconsciously trying to say something about my children? Or have I unconsciously realized the success rate correlation in names and was hoping they would be more successful due to their names? I honestly don't know. I just find the whole topic fascinating. But I hope I haven't opened up a can of worms. More than likely if anyone reads this whole review I'll undoubtedly offend someone. I've never been a very politically correct person and I don't mean to offend, I'm just a naturally curious person who wants to understand more about the world. This subject has come up in our home recently as well, because I've been teaching my 5-yr-old about Martin Luther King Day. We've had worksheets and lessons about it, and I've had to find ways to describe slavery that my son would understand. Then I started to wonder. Am I teaching this the correct way? Will his curious mind, perhaps like mine, say something one day to offend? But I have no close black friends to ask. I want to know. What do black people want us to know? Should we always use the term African American? What do they want us to teach our kids about MLK? How do we change the misconceptions in culture? Maybe if I end up becoming good friends with this woman I met, I can ask her. Hopefully she'll be open enough to forgive my ignorance.

Well, that was a tangent, but it was started because of this book. I enjoyed this book in parts and in others I was bored. I went for a Bachelor's in Psychology and quit when I only had three classes left to get the degree. I just really didn't enjoy it. I've had to take many classes on the subject of Psychology and statistics. And what people need to remember when reading this book, is that it's just statistics. Levitt and Dubner use the words "more likely" and "less likely" often for a reason. There is no way to prove direct cause and effect relationship on these topics. When I wrote papers in college for my classes, for every study I found on any topic, inevitably I could find a study proving the opposite or at least something with a different outcome. That being said, that does not mean statistical probability does not have merit. It most certainly does, as long as it's taken with a grain of salt. Knowing that even if A + B might = C, there could possibly be a factor Q, which was not seen or not taken into account. I also noticed some of the references they used for their research was stuff they had written, take that as you will. In the end, it's an entertaining book, and the conclusions Levitt and Dubner draw can account for the popularity of this book. Just the idea that abortion could be linked to the decrease in crime is reason enough to read it.