I guess some people don't like this book because it's not centered around one theme. Instead, it's more about the seemingly diffuse academic work of one of the authors Steven D. Levitt (the other author is a journalist, Stephen J. Dubner). Levitt is something of an economist but more like a social scientist using the tools of Microeconomics applied to other fields that happen to catch his interest (often having something to do with cheating, corruption, crime, etc.). In the back of the book he mentions how he considers himself a student of Thomas Schelling who is kind of like the father of Game Theory (strategy theory?), except much more of a 'man of ideas' than what one might think of when one thinks about game theory today, which is much more mathematical.

Anyway, as for the book itself, I thought it was really great. I really like what Levitt is doing as far as using the tools of Microeconomics in other fields. One of my intellectual heroes (I only have a few) is Kenneth Waltz who did the exact same thing in the field of International Relations in the '70's and wrote the seminal book The Theory of International Politics, which pretty much the single-handedly invented defensive (neo) realism. More generally, I think Economics is probably the most formalized of the social sciences and the one to which others should esteem. A lot of the Political Science field concerned with both voter behavior and how legislatures work is now pretty formalized as well, and, I, for one, think this is a good thing. I don't see how anyone could think it's not (good) unless they a)think the scientific method cannot be used to analyze human behavior; or b)have a visceral aversion to mathematical languages. Actually, I am one of the latter, but I, at least, see the value in having a formalized language to work with.

As for the book itself, there's some maybe-controversial things in there like Levitt did some work that showed that the legalization of abortion in the U.S. (Roe v. Wade) was one of the main reasons that crime in the U.S. dropped in the '90's and continues at the same rates today. He stands behind it pretty hardily though and it doesn't seem like he has a moral agenda at all. Some might argue that the best writers are those who are best able to disguise their moral agenda, but considering he writes about all kinds of not-very-serious things like how sumo wrestling in Japan is probably corrupt as far as matches g,o and there's stuff in there about how real estate agents sell their houses for more than they sell their customers' houses (which, may or may not be surprising), I really don't think he has a hidden pro-life agenda.

Anyway, there's a bunch of stuff in there (the book), hence the 'freak' in Freakonomics. It's well-written. It's not dry. It's written for a lay audience. I recommend it. Read it and feel the power of social science! ;-)

مبدئيا هناك خدعة في عنوان الكتاب

فالكتاب ليس في الاقتصاد و لكن في علم الاجتماع و لأن المؤلف رجل إقتصاد و لأن الاقتصاد هو أحد فروع علم االإجتماع فقد استخدم ما تعلمه في تحليل بعض الظواهر الاجتماعية بأدوات إقتصادية.

مجموعة من المواضيع بعضها شيق جدا و بعضها ممل أو مغرق في المحلية لدرجة لا تجعلنا نتفاعل معه.

ما هي الأشياء المشتركة بين معلمى المدارس و مصارعى السومو

يبدو سؤالا ساذجا و لكن الإجابة سهلة.
هي أسئلة من نوعية ما وجه الشبه بين البطيخ و الموز و تأتى الإجابة بأن كل منهما لا يصلح كعصير برتقال.

إجابة السؤال اللوذعى هنا هي أن معلمى المدارس و مصارعى السومو كل منهما يغش في النتائج و ليس هذا هو المقصود بل المقصود هو أنه يمكن كشف هذا الغش بنفس الطريقة و هي طريقة حسابية إحصائية طورها المؤلف و طبقها على أمثلة بالكتاب.



من الحكايات الطريفة حكاية عن موظف كان يحضر معه خبز الإفطار و بعض الجبن ليفطر هو و زملاء العمل كل يوم و تطور الموضوع حتى صار يحضر معه الإفطار لكل الشركة ثم استقال و أصبح المسئول عن توريد الخبز لبعض كبرى الشركات حتى أنه كان يوزع حوالى ثمانية آلاف رغيف يوميا.
سؤال أخر لوذعى:

كيف تتشابه جمعية الكوكلوس كلان مع الوسطاء العقاريين

و لمن يعرف فإن جماعة الكوكلوس كلان هي جماعة إرهابية أمريكية نشأت بعد الإتحاد مباشرة و نشطت ضد الأقليات الإسبانية و السود و الكاثوليك و أي شخص غير أبيض أوروبى الأصل بروتستانتى محافظ و يحكى الكاتب عنها حكايات شيقة جدا جديرة بالقراءة.

المهم أن وجه الشبه بينهم و بين الوسطاء العقاريين هو استثمار الخوف لدى الخصم و استخدام معلومات لا تملكها لإجبارك على اتخاذ رد فعل في مصلحتهم و يدلل الك��تب على ذلك بعشرات الحكايات اللذيذة جدا.


سؤال أخر :

لماذا لا يزال تجار المخدرات يعيشون مع امهاتهم

n
برغم أن تجارة المخدرات تدر أموالا طائلة كما نرى في الروايات و الأفلام الا أن الأموال لا توزع على الجميع بعدالة كما يحدث في شركتك تماما. نعم فهى تجارة رأسمالية أيضا.



يأخذك الكاتب في جولة غريبة و مثيرة في عالم الجريمة و تجارة المخدرات مطبقا نظرياته العجيبة و احصائياته المثيرة ليدلل على أن صغار تجار المخدرات يتمنى أحدهم لو يعمل حارس أمن أو أي عمل أخر لو لم يطمع في الوصول لدور الزعيم و من ثم التنعم بالمزيد من الأموال حتى يقتل أو يقبض عليه.

جزء أخر عن علاقة الإجهاض بالجريمة قد لا يكون مقنعا في عالمنا العربى ثم جزء أخير عن العنصرية التي لا تزال بصماتها واضحة و أثارها تنعكس على الواقع الأمريكي حتى الأن.

الكتاب مفيد و جيد في معظم أجزائه و أرشحه للقراءة.

I went all Fahrenheit 451 on this one.

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.

I once read somewhere that statistics can be used to prove anything. This book is evidence for the same.

Steven D. Levitt, a "rogue" economist by his own admission, and who confesses that he is terrible at traditional economics, uses the methods of statistical analysis to look at the unexplored relations between things in society - like the resemblance between Japanese sumo wrestlers and American schoolteachers, why real-estate agents are similar to the Ku Klux Klan, whether parenting has any effect on how a child turns out... etc, etc. By the confession of the authors themselves, the book has no central theme - it just explores the "hidden side of everything". Levitt and Dubner say that economics has the tools to provide the right answers, but only a very few people ask the right questions.

Some of his findings do have credibility (like that of schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers cheating to advance their careers, though I did not find anything earthshaking in those); some seem to be refreshing new perspectives (the similarity between the drug mafia and corporate houses, for example); some seem trite to the point of silliness (like the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents being undone through the availability of information); and some seem to have some substance, but require further study of all parameters (how the station in life and the behaviour of parents affect the children). However, One finding, which is lauded by most reviewers of the book as startling, I found I could take with only a very large lump of salt: that the reduction in crime in the USA in the 1990's is due to the legalisation of abortions in 1973. The authors assume that crime is committed by unwanted children whom their mothers could not get rid of, and once they were allowed to, problem was solved! This, while at the same time arguing gun control is not having much effect either way while increase in police force and punishment is a deterrent, seems to me peddling to the right liberal narrative - at the same time totally ignoring the socioeconomic factors behind crime.

As far as I am concerned, any kind of simplistic conclusions drawn from statistical data is suspect. Let me make this clear with an example close to my heart.

In India, the state of Kerala in the south (from where I hail) tops in almost all Human Development Indices (HDI) such as health, education etc. However, the state also has the highest morbidity levels. What does this mean? Whether higher levels of general health leads to higher incidence of life-style diseases, or simply that since the healthcare and education are good, more people see doctors? Similarly, Kerala is fourth in India on the basis of reported crime. Does this mean that a higher level of education increases criminal tendencies, or that with a more aware population, more crimes get reported? Heated arguments take place on these questions regularly with no clear conclusions - because there are too many factors to make clear inferences.

So does that mean Levitt and Dubner are talking through their hat, and are best ignored? No, in my opinion. This book is worth reading, if only for the unusual perspective. Also, it prompts us to think beyond the glib statistics the "experts" spout to intimidate the poor layperson, and see for ourselves.

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.

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.

There are at least two ways you can read Freakanomics – as a fun and interesting little book that uses data to tell us little things about ourselves and the world. Or, you can see it as econometrics gone apeshit and finally taking over the world. I kind of view it as both.

That said, I really enjoyed reading this. I think Levitt has developed some useful tools that can tell us some interesting stuff about the way little corners of our world are organized. I also think it is a little bit batty to think we can use economic models to prove a causal relationship between abortion laws and crime rates. There might be something there, but in order to come to a conclusion about two subjects so complex, Levitt must have had to control for so many other factors that I doubt his research is all that reliable. In comparison, the section on the economics of the street level drug trade is fascinating and probably close to accurate. The researchers were looking at a relatively small data set, sure, but I think it is still probably tells us at something useful about how that world works.

I guess what I find most interesting about this one is the effect it has had on the culture. Economics is so hot right now. Everyone is into it, it is the undergraduate degree on the rise and plenty of those kids decided they liked economics by reading Levitt’s book. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but it is definitely a trend we can track, at least in part to this book. In the end this is a fast fun and diverting read, but don’t take it too seriously, cause I am pretty sure some of these finding are bunk.

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!!!

As the tagline goes, "the hidden side of everything", this book explores the mundane yet devious plots in our everyday lives. It makes random reflections on random subjects, and in turn, upends conventional wisdom rather than reinforcing them. The book offers profound insights on informational advantage, that is enjoyed by people from (nearly) all walks of life.

A simple unasked question, and there you go! This is where the exploration begins and it is an efficacious way to demolish the widespread fallacies. All in all, this book addresses that things are not always what they seem and there lies something under the surface, which, more often than not, does not come to limelight.

It is only when we do not embrace faulty causes at the urging of the experts in which they have a vested interest, and deep dive into the rudimentary aspects of a subject, that its veracity would be divulged.

Freakonomics was written for general readers, rather than specialists. It is not very deep or analytical, but it is pretty entertaining.

The book encourages us to keep our mind alert and break out of the mold in the way we see things.

It is a series of short stories in which the authors follow whatever freakish curiosities that may occur to them.

A common topic we can find in the book is the question of what motivates people.

اخلاق اون چیزیه که ما دوست داریم دنیا اون طوری بچرخه اما اقتصاد اون طوریه که دنیا واقعا میگرده.

من با این کتاب از طریف پادکست بی پلاس آشنا شدم.
کتاب فضای جالبی داشت. من خیلی با علم اقتصاد آشنا نیستم ولی احساس میکنم بیشتر از این که این کتاب به اقتصاد مربوط باشه به آمار مربوطه.
چرا که از آمار برای توضیح پدیده‌های قابل لمس استفاده کرده بود و نتایج جالبی رو به دست آورده بود.

درس مهمی که من از این کتاب گرفتم اعتماد نکردن به حرف کارشناس هاس. اینکه چقدر میتونن دلایل اشتباهی برای اتفاقات ارائه بدن و یا گاهی اطلاعی رو از قصد ارائه میدن تا ما رو بترسونن مثل یه مشاور مسکن که به ما میگه اگه خونمون رو به اولین مشتری ای که اومه نفروشیم احتمالا زیان زیادی خواهیم کرد و ما به خاطر اطلاعاتی که داره احتمالا بهش اعتماد میکنیم.