Levitt, Steven, and Stephen Dubner - Freakonomics
Tue, May. 23rd, 2006 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceter(subtitle: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything)
Um, it's probably rather shallow of me to admit that this book has been catching my eye for a while because I like the sound of "freakonomics" and I very much like the image of an apple with the interior of an orange.
Anyhow, thankfully, it turned out to be quite an entertaining read, if you like pop science type things. Levitt is apparently a very young and very inventive economist who likes applying the tools of economics to data points and trends in apparently unrelated things. Dubner has written an article (or more) on Levitt in the New Yorker. I rather wish that both authors or the editor had decided against excerpts of Dubner's articles in front of various sections of the book though. They're entirely too magazine-style and filled with hyperbole; also, it just smacks of unnecessary self-promotion. I'm already reading their book.
Despite the somewhat facile chapter introductions ("How are sumo wrestlers and Chicago schoolteachers alike?"), the book is actually a very interesting look at statistics and the different ways you can slice and dice numbers. Levitt comes to some fairly controversial conclusions, the most famous probably being that legalizing abortion helps cut down on the crime rate. As he says, morality is the study of how the world should be, while economics is the study of how the world is.
That said, Levitt doesn't use his conclusions to argue for or against any policies; he merely shows if they work or not with regard to a certain factor. For the abortion question, he does note that a fetus would have to be worth x amount of non-fetus human lives to justify using abortion as a tool for crime prevention, and that abortion's influence on crime is really a side benefit that probably shouldn't be the main goal.
I like the way Levitt thinks, and I like the way he and Dubnet explain how he gets to all his conclusions, startling though they may be. He uses statistics to see if he can detect an increase in teachers cheating after the "No Child Left Behind" act, explains the difference in how real estate agents sell other people's houses vs. how they sell their own, and uses very concrete, applicable examples to illustrate economic principles like side benefits and asymmetry of information and how they affect people daily.
I'm not sure if I agree with all his conclusions, given that I have very little background in this, but he did seem to be very thorough in explaining how he came to his conclusions, and he didn't just look at a single set of data in any case. He actually ended up thinking of even more ways to try to prove or disprove his hypotheses than I did.
Very educational in terms of thought process, very interesting, and most of all, a very fun and interesting read.
Links:
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rilina's review
Um, it's probably rather shallow of me to admit that this book has been catching my eye for a while because I like the sound of "freakonomics" and I very much like the image of an apple with the interior of an orange.
Anyhow, thankfully, it turned out to be quite an entertaining read, if you like pop science type things. Levitt is apparently a very young and very inventive economist who likes applying the tools of economics to data points and trends in apparently unrelated things. Dubner has written an article (or more) on Levitt in the New Yorker. I rather wish that both authors or the editor had decided against excerpts of Dubner's articles in front of various sections of the book though. They're entirely too magazine-style and filled with hyperbole; also, it just smacks of unnecessary self-promotion. I'm already reading their book.
Despite the somewhat facile chapter introductions ("How are sumo wrestlers and Chicago schoolteachers alike?"), the book is actually a very interesting look at statistics and the different ways you can slice and dice numbers. Levitt comes to some fairly controversial conclusions, the most famous probably being that legalizing abortion helps cut down on the crime rate. As he says, morality is the study of how the world should be, while economics is the study of how the world is.
That said, Levitt doesn't use his conclusions to argue for or against any policies; he merely shows if they work or not with regard to a certain factor. For the abortion question, he does note that a fetus would have to be worth x amount of non-fetus human lives to justify using abortion as a tool for crime prevention, and that abortion's influence on crime is really a side benefit that probably shouldn't be the main goal.
I like the way Levitt thinks, and I like the way he and Dubnet explain how he gets to all his conclusions, startling though they may be. He uses statistics to see if he can detect an increase in teachers cheating after the "No Child Left Behind" act, explains the difference in how real estate agents sell other people's houses vs. how they sell their own, and uses very concrete, applicable examples to illustrate economic principles like side benefits and asymmetry of information and how they affect people daily.
I'm not sure if I agree with all his conclusions, given that I have very little background in this, but he did seem to be very thorough in explaining how he came to his conclusions, and he didn't just look at a single set of data in any case. He actually ended up thinking of even more ways to try to prove or disprove his hypotheses than I did.
Very educational in terms of thought process, very interesting, and most of all, a very fun and interesting read.
Links:
-
rilina's review
(no subject)
Tue, May. 23rd, 2006 10:30 pm (UTC)I'm spamming your LJ tonight, aren't I? Sorry!
(no subject)
Tue, May. 23rd, 2006 11:30 pm (UTC)Oh cool! It's so neat that you can look at it with an actual knowledge of econ, as opposed to me, who took maybe two classes and slept through them.