Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Book Review: Economics, Lite Version
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is plainly entertaining. These two authors bring many unrelated situations into juxtaposition, and find the thread that binds them both. And when they do, you will probably chuckle to yourself for not noticing it earlier. And you find that you can do that with many other events that occur in and out of your own life.
Sumo wrestlers and high-school teachers: what do they have in common? They both cheat. And so the basic premise of the book is: every human being is motivated by incentives. Economics studies the workings of this drive that human beings have.
But even with this, the book doesn't seem to have an overarching view of any sort. It's like a collage of observations that an economist with a very good sense of humor and an unorthodox view of the world makes together with a willing journalist who comes along for the ride. Which is probably why this book is simply one of a kind.
Book Review: These are the Hors d' oeuvres but not the main course: Where's the Beef?
Summary: 3 Stars
Twice over the past two years, I have browsed this book in Barnes and Nobles, and twice I decided to pass it up. However, on the third pass, I caught a familiar name as I thumbed through it: Sudhir Vankatest, the now renown Professor of Sociology at Columbia U., whose groundbreaking study of gangs in Chicago (and his editorials in the NYT) had a great impression upon me. As a result of this single name I decided to purchase the book. However, upon reading it, I too must conclude as did other reviewers, that Freakonomics must definitely remain in the category of "light reading" (very light indeed), despite the fact that there is a serious non-trivial aspect to it. One must conclude that this book is the Hors d' oeuvre but not the main course.
What is serious about this admittedly very disorganized collection of what at first sight might seem like disconnected social trivial is that it too manages to "tap" into the same "unconscious economic territory" of everyday human social interactions as do a rash of other recent books like it. For instance, "The Tipping point," "Blink," "Sway," and the "Black Swan, among the ones with which I am familiar. I do not believe that this rash of books all attempting to get at virtually the same human ability to intuit statistical patterns is a coincident at all, but rather a reflection of attempts to fill a glaring gap in sociological analysis, by other more "non-sociological" means.
Other reviewers have hit the nail on its head when they too point out that there is a difference between "correlation" and "causation" as well as that there are also very complex and confounding Heisenberg like effects involved with attempts to study, measure or even gauge human social interactions. As well, it must also be said that when dealing with human social phenomena it is also true that the hidden variables and their interactive effects are often more important than the more obvious and direct (and linear) effects. However, the fact that social phenomena are complex - that is to say, interactive dynamic and non-linear -- is not a reason to avoid analysis altogether.
It seems that since Hubert Blalock's deep foray into statistical analysis of social problems of several decades ago failed to "catch fire," that Sociologists have since tended to retreat into a methodologically defensive position, shying away from any analysis that challenges the conventional wisdom or the status quo, and from any serious quantitative analysis of social problems altogether. This reluctance as much as anything else has turned sociology into a kind of theology of the status quo. One has to look far and wide to find sociological analysis that strays even a bit from the national consensus, or from the "accepted customs" and "conventional wisdom." Given the poor quality of quantitative analysis in the social sciences generally and the dismal failure of qualitative analysis in Sociology in particular, this dereliction of analytical duties strikes me as a kind of negligence bordering on methodological cowardliness. Many of the examples in this book point these difficulties out. Even the title "Freakonomics" leaves room for it to be considered out of the main stream.
Clearly there is a positive correlation between increased abortions and decreased crime, for all of the obvious reasons. But taken out of their context as is done with many of the examples in this book, they become just isolated facts that may or may not have any additional meaning. In such cases the devil that usually lies in the details, now lies within the meaning and interpretation of the respective social contexts. Until and unless these isolated facts are properly situated in their proper sociological, and methodological frameworks and contexts, no matter how tantalizing, they are just that isolated facts without much meaning.
I disagree with the thrust of many of the other reviewer's comments, that because of their complexity, social phenomena are not amendable to scientific study -- as there are definitely creative ways to get beyond the complexity of social phenomena in the same way that was done in the military sciences. One such way is the Systems Analysis of social problems, that is using operations research, computer simulations, etc. to tackle the complexity, the non-linearity and the interactive effects. There are a number of "off-the-shelf" methodologies just waiting to be used in the human sciences. Hubert Blalock's "Path Analysis" for instance is a greatly under utilized method in sociology.
As but another example from my own research, I used a computer simulation shell called iThink and U.S. Census data to study the inner city teen pregnancy problem when it flew off the statistical charts during the period of 1965 to 1985. Contrary to the findings in this book, I found that the abortion rates of the intercity poor began to skyrocket at the same time that inner city crime did. However, so too did a whole host of other related socio-economic indicators, most notably the sexual revolution that took place at the same time (easily indexed by a host of sex related census measures) and the incentives of welfare. All of these had non-linear interactive effects, but ones that could be easily isolated and parameterized using computer simulation.
So I take issue with one of the author's main contentions that you can't put social phenomena in the laboratory. It can indeed be done, but must be done in the same way that porcupines make love, very carefully. It seems that sociological analysis has not progress must over the last two generations, but that is not these authors fault.
Three stars
Book Review: Only One Thing Is Clear
Summary: 1 Stars
Only one thing became clear while reading this book. As the author(s) put it, journalists need experts as much as experts need journalists. Levitt and Dubner proved that point very well.Book Review: Entertaining, thought-provoking, and lacking scientific rigor
Summary: 3 Stars
While I wouldn't go so far as to relegate the book to one-star status, I completely agree some of the objections on here. I'm halfway through the book right now, and I've been repeatedly troubled with the authors' tendency to reach qualitative conclusions that go beyond their data.
That said, it's still an entertaining book. Reading it with a critical mind, questioning the authors' methods and conclusions, helps you sharpen your own understanding of statistics, causation and correlation, etc. I'm happy to have read it (well, half so far).
Book Review: Number game
Summary: 3 Stars
Interestingly, the book starts off very nicely with catchy questions and a unique perspective in answering them. However, you quickly realize that the author is beating around the bush and comes back to the same question and answers. The authors are prejudiced to begin with and therefore play with numbers and carefully framed sentences to win the reader's vote. In addition, the authors dismiss other works as providing 'little evidence' while providing little/no evidence to their own work.
In short, the book is interesting and insightful but don't take it seriously.