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: What cause? What effect?
Summary: 1 Stars
Let's see. Since 1973, as the abortion rate goes up, the crime rate goes down. Do abortions, then, cause a decline in the crime rate? That is the authors' claim. Since 1973, Americans have consumed more cola. Does cola consumption cause a decline in crime, as I am now arguing? Think about it. As people's bellies are fully of the bubbly, they are more bouncy, not wanting to bop boys on their brains. Both the abortion rate and the cola rate correlate inversely with the crime rate. Which, if either one, has a strong, I mean a knock your stinky socks off strong, negative correlation with reduced crime? You see, many things correlate with reduced crime, but not all are strong enough to be truly important. If one was ever scientifically fortunate enough to show a cause to reduced crime, that person might have a best selling book and become rich and appear on talk shows. Cause and effect. How, then, do we go about studying that? We have two proposed strong causes to the reduced crime rate: the increased abortion rate and the increased consumption of liquid candy. To test the two hypotheses, that either abortion or cola consumption causes a decline in crime, we would have to do an actual experiment, not play silly games with correlational statistics. Let's see. We'll randomly assign 100 women to an experimental condition, where they have an abortion. We will randomly assign another 100 women to a control condition, where they will give birth to their children. Now we can compare the 100 children in the experimental group with the 100 children in the control group to see which group commits more crime. Whoops! I forgot. The 100 children in the experimental group are dead. How can they bop boys on the brain now? Does this mean that we can't even discuss cause and effect here? Whooooo. How, then, can the authors talk about cause and effect for abortion and crime? Are their brains bopped?? No genuine science here.Book Review: A Surprising Interesting Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I was skeptical when I first started to read Freakonomics - an economics book that is interesting? Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed every page of this book. The author's unique outlook on various issue is very thought provoking. It certainly has made me question a lot of the "expert opinions" that we hear every day in the media. I have recommended this book to several of my friends and they have all enjoyed it as well.Book Review: Fails to be compelling, still entertains
Summary: 3 Stars
There's something to be said about a book that brings up new ideas and changes our way of thinking. Freakanomics may be one of these books, but it does not rate highly on the overall list. A lot of interesting examples are given, but without a lot of real data nad just some passing insightful observations. Think more along the lines of Gladwell's "Tipping Point" rather than Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation"; both were books about big important ideas that were interesting and well written, only one really seemed to have a lot of meat to it.
The book reads like a very interesting magazine article. It opens your worldview a bit, maybe causes some discussion, but you won't need it around as a reference. If that is what you are expecting, it is excellent. For those who maybe wanted a bit more, it is disappointing.
Book Review: Facts are stubborn things
Summary: 4 Stars
Were it not for the deliberate obscurantism that infects most professionals in the field, economics would be one of the most fascinating subjects on Earth. After all, we all make choices and buy things daily, nearly always handicapped by incomplete information. Thanks to Levitt and his writing partner, layers of cant and superstition are stripped away from some very important questions (why do children succeed in school?) and some merely fascinating ones (why do sumo wrestlers cheat?). Levitt is the economist for the intelligent, interested nonspecialist -- in short, a much needed antidote to the ideology-based spewing or needlessly obscure academic irrevelancy that passes for thought these days. Economics are fun again, like when you set up that lemonade stand.Book Review: "I don't want to write a book ..."
Summary: 2 Stars
... Levitt quotes himself (!) as saying, "unless maybe Dubner and I could do it together." The result is a strange and ugly collaboration. There are a few interesting ideas (few because it's short and very leisurely paced), but they are not so much argued as revealed, interlarded with comments (by Dubner, one hopes) about how brilliant Levitt is.
It's tedious, but more important, it subverts the theme of the book. Over and over they tell us not to believe experts, to think for ourselves, to look at the data. But the presentation is so superficial and the data so thin that no reader could reach the same conclusions thinking for herself. Instead, we just have one more expert telling us the others are wrong. How fresh and radical is that?