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: I appluad the intent but not always the method
Summary: 3 Stars
Levitt and Dubner seek to reveal the true statistics and economics behind a myriad of topics. In one example the authors criticize a number of officials for taking credit for a decrease in crime rates because their analysis indicates that the legalization of abortion had more to do with the drop in crime than any other factor. Their logic is usually sound, though it misses a few points occasionally, for which I'll give them the benefit of the doubt - you don't write a book without considerable research. But there are most definitely times where the authors are guilty of the same mistakes they charge others with: misrepresenting the data.
Whereas the targets of the authors' criticism seek to gain public approval by making claims people wish to hear, the authors stand to gain by challenging conventional wisdom - they sell more books. It certainly takes an unbiased mind to assert that abortion prevents crime but I think that lack of bias also lead the authors astray, especially with the pool versus guns issue.
The authors say 550 kids under the age of 10 drown each year and there are 11,000 residential pools, therefore, the likelihood of death by pool is somewhere around 1 in 11,000. 175 kids under the age of 10 die each year from guns and there are 200 million guns so the likelihood of death by guns is 1 in 1 million-plus.
These data are perhaps informative separately but nowhere near comparable. I will assume the authors had the presence of mind and the ethics to not count kids who drown in lakes, bath tubs and who knows how else and I sincerely hope they're not counting the millions of guns stored at the thousands of police stations, military bases, museums, etc around the US. Even if that were the case (the authors don't say) the data still can't be compared. For one thing, every house only has one pool but if a house has at least one gun, chances are it has several. A more accurate statistic would be number of households with pools and number of households with guns. Is that enough to make a difference? I can't say and they don't either. What I do know is that in a book which criticizes hasty and irrational stretches of statistical claims you should be extremely careful about the claims you make. In this case I think it was a poor decision to try to compare pools and guns with the data they had. They should have either dug deeper or left the issue alone.
The book started well enough and I went along with the majority of their logic but the pool and gun issue was a big problem for me. Near the end they spent much too long talking about trends in names; it was overly tedious with lists and lists of names that correlate with economic status during given time periods. I would have appreciated further explanation and discussion of their logic on earlier topics and less lists of names at the end.
Book Review: Not For Everyone, But Worth Reading
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is definitely not for everyone - you really have to take the theories presented with a grain of salt. However, I think the authors clearly present the arguments as correlating factors, not causal factors.
But, putting that aside, the main premise of the book, that there may be correlations and causal relationships between the most unlikely factors in life is worth taking a look at and exploring - IF you are willing to put aside your own biases toward the subject matters presented.
For example, if you are willing to put aside your biases that abortion has nothing to do with changes in society, you may discover that overall, the legalization of abortion COULD have a far-reaching implication on society, such as changes in crime rate, then you may have something new to think about by reading this book.
OR, if you are willing to look at different factors that may contribute to student success rate, other than the quality of schooling, then you may have something new to think about by reading this book.
That's what I garnered from reading this book, and that is precisely why I believe it's a great book. In fact, that is, in my opinion, what makes a great book: one that opens and expands your mind beyond the ordinary.
Book Review: Do Names Matter?
Summary: 5 Stars
As an elementary principal and a man in his fifties, parts of Freakonomics was of extreme interest to me. Specifically the the sixth chapter, "Perfect Parenting, Part II, or: Would a Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?" The rest of the book is filled with many fascinating studies. But, the chapter on names is what kept me reading (you don't have to read this book in order). I think back to my long dead relatives with names unlike any that exist today: Mabel, Opel, Herbert, Jesse, Oliver, Agnus, and Clara (okay, there's a few Claras today). When I was in elementary school there were classrooms full of Susan's, Karen's, and Deb's. In my niece's generation of the thirty somethings, there were many Jennifer's, Sarah's, and Nicole's. On my staff there are four Mary's, but at this school with over 800 students passing through the doors in past six years, there hasn't been one Mary. Today we have Emily, Hannah, Madison, Ben, and Alex.
But, there's more to it then just how names have changed over the generations. The authors look at the possibility that names can influence personal economics. In the late 50's and early 60's a man named Robert Lane named two of his sons Winner and Loser. Would, could those names influence their success in life, at least in the way that society judges success? Well, it was discovered that Winner didn't turn out to be a winner and Loser did. Winner Lane ended up with a long criminal record with over three dozen arrests. Loser graduated from college with an academic scholarship and is a sergeant in the New York Police Department.
Or there's the case of Temptress, a fifteen-year-old who has lived up to her name by being charged with ungovernable behavior which included bringing men to her home while her mother was at work. The Lanes and Temptress are African-Americans leading a black economist, Roland Fryer, to wonder if the distinctive black culture a cause of the economic disparity between blacks and whites or reflection of it?
Fryer studied the names of all babies born in California since 1961. The data showed how different whites and blacks named their children. More than 40% of the black girls born in California in a given year receive a name that not one of approximately 100,000 baby white girls received in the same year. Along with that data is economic information. Names have economics attached to them. Does this mean that a boy named DeShawn changed his name to Jake he would fare better financially? According to the authors, no. It's more of a matter of what kind of parents name their children what kind of names. Boy babies born of poor women are more likely to be named DeShawn rather than Jake. But, again, it's cause and effect. The names don't affect the economics, it's the other way around. A poor black mother is unlikely to name her child Brett, Connor, or Molly. A wealthy white mother is unlikely to name her child Ebony, Jazmine, or Marquis.
Does all of this have anything to do with education? I think so. As educators, do we have preconceived ideas about students entering our classrooms named Xavier, Juan, or Precious? Also, do we have different ideas about children before they enter our classrooms named Julia, Jonathan, and Andrew? Freakonomics's sixth chapter displays charts based on Fryer's research such as the most common white girl names among high-education parents, most common white girl names among low-education parents, the ten most common spellings of "Jazmine" (i.e. Jazmine, Jazmyne, Jazzmin, etc.).
All of this data will likely make you a bit more skeptical of the way data is interpreted and theories fed to us as fact by the "experts". The trick to most of the puzzles is simply asking the right questions. For example, can a black parent make some attempt to influence his or her child's future success in life by selecting a name off the high-education white list or could that name make it harder for a black child to fit in with his or her peers with such a "white" name? Would he or she be accused of being too white as children are when they do well in school in some neighborhoods. Often, the answers to Levitt's questions involve incentives. Freakonomics answers these questions and inspires the reader to look creatively in one's own life to find questions and answers.
It is a breezy, easy-to-read book, especially for one interested in economics. It's a fun book to read that offers enough trivia to keep audiences entertained at parties, gatherings, etc. The book reads like six short articles from a good magazine. I found it fascinating and wished it was longer or that a sequel will be written. I recommend the book to anyone that loves to read and be entertained.
Book Review: Boring.
Summary: 2 Stars
I can't believe an entire book was created about such minutia, nor did I find the process by which they came to some of their conclusions to be so profound. Thank god I only picked this up at the library. After a quick perusal through the book on a train ride home, I decided to return it. I found it tres boring.
Book Review: The dangers of conventional wisdom and causal misattribution
Summary: 4 Stars
As the subtitle of this book implies, there is a hidden side to everything; explanations which experts offer, and the general public buys into, are at times inaccurate or flat-out wrong. With most complicated issues (take crime, for example, a subject discussed at length in this book) there are usually unnoticed factors at work which influence events in unexpected ways. We, as humans, want explanations which just "make sense", yet the world is a complicated place and things aren't always the way they seem, or the way we would like them to be.
If you've ever taken a course of research methodology or statistics (or economics, of course), you probably won't find the premise of "Freakonomics" very ground-breaking or innovative. Yet, the treatment of the topics raised by the authors is very entertaining, and this is indeed a quick, enjoyable read. Overall, this book is certainly worth reading, if only to reaffirm one's sense of the complexities of life and human behavior.