Last week my friend Kunal (second year MBA student) recommended this book: Freakonomics. With the economics on the tag and me being not particularly fan of the subject, was skeptical at first. He eased my hesitation by simply focusing on the name. Freakonomics.
Well I gave it a shot.From the introduction alone I was immediately comfortable as this book has nothing to deal with the hard core economics.
Freakonomics
A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J.Dubner
The authors confess at the very beginning that the book has no central theme. After going through each of the chapters you couldn’t agree more. If there is even a central idea in this book then it could be taken as: If morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work.
The book explores the funny side of life trying to answer some questions that might have interesting and even surprising answers.
The book in super summary from the authors:
1. what do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?
In which we explore the beauty of incentives, as well as their dark side – cheating. who cheats? just about everyone. how cheaters cheat, and how to catch them. stories from an israeli day care center. the sudden disappearance of seven million american children.. cheating school teachers in Chicago.. why cheating to lose is worse than cheating to win.. could sumo wrestling, the national sport of japan, be corrupt? what the Begal man saw: mankind may be more honest than we think.
2. How is the Ku klux Klan like a group of Real Estate Agent?
In which it is argued that nothing is more powerful than information, especially when its power is abused.
Going undercover in the Ku Klux klan.. Why experts of every kind are in the perfect position to exploit you.. The antidote to information abuse:the internet..Why a new car is suddenly worth so much less the moment it leaves the lot… Breaking the real-estate agent code: what “well maintained” really means.. Is Trent Lott more racist than the average weakest link contestant?.. what do online dates lie about?3. Why do drug dealers still live with their Moms?
In which the conventional wisdom is often found to be a web of fabrication, self interest, and convenience. Why experts routinely make up statistics; the invention of chronic halitosis.. How to ask a
good question.. Sudhir Venkatesh’s long, strange trip into the crack den.. Life is a tournament.. Why prostitutes earn more than architects.. What a drug dealer, a high school quarter back, and an editorial
assistant have in common.. How the invention of crack cocaine mirrored the invention of nylon stockings.. Was crack the worst thing to hit black Americans since Jim Crow?4. Where have all the criminals gone?
In which the facts of crime are sorted out from the fictions. What Nicolae Ceau? escu learned – the hard way-about abortion.. why the 1960s were a great time to be a criminal.. think the roaring 1990s economy put a crimp on crime?.. Think again.. why capital punishment doesn’t deter criminals.. do police actually lower crime rates?.. prisons, prisons, everywhere.. seeing through the new york city police
“miracle”.. what is a gun really?.. why early crack dealers were like microsoft millionaires and the later crack dealers were like pets.com.. The super predator versus the senior citizen.. Jane Roe, crime stopper: how the legalization of abortion changed everything.5. What makes a perfect parent?
In which we ask, from a variety of angles, a pressing question: do parents really matter? The conversion of parenting from an art of science.. why parenting experts like to scare parents to death.. which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool?.. the economics of fear.. obsessive parents and the nature-nurture quagmire.. why a good school isn’t as good as you might think.. the black white test gap and “acting white” .. eight things that make a child do better in school and eight that don’t
6. Perfect parenting part II or Would a Roshanda by any other name smell as sweet?
In which we weigh the importance of a parent’s first official act – naming the baby A boy named Winner and his brother, Loser.. the blackest names and the whitest names.. the segregation of culture: why seinfiedl never made the top fifty among the blackand low end names (and how one becomes the
other).. Britney spears: a symptom, not a cause.. is aviva the next madison?.. what your parents were telling the world when they gave you your name.EPILOGUE: Two paths to Harvard
In which the dependability of data meets the randomness of life.
As you can imagine from this summary, the authors talk on such a diverse terms and ask questions that are funny and grave at the same time. But the answers are all based on real data and it’s fascinating to see how they come to the conclusion and the actual cause.
Needless to say all of the answers you answer (unless you have read this book or you think the way Levitt does) will be wrong.
A highly recommended read.
