Freakonomics

"Very interesting look at the world we live in. Forces you to think and look at things from a different perspective."

"I wanted to like this book better than I did. I’ll admit I’m still working through some of the end matter but the bulk of the book I’ve finished. <br/><br/>I enjoyed the creativity of the questions Levitt asks and the logical methods he uses to answer them. Perhaps it’s simply that this book, updated in 2006, hasn’t aged well. I found his explanations of basic science, well, basic. Correlation vs causation and basic regression analysis isn’t anything new to me, but it may not be knowledge the general public without an academic would have. <br/><br/>My biggest quibbles with Freakonomics come down to the more controversial suppositions around crime, car seats, and racism. His car seat data, based on a cursory internet search, is bogus: he focuses purely on deaths and not on serious injury. Car seats have very good evidence showing them to cut risk of death or serious injury in half or more! His conclusions that legal abortion leads to reduced crime, as do higher levels of policing, feels like he’s seriously missing the point. He throws a bone to the idea that root causes of crime need to be addressed, but essentially in the arguments dismissed that notion and concludes that the only thing that REALLY moves the needle is fewer unwanted babies (even though he wasn’t actually able to identify WHY abortions reduced crime, just the existence of the correlation) and more police. Finally, his work on racism and his claims that Black sounding names don’t create an economic disadvantage, reeks of racism. He tries to strip systemic racism and racial bias out and replace it with socio-economic status - though of course, Black Americans are much more likely to be of low status. He posits one supposition that a DeShawn Williams would be less likely to be called for a job interview than a John Williams, not due to racism, but because DeShawn “sounds lower class” and interviewers may be inclined to think that somebody lower class would be less reliable. As though somehow associating Black names with being lower class and unreliable isn’t racist...<br/><br/>Finally, in the first end matter essay, a comment is made that his student work on policing and crime was called into question for a serious math error. Yet it appears the exact same conclusions from that original research are presented as fact in the body of the book. <br/><br/>Overall I find Levitt frankly kind of insufferable and the glowing biography of him at the end just makes it worse. Don’t read this book - there’s plenty of other interesting books of popular science to be read! Find one that’s less racist maybe."

"I love the way they have the facts laid out with the story. Do you have any book recommendation ?"

"Freakonomics is a lot like Predictably Irrational - or rather, I should say that Predictably Irrational is a lot like Freakonomics (seeing as Freakonomics did come first). Freakonomics is a fun, easy read but I felt like it didn't really have any take-home message like Predictably Irrational did. The anecdotes and case studies were fun and interesting, but they didn't have any application to my life. Not a bad way to spend a train ride, but certainly not one of my favorite books"

"I listened to <i>Freakonomics</i> as an audiobook on a long road trip a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it; so much so I'm thinking about listening to it again the next time I'm on a road trip with my husband, who I think would also enjoy it. Really interesting connections!"

"It's a good book, looks at big issues in our society with a fresh pair of lens and it makes sense."

"Great book "

"So much fun "

"No. Didn't know there was one. I'll check it out. "

"Data, fun, interesting, unexpected. "