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Book: Freakonomics

24.Jun.2007

Freakonomics was the first book on my to read list and the only one I already owned a copy of. The book was written by the famous (in his field, since I didn’t know him before) economist Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a writer and journalist from New York City. It contains several social analyzes made by Leviit in areas not usually studied by economists.

Specially focused on crime and corruption, the book presents conclusions and the process the economist used on the data analyzes. While this may seem somewhat boring, the objects in study are all cases we can relate with our lives. Things like professors cheating student exams to get better overall results or how the way parents treat their children will influence their future personality and achievements. The way the process is presented also enables the reader to see exactly from where the conclusions were without throwing rivers of data, although in the last chapter the books suffers a bit from that aspect. Some controversial conclusions are presented in the book, like the reason the crime had strongly declined after the 90 decade in the US was the abolition of the laws restricting abortion. But all these conclusions are strongly based on the information Levitt gathered.

I read the book really quick since it’s quite interesting and of easy reading. You constantly seek for the reasons for all the affirmations made on it. And all the hard statistical and economical methods are kept from you or explained on a simple manner. Probably that’s the main reason the book got so popular. A must read for all that at least once try to understand how society works and what moves it.

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2 Comments

I really like levitt's stuff. He is quite fearless when it comes to data interpretation. :) you might find this interesting: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/29

nuno povoa / 24.Jun.2007 at 09:40am

I didn't knew the video, but it was a good talk. It's basically a transcript from the book, but it is more interesting when a live person tells you about it. It has more impact.