I got the book a couple of Christmases back from my brother-in-law’s family, but never quite got round to reading it. Did manage to pick up the audiobook version, though (and of the revised edition, to boot) and plowed through it in a couple of weeks of commuting.
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (revised ed.) (2006)
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This is not a book about economics, at least not in the traditional Friedman / Keynes / Stock Market / Supply-Demand Curves kinda way that I had to plow through in college. Instead, it’s about how to use statistics and the economic concept of incentives and price (loosely defined) to glean interesting answers to apparently unsolvable questions. For example, why did violent crime, spiraling out of control at the beginning of the 90s, suddenly drop back to 60s
level? Why do crack dealers live at home? Is sumo wrestling crooked? How much can you trust your real estate agent? Do teachers cheat on standardized classroom testing? How much effect do parents have on kids, in particular with how they name them? For Levitt (the actual boy genius economist behind journalist Dubner’s words (and voice)), it’s not just a matter of asking the questions, or even answering them, but determining how do you know?
And that’s the subversive (in a good way) heart of Freakonomics — not so much the brain candy topics or conclusions, but the demonstration that statistical analysis and figuring out how to tackle questions can unravel seemingly insoluble problems.
The revised edition has repackaged some of the material, removed some of the Levitt biography, and addressed a couple of questions raised since the books original publication. It also includes in the appendix (the last disc) the original Dubner article on Levitt, and some related essays/articles.
Info: As the topics mentioned above (a subset of those tackled here) imply, there’s no Grand Theme or Unified Theory here presented. Instead, it’s like reading a series of lengthy “The Straight Dope” columns, backed up by statistics and clever analysis. You may not always agree with Levitt’s conclusions, but it’s hard to simply dismiss them as punditry. Some great information in here, much of it counter-intuitive or “against common sense.”
As important, as noted, is showing how the answers to many of these questions are out there — it’s “just” a matter of figuring out the right approach to the questions and how to tease the answers out of the data probably already at hand.
Writing: Dubner presents the material in an organized fashion. The presentation is done so in an informative, clear, and entertaining fashion. This is echoed in Dubner’s reading style for the audio-book, which is calm, engaging, slightly quirky, but in keeping with the subject (Levitt). He even does a good job of presenting tabular data, always a challenge in an audiobook format.
If there’s any criticism, it’s that the info and analysis presented is almost too slick, too glib, even too pat. The info can’t be dismissed, but one gets the sense that it springs almost full-blown from Levitt’s head, rather than requiring a lot of analysis and grunt work to test and retest hypotheses.
Re-Readability: I intend to listen to this again some time. There’s a richness of info here that can be missed on first pass, and it will be interesting to see if or how any of Levitt’s conclusions get
Overall: I highly recommend this book to … well, pretty much anyone. Folks with a statistical background will appreciate the cleverness. Policy wonks and bloggers will find some of the conclusions intriguing. And just “ordinary folks” will, I think, get a new appreciation for how economics, reason, and facts can be applied to the practical questions of this world.