Is conventional wisdom really so obvious?
Reviewed by Larry Li
January 7, 2007
This book is wonderfully written by two economists who shed new light on old questions by using statistics and data to prove their findings. It makes the reader think about simple questions such as why do drug dealers still live with their moms? And is a house with a gun more dangerous than a house with a pool? All these simple questions lead to a surprising and unexpected answer in Freakonomics.
Whether you are an economist, a teacher or just your average high school student, you will love Freakonomics for its innovative and interesting methods of approaching seemingly simple and typical questions. Just as the introduction suggests, this is not your average book that merely answers questions with conventional wisdom but rather one that delves deep within the heart of the question. Things are not what they seem and conventional wisdom is challenged by data that economists, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, present. This book is wonderfully written by two economists who shed new light on old questions by using statistics and data to prove their findings. It makes the reader think about simple questions such as why do drug dealers still live with their moms? and is a house with a gun more dangerous than a house with a pool? All these simple questions lead to a surprising and unexpected answer in Freakonomics.
Whether you are an economist, a teacher or just your average high school student, you will love Freakonomics for its innovative and interesting methods of approaching seemingly simple and typical questions. Just as the introduction suggests, this is not your average book that merely answers questions with conventional wisdom but rather one that delves deep within the heart of the question. Things are not what they seem and conventional wisdom is challenged by data that economists, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, present.
The first thing you might notice is the cover of the book which depicts a green apple with a juicy orange inside. This is very symbolic of the book because it shows that there is a hidden side to everything and the first impression you get from a situation might not always be right. Just like the image on the front of the book, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner try to find out if a situation if really what it appears to be or is there a hidden sweet center that everyone else has missed. They tackle interesting questions such as what do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? What makes a perfect parent?
To answer these questions, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner make five basic assumptions: (1) incentives are the cornerstone of modern life, (2) the conventional wisdom is often wrong, (3) dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes, (4) “Experts” use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda and (5) knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so. To answer the question what do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have common requires an innovative approach. Levitt and Dubner start off by studying qualities that relate to their assumptions. Since the first assumption states that incentives are the cornerstone of modern life, what incentives could school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Well, money is a common incentive that everyone could do with a little more. Since students might cheat for a better grade, couldn’t teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat to get more money? Further reading will reveal the ingenious connections that Levitt and Dubner draw that lead to an astonishing conclusion.
Freakonomics parallels F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby by in many ways. Similar to how Fitzgerald writes about the unconventional American dream that Gatsby has, Levitt and Dubner also write an unconventional story that at first seems to be perfectly normal. At the beginning of the The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway talks directly to the reader and tells him or her that he will be telling a story of his perception of the events that had transpired involving Gatsby, and throughout the novel, the story is told through Nick’s perspective and within Freakonomics, it not only begins similarly but also follows a comparable narrating style. Also, within Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner present questions that seem to have logical answers such as “Is flying safer than driving?” yet we find that the answer isn’t what we always expect just like in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald presents the question “What is the American dream?” and we find that our answers are swayed by our own personal bias.
I suggest anyone who has a little extra time and wishes to view the world a little differently to read Freakonomics. It is a wonderful book which explores everyday mysteries such as why did crime rates suddenly fall? Was it due to tighter gun laws? More law enforcement? Could Roe vs. Wade have played a role in it? After reading Freakonomics many apparent mysteries will no longer appear as puzzling.