Freakonomics
Jun 4th, 2006 by Dave
It’s a book, a blog, a different way of looking at the world. The hero of our book has one super power - the ability to see things as they are without the assumptions and preconceptions and biases the rest of us mortals carry around with us; and he uses his power for good, not evil, directing it at the big issues of our times rather than abstruse textbook theorems. His sidekick, journalist guy, explains his vision to the rest of us.
Big drop in the crime rate in New York City? Both the mayor and the police chief took credit for it but our hero suggests another cause even more significant, and his conclusion, as they say ‘unleashed a firestorm of controversy’.
Standardized test scores are more important in our schools than ever before and teachers are under increased pressure to raise those scores. Are they cheating? There is a way to prove there is cheating just by analyzing the data.
Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers? This study came out of some original - and dangerous - research by Sudhir Venkatesh in the crack dens of Chicago.
If you find this book as interesting as I did, you will be interested in a recent article in the NY Times A Star is Made (registration required) written by our duo which gives an explanation for why the elite soccer players of the World Cup are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than the later months. Punchline is that expert performers are nearly always made, not born. This radical new idea a/k/a ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ is the focus of the Expert Performance Movement, a group of scholars interested in finding out where experts come from.