Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780141019017ISBN:0141019018
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: ALLEN LANE (PENG)
Date Published: 2005-07-07
ISBN-13:9780713998061ISBN:0713998067
Description: Good. Hardcover _ Good reading copy with moderate wear _ Different cover _ This will be on its way to you TODAY! Email confirmation _ No hassle returns _ all emails answered promptly _ Outstanding Quality, Value, and Service with Always Great Products _ Check our feedback _ We appreciate your business! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780141019017ISBN:0141019018
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Description: New. Asking questions about human motivation and living and reaching some conclusions, this book aims to be at the heart of things we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic... read more
Description: New. Asking questions about human motivation and living and reaching some conclusions, this book aims to be at the heart of things we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic... read more
Description: Fine. ¿Qué resulta más peligroso: una pistola o una piscina? ¿Qué tienen en común un maestro de escuela y un luchador de sumo? ¿Por qué continúan los traficantes de drogas viviendo con sus madres? ¿En qué se parece el Ku Klux Klan a los agentes inmobiliarios? Quizás éstas no sean las típicas preguntas que se formula un experto en economía. pero Steven D. Levitt y Stephen J. Dubner no son unos economistas muy típicos. Se trata de especialistas que estudian la esencia y los enigmas de la vida ... read more
Description: New. ¿Qué resulta más peligroso: una pistola o una piscina? ¿Qué tienen en común un maestro de escuela y un luchador de sumo? ¿Por qué continúan los traficantes de drogas viviendo con sus madres? ¿En qué se parece el Ku Klux Klan a los agentes inmobiliarios? Quizás éstas no sean las típicas preguntas que se formula un experto en economía. pero Steven D. Levitt y Stephen J. Dubner no son unos economistas muy típicos. Se trata de especialistas que estudian la esencia y los enigmas de la vida ... read more
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780141019017ISBN:0141019018
Description: New. Please allow 3-4 days delivery. Rapid dispatch with careful packaging. We're a friendly and helpful family company, please get in touch if you need any help. read more
Description: New. PLEASE NOTE: All books are promptly imported from the UK using DHL or Royal Mail international mail WITH TRACKING NUMBER. D elivery is typically 5-10 working days. Please do not select expedited shipping. Professional and reliable bookseller (est.1987). read more
"The conventional wisdom is often wrong. The author (co-author?) makes some interesting points. However, he spends a lot of time demonstrating how the professor arrived at his conclusions - a lot of time. A lot.
Still, I'd recommend the book and I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to read more about this man's theories. But I'd probably fall asleep while he explained why he thinks what he thinks.
Almost exactly like I did in Economics 101 many years ago."
"I loved this book, though I think the title is a bit misleading. It's not really about economics. In fact, he's showing you what interesting things you can discover when you apply statistical analysis to problems where you wouldn't normally think of using it. I use statistical methods a fair amount in my own work, so I found it particularly interesting. The most startling and thought-provoking example is definitely the unexpected reduction in US urban crime that occurred towards the end of the 20th century. Crime rates had been rising for decades, and people were really worried about what would happen if the trend continued. Then, suddenly, they peaked and started to decline. Why? There were a bunch of theories, all of them superficially plausible.
Levitt crunched the numbers, to see what proportion of the variance could be ascribed to the different factors. This is a completely standard technique; it just hadn't been used here before. He came to the conclusion that the single most important factor, by far, was the ready availability of abortion that started to come in after Roe v Wade. Other things, like more resources for policing and tougher sentencing policies, probably helped, but not nearly as much. I didn't at all get the impression that he had been expecting this result from the start, and just wanted to prove his point. He processed the data, and went where the numbers led him. That's how you're supposed to do science.
The clincher, at least as far as I was concerned, was the fact that crime statistics peaked at different points in different states, the peaks correlating very well with the dates when each state started making abortion available. States that brought it in early had correspondingly early peaks in their crime rates. It's hard to see how that could happen if Levitt's explanation weren't correct.
I am surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of Levitt's findings in the political world. Maybe it's just regarded as too hot to handle. But if Levitt is right, and at the moment I would say it's up to his critics to explain why he isn't, then pro-life campaigners would seem be heading in a very unfortunate direction."
"After packing 5 books for my trip, I found myself sitting in the Philadelphia airport with nothing to read. My mom, instead of buying me Remember Me? or Change of Heart, handed me her copy of Freakonomics: A rough Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
Freakonomics was a great back-up book. It was witty, insightful, and really made me think. What does the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real-estate agents? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? Where have all the criminals gone? What makes a schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How perfect Roshanda by any other name smell as sweet? parents?
Freakonomics attempts to tell us along with a few other tidbits of information, like:
"In the world of online dating, a heedful of blond hair on a woman is worth about the same as having a college degree-and, with a $100 dye job versus a $100,000 tuition bill, an awful lot cheaper." {pg. 83}
{Forget college and law school! All I really need to do is head on down to CVS Pharmacy or Walgreen's in order to get my MRS degree.}
"Chemistry is best left to chemists." {pg. 109}}
"The likelihood of any given person being killed in a terrorist attack are infinitesimally smaller than the likelihood that the same person will clog up his arteries with fatty food and die of heart disease." {pg. 151}
"Obsessive parents know who they are and are generally proud of the fact; non-obsessive parents also know who the obsessive are and tend to snicker at them." {pg. 153)"
Freakonomics isn't really about any one thing, which makes it a bit hard to summarize. In essence, it's economist Steven Levitt playing around with economic principles and basic statistical analysis to examine various cultural trends and phenomena. He tackles a variety of questions, from whether or not sumo wrestlers cheat (they do) to whether or not a child's name determines his success (it doesn't). He does this all through examining statistics and data, trying to find facts to back up various assertions rather than relying on conventional wisdom.
The Good:
As a person who is sick of the inability of most people to have a rational discourse on any even vaguely politicized topic, and a self-proclaimed skeptic, it's nice to read anyone who endorses looking at hard data to make judgments about possibly controversial issues. Levitt does a nice job of not only proclaiming the advantages of this sort of rational outlook, but also of showing that when you actually examine the data, you sometimes get surprising results. Furthermore, he takes the time to point out that there is a difference between correlation and causation, and that many people mistake one for the other. Again, a nice touch.
The actual questions that Levitt asks are all fairly interesting, though some will appeal to certain readers more than others. In addition to cheating sumotori and strange names, Levitt also examines cheating teachers, the economics of crack dealers, and the effect of abortion on crime. Crime, in point of fact, seems to be Levitt's greatest interest, and I wonder if he might not have been better served by writing an entire book on the relationship between economics and crime, as opposed to trying to touch on a number of different subjects that are all largely unrelated. It might have made for a tighter, more focused book.
The writing is solid; simple and easy, but solid. Despite being a book about economics, it's not a terribly dense read, as witnessed by the fact that I finished it off in about two days. Granted, it was two days of heavy reading, but it was still two days.
The Bad:
For a book that's so gung ho about statistics, there aren't many statistics in here. Levitt claims that the numbers back up his research, but he rarely provides the data itself, which makes it difficult to tell how much he might be manipulating statistics to serve his own ends. It makes the book seem like it's been dumbed down for the plebian masses, which will be very frustrating to any intelligent reader who wants to look at Levitt's data themselves. Any reader who doesn't feel like reading the numbers can do what most of us did in undergrad-skip the numbers sections. It's just sloppy; I can't imagine Levitt would do this in a formal economics paper.
The book also lacks much in the way of an unifying theme, a problem that is acknowledged within the text itself; that isn't only sad, it's sloppy. I doubt that a writer of Dubner's skill and an economist of Levitt's apparent genius (more on that below) are totally incapable of thinking of and describing some kind of unifying theme throughout this work. It just smacks of laziness, even more so when there's a half-hearted "well, I guess you could say it's this..." sort of thing in the epilogue. Again, I have trouble imagining that Levitt would submit a paper that was this disjointed to a serious economic publication; why should the general public be treated less seriously?
The Ugly:
The self-aggrandizement. Oh, the self-aggrandizement.
Every chapter is preceded by excerpts from an article about Levitt, which all tell us what a brilliant and unconventional economist this man is. In the introduction, we're told that he really wasn't that interested in writing a book, unless he got to work with this wonderful journalist who had written an article about him earlier. The cover promises that we will be "dazzled" by a "rogue economist" who explains "the hidden side of everything."
For all of this talk of brilliance and dazzling explanations, the book doesn't seem that brilliant. It seems like a transcript of some interesting dinner conversation with a smart guy, the sort that makes you go home and think, "hey, this stuff is interesting, I ought to go pick up a book about it." Of course, the problem here is that you've already picked up the book.
The fact that Levitt wasn't that interested in writing a book in the first place is telling; this book feels like something written by a person who needed to get the work done, but really wasn't engaged in what he was doing. Maybe he should have waited until he was a little more motivated."
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