Freakanomics Book Critique

In the book Freakonomics, written by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubne, the authors go through different parts of modern life to show how economics describes why people act a certain way as well as the way specific outcomes occur. They look into different aspects of society and view them with different perspectives. With the use of specific data and the fundamentals of economics, the very obscure comparisons and the different chapters in the book show correlation between economics and human nature. The main point of this book is to explain a few fundamental ideas through the answers of strange questions and how they play a major role in society.

When you look at my older sister you might think that she kind and helpful girl because the way she acts in public and helps my mom out. Also you might think that she is a kind sibling. But in reality that not who she is while she is home. When she is home she always on her phone and doesn’t really help with things and can be mean to my little brother. Even though this is a example of something that is good it's actually bad. In some situations bad can be good because the bad can help you get past things in your life or solve some things in your life. In the book freak the mighty by Rodman Philbrick give a great example of that.

Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Levitt and Dubner utilize intriguing rhetorical questions, compelling anecdotes, and interesting allusions to refute the legitimacy of conventional wisdom. Freakonomics also attempts to inform and entertain readers with interesting facts. Levitt and Dubner explicitly reveal their purpose when they state that “the aim of this book is to explore the hidden side of . . . everything” (Levitt and Dubner 14). The authors intend to debunk commonly held beliefs by looking into a wide range of unusual inquires, and they use rhetorical questions such as “what do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?” in order to lead into deeper issues(Levitt and Dubner 15). Like Socrates, Levitt and Dubner rely on questions as a means of achieving deeper understanding, and while outwardly sumo wrestlers and schoolteachers don’t have much in common, Levitt and Dubner reveal that both are connected in an unexpected way:

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation” (Levitt & Dubner 16). Freakonomics is a book written in 2005 by award winning economist Steven Levitt and former New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner while they both resided in different states. The use of simple diction makes it so a larger audience can be reached; readers vary from everyday people to students to economists. In order to better explain economics, Levitt and Dubner appeal to their audience by forgoing economic jargon and using simpler terms to ensure that the readers understand and relate to what is being explained throughout the passages. The authors also appeal to the readers through their credible background and logically by using statistics, researches, facts and parallelism.

“Economics is not an exact science. It's a combination of an art and elements of science. And that's almost the first and last lesson to be learned about economics: that in my judgment, we are not converging toward exactitude, but we're improving our data bases and our ways of reasoning about them” (Paul,1). Despite Paul Samuelson’s accomplishments, his life growing up was not as ideal as a child would like. Paul was born in Gary, Indiana on May 15, 1915 to parents Frank and Ella Samuelson. Frank Samuelson was a pharmacist, who had financial difficulties after WWI. Thus, the family was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois. Enrolling at the early age of 16 to the University of Chicago, on his first day of college he claimed he was “Born as an

David Colander defines economics as "the study of how human beings coordinate their wants and desires, given the decision-making mechanisms, social customs, and political realities of the society” (Colander, 2010, p. 4). Coordination in this definition refers to production content, method, recipients, and even quantity. To think like an economist one must analyze every situation by comparing the costs and benefits and make any decisions based on those findings (Colander, 2010). The study of microeconomics zeroes in on the individual and analyzes how economic forces affect the choices he or she makes.

Freakonomics is a humorous and intriguing book about taking off the top layer of a situation and understanding what is happening underneath. Through everyday examples Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner take perspectives that are unheard of in any other writing while simultaneously comparing the most unique and uncommon ideas to each other. As they study everyday life, readers see insight to the ways in which the world really functions and runs. As they study the world the authors continue to ask questions, thus continuing to challenge the reader to seek for a deeper answer. Through these highly untypical questions, Levitt and Dubner are able to display that the root of economics itself is incentives.

Within its 300 or so pages, Freakonomics manages to cover a vast scope of topics that typically wouldn’t be seen as related at all, let alone bound within the same two covers of a best-selling book. From sumo wrestlers to real-estate agents to drug dealers, Levitt and Dubner delve into these and many other unconventional topics in a way that shines a new light on all of them--in a way that an economist would look at them.

The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a book that takes you through facts and statistics that seem reasonable and logical at the beginning but soon they dissect it and show you the true side of the statistic. The whole premise of the book is to show you the “hidden side of everything. (Cover page)” Like how dropping crime rate throughout the 90’s drastically dropped seemingly overnight. This drop was associated with better policing strategies, this idea is great for reassuring the public, but is it really true? Turns out it was probably closer linked to the legalizing of abortion. The authors of Freakonomics throughout the book think outside the box in order to show you

1.In the book, Freakonomics, the authors discuss about a group called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was very popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the article “27 Important Facts Everyone Should Know About The Black Panthers” by The Huffington Post, a group called the Black Panthers was also popular in the twentieth century. The Black Panthers differ from the KKK in many ways, for example the Black Panthers wore black leather jackets and black berets, opposed to the KKK white sheets and hoods. A major difference between the two group was that while the KKK was hunting down black people, the Black Panthers were trying to protect the black community.Another notable difference between the two groups is that the KKK was aided by the

In the eyes of the authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, economics is not seen as a monetary subject but rather a subject with the ability to gain answers through the utilization of interesting, yet out of the ordinary questions. These “out of the ordinary questions” can be seen as the backbone from which the collaboration was written. Levitt and Dubner structured the novel in this way to explore and reveal “the hidden side of everything.” They focus on the incentives behind people’s motives in all different aspects of society—from sumo wrestlers to crack dealers—and connect the surprising similarities with each other. After reading what Levitt and Dubner had to say, I established that the authors’ goal in creating such a novel was

While this book has a title that sounds like a course required to take to be a stock broker on Wall Street, it is nothing from a boring lecture on the economic patterns of the world. Levitt uses stories he has experienced from a military man selling bagels (Ch1) to a drug dealer with a business degree (Ch3). These stories are used for audience relation to their own life situations and how they dealt with them, to show that economics work in the same way.

Superfreakanomics is set up in chapters of short excerpts that dive into different topics ranging from illegal industries, such as prostitution and other examples, such as the safety behind using car seats and the altruistic nature of humans. Each chapter provides many stories, data, background, and commentary on how this system is functioning poorly, could be improved, or related to other larger issues in society, such as combating terrorism. In their introduction, Levitt and Dubner discuss seeing the world from the perspective of economists and include being a person in an undeveloped nation such as India and the transition from horses to cars, as well as talking about statistics and the bending of knowledge. This introduction shows that every day events can be quite interesting and can be a starting point to conversation.

Regardless of Levitt’s claim that “this book boasts no unifying theme,” Freakonomics consists of one motif, the use of data to explain the unexplainable, or Levitt’s study of Economics, Freakonomics (Levitt, Dubner 14). For example, in the late twentieth century the crime was at an all time high, but by the turn of the century crime dropped to the lowest rate in the last 35 years. Many proposed that this massive drop resulted from gun control, a strong economy, or new police strategies, but what if the criminals that would have plagued the twentieth century were never born? Levitt would argue that the supreme court decision of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, is the cause of the drop in crime. He qualified his claim by disproving the

When examining the economy, many economists assume that economic contributors make their decisions as unemotional rational beings. John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, was one of the driving forces in a revolution of economic thinking. In his 1936 book, Keynes coined the term “animal spirits” to describe the instincts and emotions that influence and guide human behavior which have a direct impact on the economy. Following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, economists and authors George Akerlof and Robert Shiller published the book, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it