Chapter 1: In the novel of Freakonomics written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, it clearly shows how economic incentives in our society would make a usual honest person decide to commit the act of cheating. If that person comes across the thought of cheating, it usually is for a personal well being. By that I mean they are obviously doing it for an important reason because normally they would never think about committing an act that is morally wrong. The two groups in the chapter that I feel have the most similar qualities were the teachers and the sumo wrestlers. They can stand and talk for hours on the subject they love, but it 's been proven that they cheat. Who do you ask? Teachers. According to the novel "An analysis of the …show more content…
The student is moving on with false thoughts in their brain to the next level which can affect them highly at that subject. In addition the big men who fight for dominance are just at fault with the teachers for cheating. The sport is primarily based on honor, but that 's just a stretch of the truth in reality. The main focus in sumo wrestling is that "each wrestler maintains a ranking that affects every slice if his life" (Levitt & Dubner 38). For it affecting their lives it gives them incentives to cheat such as: "how much money he makes, how large an entourage he carries, how much he gets to eat..." (Levitt & Dubner 38). Now their cheating perspective I feel succeeds because of the fact they help one another out by letting them win to help their success, only if the favor is returned. Just like the saying goes, you scratch my back and I 'll scratch yours is all what the sumo wrestlers are doing. In my life I witnessed cheating a lot but one student always sticks out in my thought bubble. His incentive was he needed an a to maintain a 5.0 GPA, so he cheated on the final and succeeded in maintaining a high …show more content…
"The belief in parental power is manifest in the first official act a parent commits" (Levitt and Dubner 181). This is a huge decision for a parent, look at the Lane family for example. They named their first son "Winner". "Winner Lane: How could he fail with a name like that?" (Levitt and Dubner 181). A person would think this kid is going places with a name like that, and to his brother "Loser" a person would think the exact opposite. The California study looked at different birth certificates. The certificates display the name of not only the child, but the parent as well. Interestingly enough they also showed the zip code. From looking at the zip code a person can look at the living environment around them. For example a poor, well populated African American community will have different names rather than a rich white community. In this study, I as reader do not agree with this study. Once again correlation does not show causation. A man by the name of Andrew grew up in the poorest area of Chicago, but grew up to be a millionaire by playing Major League Baseball. The naming of a child doesn 't not determine the outcome of their life. Both my father, stepmother, and brothers names appear in different lists. I personally do not think this means anything, everybody grows up into something and a name will not determine this
Summary In chapter one of Freakonomics, the beginning portion of the chapter discusses information and the connection it shares with the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents. The Ku Klux Klan was founded right after the Civil War, in order to persecute and subdue the slaves that were newly freed. The popularity of the Klan increased in the early 20th century, around the time of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Klan had only discriminated, persecuted, and subdued Blacks, but in the 20th century they did these things to Blacks, Jews, and Gypsies.
Written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics is built upon three major philosophies: incentives are the fundamentals of life, experts on a subject use their knowledge as an advantage to serve their own wellbeing, and orthodox wisdom is wrong most of the time. This book goes into detail to explain the mindsets of humans, from school teachers to sumo wrestlers, through statistics. Levitt and Dubner claim that when the data is closely examined it can relate to more concepts than originally hypothesized. The style of this informative piece is very precise yet, at the same time, very concise and to the point. The tone carried throughout the book is informative and knowledgeable. The authors use distinct tactics to get points across
“So if sumo wrestlers, schoolteachers, and day-care parents all cheat, are we to assume that mankind is innately and universally corrupt? And if so, how corrupt?” (Levitt and Dubner 43). In my opinion this rhetorical question summarizes Chapter 1’s findings and poses two different sides of an argument. The author finds that cheating is more common when an individual is placed into a win or lose situation. The incentive to cheat is the concept that an individual is getting more for less. So, similarly to how teachers may change their students’ test scores to get a higher pay or praise, sumo-wrestlers might rig matches to obtain a higher ranking. To analyze how incentives cause teachers and sumo wrestlers
The world is an increasingly tricky, sticky place. Mysteries present themselves every day; and in every way, people are puzzled and intrigued and on the hunt for answers. Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics with Stephen J. Dubner, is one such person. Devoting his professional life to cracking the mysteries of seemingly mundane, and sometimes trivial, economic in daily life, Levitt jumps from assumption to decision, connecting dots in sometimes genius, sometimes haphazard, ways, and forming conclusions that occasionally defy conventional thought. Freakanomics gifts readers with several ideas to chew on and challenges deeply rooted thoughts.
Conventional wisdom would argue that all crack cocaine dealers make an obscene amount of money. Despite the danger of dealing drugs in Chicago (or anywhere for that matter), many people still do it. Lower paying jobs generally have a large supply pool, and higher paying jobs generally have a smaller supply pool. Realizing that these crack dealing organizations and gangs operate like a normal business flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that crack dealers are all rich. The American idea of working hard and eventually becoming successful is what the lower level dealers believe in and what makes them stay in that horrible job. There is a multitude of lower level jobs to fill, but there is a significantly smaller number of higher paying jobs available. The people in charge would like things to stay as
“For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it. Cheating may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor. Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more or less” (21). This quote is important because it proves how everyone has cheated once. In many cases it is true, people often cheat on tests or even on their diet. Not everyone can live up to their expectations. Some may justify it, others proudly proclaim it, and others will try denying their cheating vigorously. Most people consider cheating as a bad and unwise action. In this novel, it gave two examples of cheaters, school teachers and sumo wrestlers. It shows how both authors can take two different people and still find something similar with both of them, like cheating.
This chapter's main idea is that the study of economics is the study of incentives. We find a differentiation between economic incentives, social incentives and moral incentives. Incentives are described in a funny way as "means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing", and in this chapter we find some examples public school teachers in Chicago, sumo wrestling in Japan, take care center in Israel and Paul Feldman's bagel business of how incentives drive people and most of the time the conventional wisdom turns to be "wrong" when incentives are in place.
In this final chapter, Christian Miller speaks about cheating. There is a cheating behavior that many people do for various reasons. This assumes that the cheater might not be the one who is advantaged. Most humans today cheat when the opportunities arise. In studies, it is clear that many students cheat while in college. Of the many students who cheat, only a small fraction of them get caught. In a very large group of people, it was seen that only 3 people stated that they have never cheated while in school. In one case, a student found an exam on the printer and mass distributed it to the class and the class finished the exam quickly and scored higher. This made the teacher skeptical and a retake was made. It is clear that cheating is very prominent on college campuses. In an experiment, participants were told that they could only take 5 minutes on a
Economics in reverse is the best way of describing the unconventional method preferred by economist, Steven D. Levitt. While most economists measure social situations and present the data as numbers and graphs Levitt takes anomalies within the data to reveal truths obscured. It’s Levitt’s sociological take on economics that has set him apart from his peers with his heavy focus on incentives, choices, and the consequences they have. Freakonomics mirrors Levitt’s method since it’s a collection of stories he has uncovered or read, and the core economic principles are hidden within each story throughout the book, sometimes even in plain sight like how there are exactly as many chapters as there are core economic principles.
How do people behave when they face a number of chances to cheat with little or no risk of exposure? In this summary I will present the results of 4 studies made to determine whether or not people take advance of opportunities to cheat. This experiment is important to companies and institutions to know more about their employees and/or students’ behaviors when exposed to situations when they can or have a chance to cheat, if most institutions understand the behavior related to cheating and opportunities to so do, they can be more prepared to avoid this type of situations, and eventually to catch them.
Although not sharing a last name can’t really hurt anybody, it is important for a child’s identity. Traditional people understand that children always have the same surname as their fathers. Therefore, people may not realize the relationship between them if they don’t have the same surname. Besides, connections between mothers and children are strong, but fathers also play a very important role in families, as Breslin herself points out. The blood of the child is the combination of the blood of his/ her parents. I can’t give my children my wife’s last name just because she was pregnancy. It doesn’t make sense to me. Furthermore, there are many ways to show the love of the father for his family so they don’t need to be concerned about sharing their name with their children. In fact, I agree with Breslin’s views because I think that people should follow the tradition, reinforce family togetherness, and adhere to history. Many women and children find that having the same last name as their husband helps them feel more like a family, and a new name is an important symbol of a family united. It is not only the tradition in America but also a tradition all over the world. For example, my country, Viet Nam, people passes on the husband’s surname to their children. It historically states a long time ago and becomes a tradition. If anybody tries to do the opposite, they will be called ill
A world that demands perfection is only more likely to create imperfections. In the article “Who’s Cheating Whom?” written by Alfie Kohn, he deconstructs cheating in school from why students cheat to the underlining cause. He sheds light on the fact that cheating could in fact be mainly caused by the environment our culture has created for students. Cheating is most often seen in situations where students find what they’re learning to be boring or something they have no interest in. Many social scientists also believe cheating is a result of both the educational system and society valuing and rewarding the high grades over actual learning and teaching. Due to this competitive environment created in school
Everyone has cheated on something at some point in their life, whether it is in a game, on a test, or in a relationship, everyone has done it. Cheating is anything that involves breaking a rule, or getting an unfair advantage. Schools are one of the most popular places people cheat. Many people down play cheating and use excuses like, “He shouldn’t have let me see his paper,” or, “I am just using my resources wisely.” But, what causes people to cheat? Students cheat in school because of laziness, high standards or pressure to do well, and misunderstanding.
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
Therefore, performance-enhancement in sports is no way to achieve victory and success. True athletes know not to cheat, have positive impacts on upcoming athletes, and display proper professionalism. One should think long and hard of the consequences of cheating after years of hard work and determination. Keep in mind that athletes are adults and should be fluent in making honest decisions. Honesty plays a key role in personal development and maturity. More importantly set the example and keep the American Dream alive in sports altogether.