Freakonomics A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Freakonomics brings together many combinations of thoughts that one wouldn’t find relevant in companionship. The two authors discuss comparisons that are so off the wall, that you almost question reading the book; however, that is the reason many read the book in the first place. The authors Levitt and Dubner compare in one chapter of Freakonomics the reason why drug dealers live with their moms. Throughout this chapter, the authors discuss questions about why intelligent people sometimes do not ask questions that people really care about, advertising and surveys, and why, in general, do drug dealers still live with their moms. The use of testimonial evidence is prudent in the chapter because its proof builds the case for the qualitative evidence used during the drug dealing section of the chapter. I will discuss these three topics in detail and analyze the author’s contributions to the arguments they present, by evaluating how the argument was portrayed based on the evidence given in the book.
“But if you can question something that people really care about and find an answer that may surprise them—that is, if you can overturn the conventional wisdom—then you may have some luck” (Levitt and Dubner 87). What Levitt and Dubner meant by this passage, is that if you divulge yourself into questions, ridiculous or not, you might find something you are looking for. If there are unanswered questions, and no one is asking them, they are “bound to yield uninteresting answers” (Levitt and Dubner 87). Meaning, people are not usually asking questions in which they are not interested in the answers. From a personal no...
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...ves otherwise. A foot soldier makes, according to the financial evidence given, $3.30 an hour. Actually, many foot soldiers held other jobs to supplement the low wages they were issued dealing drugs. The evidence given in this section of the chapter was useful to the reader to understand and visually absorb the material.
As a whole, the evidence given in this chapter was sufficient in building a cohesive thought. However, the advertising and survey section of the chapter through me for a loop and almost made me stop reading the chapter all together. The use of testimonial, measurement, and analytical data discussed in the chapter allowed me to truly understand the point that the authors were trying to get across to the reader. The chapter, like the rest of the book, contains thoughts that are not conventional in nature and are interesting to think about.
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
Freakonomics is an economist’s viewpoint on the events and issues that we encounter and hear about every day. Levitt uses his many years of experience as an economist to address topics ranging from abortion to the power of information. He looks at the statistics behind each topic and makes an informed analysis, generally not following popular belief about it. Levitt foresees and counters arguments that people may have against what he is stating. His counter arguments are filled with data and statistics to make them rock solid and very hard to dispute. Levitt’s approach on the world is very different from the average person’s, he looks at everything from what statistics and data tells him. He states “The conventional wisdom is often wrong…”
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.
Chapter four of Freakonomics starts off by giving background information of the dictator in Romania. Nicolae Ceausescu was the dictator of Romania that made abortion illegal. With this new abortion law Ceausescu wanted to strengthen Romania’s population. Before the abortion law, there were four abortions to every live birth (Levitt and Dubner, 2009). However, women who already had four children and were apart of the communist party were exempt from this law. Within one year of this act the population had doubled. Studies had shown that people who were born after the abortion law would do worse in school, in work, and would sometimes be more likely to become
In chapter 4 of Freakonomics, “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?” Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner discuss and argue the possible reasons for the crime drop in the 1990’s, asking and focusing on the question “just where did all those criminals go” (108)? The authors open with a story about the abortion laws in Romania, transitioning into the many factors that could have affected the 1990’s crime drop in America. Some of these factors include the following; Strong economy, increase in police, gun-control laws, the aging of the population, and then their main argument, abortion. While reading this essay, I had difficulty with many things, first off, my emotions, followed by the overall organization.
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.
...the data did not involve member checking thus reducing its robustness and enable to exclude researcher’s bias. Although a constant comparative method was evident in the discussion which improved the plausibility of the final findings. Themes identified were well corroborated but not declared was anytime a point of theoretical saturation Thus, the published report was found to be particularly strong in the area of believability and dependability; less strong in the area of transferability; and is weak in the area of credibility and confirmability, although, editorial limitations can be a barrier in providing a detailed account (Craig & Smyth, 2007; Ryan, Coughlan, & Cronin, 2007).
...age. Levitt explores this passage with the same approach that he uses to explore the hidden side of many other such examples in society that have been overlooked and accepted as conventional wisdom for far too long. Take the parents who feel confident that they have made the right decision to forbid their child to play at a friend?s house whose family owns a gun, but allows their child to play at a friend?s house that has a pool. Levitt shows that the child is about ten thousand times more likely to drown in the swimming pool than in a gun accident, but that the violent conventional mindset associated with guns wrongly portrays their potential of causing death. Through these examples, Levitt establishes Freakonomics as a way by which the reader should live their life, never totally accepting something until every stone has been upturned, eventually exposing its hidden
On the front cover of Freakonomics, the subheading reads, “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” which is the purpose of the book. The economist Steven Levitt and the author Stephen Dubner wrote this book using several rhetorical devices to achieve that purpose. A few of those devices, style, ethos, pathos, and logos, were prominent within the book and helped to convey the message and purpose well.
The articles, published after 1996, contain varied methods of research attainment, but share similarities such as being a self-survey, having a small sample size, and being
...haviors he so wishes to comprehend are those whom he labels as The Cocaine Kids. Now that examples of these drug sellers’ behaviors have been provided, the criminological theories that can explain such behaviors have been made visible to the unseen eye. Criminological theories including the theory of Differential Association, the Subculture of Violence Theory, and the Social Learning Theory can be viewed as methods for developing a knowledgeable understanding of how and why such behaviors introduced individuals to the drug-selling world, kept them submerge deep within it, and allowed for them to leave it.
Revealing the hidden side of life in clarity, Freakonomics draws in all economists with unmentioned assumptions which are upheld with reasoned correlation, bonding subjects that unveil misconceptions, concluding on economic pattern limitations. Effectively, they lead their audience on their conviction route as smoothly as possible. Nice job on not screwing the map up. Allowing them to achieve their goals, this was to change people’s views. By the time a person puts down Freakonomics, they have been led to conviction about all their claims because Dubner & Levitt know that in order to change someone else’s way of thinking you must change your own.
Now within the rest of this paper you will be finding a few different things getting discussed. Staring it off we will be discussing the articles that we have found to make our arguments and hypotheses. After wrapping up the literature reviews we will be discussing the hypotheses thus continuing onto our variables and indicators. Once we discuss our hypotheses we will be moving onto the research design. The research design will have our general issues, sampling, and methods.
Levitt, Steven D., and Dubner, Stephen J. Freakonomics:A Rouge Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything. New York: Harper, 2009. Print.
...tions are made in the light of the findings from the study survey outlined in these articles.