Freakonomics

Light, fast and very, very pop; this is to economics what “Dancing With the Stars” is to... Steve Wozniak. i.e. One features the other, but don't expect to learn much - at least, much reliable stuff. Many of the studies in this are showoffy analyses, some of which have been discredited due to shoddy regressioning.

Levitt considers himself very clever, and there is an element of fun that he brings to the field, but it's not terribly serious. Read this in one sitting, and now I have a stash of party ice breakers which are only potentially dodgy. Hey, did you know that names cycle through the socio-economic classes by decade? And you're less likely to get the interview if you have an identifiably African-American name? Well, possibly. Not sure about the numbers.

I guess Levitt's big contribution, like Jamie Oliver to cooking, is getting people (including economists) excited and inspired again about the field. If you're interesting in stereotype threat though, for example, I'd recommend Claude Steele instead...

Brillante saggio sulla statistica applicata all'economia e alla società (americana) dove si trovano delle correlazioni tra criminalità e aborto, pistole e piscine. 7

The best book I read at 2023 so far. I will read it again possibly.

Overall, it was fine. It's an interesting take: apply economic ways of thinking to multiple social issues or everyday situations. The author's claim is that numbers tell the full story and never lie, to which I mostly agree, however, there are instances when numbers don't tell things in the correct way or they remove the human element. Additionally, as Levitt mentions, one has to make sure they are measuring the correct thing and interpreting the numbers in the correct way.
Outdated and a bit boring overall. Would be better as a podcast, honestly.

By the end of the book, you'll have learnt to take everything with a grain of salt, so hopefully that means taking the contents of the book with a grain of salt as well. After all, you're still being told what to believe, it's just that it goes against the conventional knowledge he harps on about.

While this book teaches critical thinking I'm afraid it goes the other direction as well. Skepticism is good but branding experts as selfish bastards and later clarifying that all humans are selfish bastards (wait, just most) an interesting strategy in a world that is rife with antivaxxers and flat-earthers and god knows what else.

I think Freakonomics does a good job in hammering in the core message of statistics and economics (huge overlap between the two honestly) which is that the most obvious factor of causing something isn't always the right answer and that many (hidden) things are behind it. I do wish that the book had a more unifying theme so that they can hammer in lessons and educate the reader rather than throwing a bunch of facts at me until I was purple and blue with tidbits of info. Otherwise, nice read, but I wouldn't buy this to learn about economics.

I also found it quite weird that there were quotes included from a NYT article defending Levitt's work and person LOL

Statistical manipulation abounds! Despite the authors mentioning correlation does not equal causation, most of their assumption rely heavily on it. The authors come off as extremely confident in their claim yet, never offer issues with the statistics or other factors. I think if you have spent time doing data analysis, you'll spot the issues with this book 1,000 miles away.

ALSO WHY ARE THERE NOT IN TEXT CITATIONS??!! I mean for gods sake, at least put them with each chapter. I feel as if they buried the citations at the end just to make it harder to find the actual research (and thus discover issues with the methods or other possible explanations.)

Very interesting book and as someone who VERY easily gets bored of statistics and economics this book was a joy to read. I wouldn't take everything in Freakonomics as fact and I will definitely be doing some further reading (I would suggest you do too if you read this book) on topics mentioned in it. In all, I found that this book kept me entertained and I was never bored. It gives a lot of food for thought and I have had a lot of interesting conversations at social gatherings discussing some of the topics in this book. If you want something fun and informative to read I highly suggest this book.

** an absolute classic, Levitt and Dubner, can I have your coffee order next? **


I found out their podcast before I knew about the book (weird, I know). The podcast served as a gateway to exciting on-going research in the field of social sciences and economics - inspiring an enthusiastic freshman.

Five years later, I re-visit this book and it's a different experience. I know more about the field, I have done lateral reading of related publications and I am better able to appreciate the arguments, especially the simplicity with which they are presented.

It is no surprise that this is one of the best get-to-know-econ for dummies book that teases you with random but intriguing titles and makes you sit through the difference between correlation and causation, teaching what a regression can and cannot tell you, what the data means and how stories are decoded from it.

I think Levitt and Dubner are visionaries in attempting to write this book - for a more noob audience and keeping them engaged through and through. There is an odd comfort in revisiting books of Christmas past and also giving a sense of development and growth - in a time when freedom, struggle and purpose feel lost.

Quarantine read no. 2, you were kind to me :)

The book had a lot of interesting fact and was well told. Though it felt Frome time to time as the analysis in the book was made more to be spectacular than correct.

Why did I pick this
I can't remember a specific example, but I know Freakonomics has appeared on many online must-read lists. I put it on my list, expecting I could learn something about the ‘invisible forces' at play in a community. Since it was available in my library I borrowed it.

The book
In the book Levitt describes some interesting causes and correlations at play in society. For example; that people will have a tendency to cheat (in this case specifically sumo wrestlers at tournaments, or parents of pre-school children).
As the author notes in the book there is not a single thread connecting the many observations. The story wanders, and at times I found this very annoying, as I could not really connect the content I was reading to a specific takeaway.

Recommendations
I believe this book might be one of the first to focus on numbers and statistics to uncover ‘wrong' assumptions in society. Which might be the reason why it's on multiple to-read lists.
However, I do think that in the mean time better books have arrived, with Factfulness by Hans Rosling high on number one. Shortly followed by Sanne Blauw's ‘Het best verkochte boek ooit' (unsure whether it's available in English). Both of these books do not feature sections which praise the author in between chapters, which I thought was a bit self-centered...

The book is fine, but the included New York Magazine article at the end made me realize it's just an expanded version of a magazine article. Not great in audio format.

Interesting book illustrating what is economics and how the real world looks like. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner got together and come up with this crazy idea of writing a book describing crazy behavioral economics. They expose pretty insane questions and made them so interesting and amusing for the reader to follow, and look into the world and surrounding with another set of eyes.

Conventional wisdom has been discussed in to the details within this book. How it has been introduced, and how misleading it can be within the society. There are plenty of data analysis and study resulted has been provided to articulate the issues.

Causation vs correlation also has been demonstrated in to the details. What people believed can be causation of an incident has been proved to be just correlation in hindsight, with pretty nice examples.

Another accept of the book are the crazy questions exposed by the authors, such as; which one is more dangerous swimming pool or gun for a kid in a house?, why drug-dealers are living with their parents?, what are the relationships of existence of many books in the house and smartness and success of a kid?, is abortion lower the rate of the crime? All these questions have been discussed in to the details. The more the question is analyzed the more interesting it get.

Liked it, but the podcast is better

En voyant la foule de 5 étoiles accordées à ce livre par mes connaissances j'avoue que je m'attendais à quelque chose de beaucoup plus marquant. Au final si la réflexion est intéressante et incite à regarder certains faits de société de manière plus approfondie (et à payer attention à ce que l'on fait corréler parfois de façon inexacte), plusieurs points m'ont dérangés dans ce livre :

- Le manque de référence hors Levitt, où je me questionne beaucoup tant sur la méthodologie que sur l'objectivité. Même si certains points sont intéressants, il devient dur de ne pas douter
- La vision anti experts. Que l'on ait du mal à croire véritablement un agent immobilier passe, que ce climat de scepticisme s'étende à tous les experts... et l'on se ramasse des antivaxxs en pagaille
- La façon dont le livre est rédigé qui tient plus d'une adoration de Levitt qu'autre chose à plusieurs niveaux. J'avais l'impression de me retrouver dans un livre d'Allen Carr dédié à l'économie par moments ou à la vie de Steven Levitt, c'était assez dérangeant (clôturer chaque chapitre par une coupure de presse à sa gloire n'est peut être pas le meilleur point).

Au final, un livre qui nous dit de nous méfier des experts... par un expert. Je m'attendais à beaucoup plus frappant, j'ai l'impression d'être sans doute passé à côté de quelque chose mais j'émets énormément de réserve et j'avoue ne pas comprendre ce que tant ont trouvé génial dans ce livre :)

I give it 3 stars because I enjoyed reading it. I found it interesting but it also reminded me of the saying ‘take everything with a pinch of salt'. Some conclusions seemed far fetched and unconvincing but more importantly it begs that we question stuff. Also, in today's age, when data is available on almost everything, we should try to analyse it and use it to solve real world problems. Also, I do understand the idea that there's an incentive attached to everything people do. It doesn't necessarily have to be tangible.

One of the most interesting books written in the field. Questioning the conventional knowledge we all have and base our decisions upon. Definitely a fun read.

An interesting read for sure, but I didn't walk away feeling compelled or curious to think differently. The book is a self-admitted hodgepodge without a unifying thread. I probably should've read the back cover first - I think I just expected this book to be something it's not.

Shallow, some claims hardly substantiated, a bit narcissistic.

Worth reading. I got lost in the logic and statistics a couple of times but the authors make a pretty good presentation.
I would have liked to see more graphs presenting the statistics and diagrams or use-case diagrams. I think that would have been helpful to readers.
This book made me regret not paying as much attention as I should have in Game Theory classes I took back in the University.
I will edit this later with a couple of quotes I found interesting.

Just an interesting read. The Documentary version (which I think I watched on Netflix) was a fun bit of rainy day TV. Easy read for interest and fun. Not a meaty book that stays with you. It is what it is.

If you like Malcolm McDowall, read this...and vice versa.

Reads like a series of short, very insightful essays.

OK. This was a really intriguing read & definitely gave me new ways of looking at things like crime & education. Some of the ideas were so new & surprising to me that I want to have someone smarter than me fact check it? I know there are appendices & such, but, just, REALLY? A lot of it makes total sense though, like swimming pools killing way more kids than guns, and legalized abortion lowering the crime rate. It's written in an easy, conversational tone with data charts & such.

Very interesting, insofar as it connects seemingly unconnected things and phenomena.