Freakonomics

** 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 :)