Obvious Diversion

Freakonomics should probably have been titled The Exploration of Common Social Assumptions Through Statistical Analysis, but it probably wouldn’t have sold very well. As a result, they slapped Freakonomics on the front of it and managed to make a book about economics and analysis a New York Times best seller. Bravo.

Here are some of the things he proves through analysis:

• The legalization of abortion in the 1970s led to the dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s
• Professional sumo wrestlers cheat like dogs
• Being a drug dealer isn’t very profitable
• Spanking or not spanking your kid doesn’t seem to make a difference
• Baby names are a very strange form of social trickle-down economics
• Smurfette put out like a cheap tramp

Okay, maybe not that last one due to lack of data, but the other ones are true. The book is easily readable, even for the mathematically challenged so don’t be afraid of the economics theme. Remember if you disagree with these conclusions, then you need to challenge either his methods or data (or both), but not the conclusions they result in. To a lesser extent he also explores some topics with regression analysis which, he admits, is a little more voodoo-like in as far as you can trust the results, but what can be observed is pretty interesting.

I do have a few complaints. The volume is a bit thin and light on supporting data. It is properly footnoted, so you can explore further if you wish, but I would have liked to have sample data right there with the narrative. Also, the book is devoid of illustrations or charts. When you’re trying to explain a dataset that literally has a thousand words in it, perhaps a picture (worth a thousand words) would be helpful.

Freakonomics on Amazon

Two more Book It! books and I get a personal pan pizza.