Freakonomics

What'd you expect for a New Year's Eve / Holiday post, something festive?

The first thing about this book that caught my attention was the picture of the apple-orange. I love oranges. If i had to pick one food to eat and nothing else for the rest of my life, then i would pick an orange. I saw the picture and i thought how great it would be to have an apple-orange. Yummy! So even though i studied economics, i was drawn to this book because of the food - further proof of the power of packaging as a marketing tool.

The book is great! Steven Levitt's way of analyzing questions and economizing them to provide answers and solutions are very non-intuitive. If you are looking for out-of-the-box thinking, then this book is the poster child. In each chapter Levitt attempts to explain and answer questions like "Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?" and "What makes a perfect parent?" I find his reasoning very educational and Stephen Dubner's style of writing very easy to read and often amusing. I especially like the emphasis on the difference between correlation versus cause:

"A correlation simply means that a relationship exists between two factors-let's call them X and Y-but it tells you nothing about the direction of that relationship. It's possible that X causes Y; it's also possible that Y causes X; and it may be that X and Y are both being caused by some other factor, Z."

I also like how Levitt and Dubner emphasize a very strong truth i've always subscribed to - numbers don't lie.

I recommend this book to everyone! It's only 207 pages so even if you don't like what you're reading, then it'll be over before you know it. But like it or not, you'll be a more intelligent person for reading it. And check out their blog (the link is also in the title of this post). I like reading it so much i've added it to my favorite links - the section on the right column labeled "Bored?"