Book Review: “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

A book full of untypical and freakish questions asked and analyzed scientifically from large amount of data under an economic point of view.

1.  Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?
2. What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?
3. Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?
4. How much do parents really matter?
5.  What kind of impact that legal abortion has on the criminal rate?
6. How much car seat helps kids?
7. School entrance test and random-lottery-selection, which one is more beneficial?
8. Is that residents of megacity smarter that people from rural areas?

Those questions were about subjects that didn't sound related as they physically did. The book will show you why.

Those co-authors show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives – how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. More than once throughout the book, you may need to adjust yourself to really recognize the tradeoffs, which lead to tough choices between human morality and human incentives. Statistics show you the facts from numbers. However, those numbers are sometimes so rough and hurtfully true that you properly would prefer to not believing in them (if possible). There are many moments that it is extremely hard to count on what you’ve seen from the findings. I would like to borrow the book blurb from Malcolm Gladwell “Prepare to be dazzled.” to end my review here. Hope you will enjoy the book and find the answers yourself.