Brimming, originally uploaded by Cassiodorus.
Damn. I'm not sure this book is worth the review required to fill the page to the right of the picture. Anyway...
Easy, light read. Nothing particularly penetrating, but Mr. Levitt certainly does ask refreshing questions. Hmm.. that's pretty much it really. I can't say it deserved all the media attention, but I did find the section on "What Makes the Perfect Parent?" enlightening and reinforcing. That is, the data suggests that what parents are affects their children more than what parents do. So obsessive parenting hardly works.
Although Levitt suggests that the "conventional wisdom" is always wrong, there are instances where his results support the "conventional wisdom": men and women routinely lied about their height/weight on their on-line personals ad thinking that they would get more responses -- they were right. The usual stereotypes still applied online.
Yet that was the extent of Levitt's "unifying theme" -- that common sense is usually wrong.
Great. Thanks for the update. The examples of this fact were cool, but not enough to merit the coining of "Freakonomics" as a wholly distinct form of inquiry. Save the hubris, pass the cheese.
Easy, light read. Nothing particularly penetrating, but Mr. Levitt certainly does ask refreshing questions. Hmm.. that's pretty much it really. I can't say it deserved all the media attention, but I did find the section on "What Makes the Perfect Parent?" enlightening and reinforcing. That is, the data suggests that what parents are affects their children more than what parents do. So obsessive parenting hardly works.
Although Levitt suggests that the "conventional wisdom" is always wrong, there are instances where his results support the "conventional wisdom": men and women routinely lied about their height/weight on their on-line personals ad thinking that they would get more responses -- they were right. The usual stereotypes still applied online.
Yet that was the extent of Levitt's "unifying theme" -- that common sense is usually wrong.
Great. Thanks for the update. The examples of this fact were cool, but not enough to merit the coining of "Freakonomics" as a wholly distinct form of inquiry. Save the hubris, pass the cheese.
