Alternately fascinating and frustrating. An economist investigates and examines statistics to answer questions that people don't naturally think of. Why drug dealers live with their mothers? What cocaine and nylons have in common? etc.

Though he takes a broader view and also accesses more data than what is often available, he, like others he is almost mocking, makes grand pronouncements about what the statistics say. Statistics aren't worth much in my opinion and can be read in so many ways, taking various things in to account and leaving others out often in order to get the result you want/expect.

Writing: Each chapter asked a question and the answer often involved many stats. It was a bit complicated to follow in audio format as he began some topics and wouldn't finish them until a later chapter.

It's an interesting read, although the title may be a bit misleading. There's actually very little economics in it, most of which is difficult to verify.

Interesting read, nevertheless. ( )

Steven D. Levitt is an economist who finds correlations between seemingly unrelated things, using statistics and data as evidence. For sure, that means this book covers some interesting subjects and provides a lot of food for thought. However, on the whole, I thought the book delved only very shallowly into the topics of exploration.

I get the sense the book was put together very quickly and without much effort. Levitt himself states that he didn't actually want to write a book originally and it shows as each chapter seems to skim the surface of its topic, when there could have been far more investigation into it. The book is very very light on the actual statistical data as well, which makes its arguments less solid. I can't help but compare this to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, which is very much in the same vein as both books use a variety of more anecdotal data to make their points, all the while weaving together a picture of the hidden connections behind the workings of reality. Maybe it was due to reading Outliers as an audiobook (it was Gladwell himself who narrated it and you can clearly hear his passion about the subject matter), but this book felt really superficially-constructed, like the authors just wanted to get it out of the way.

I thought some of the things covered in Freakonomics were obvious already-- who really believes drug dealers live glamorous lives? or that that real estate agents would put in the same amount of work selling a client's house compared to their own house? Really, the most interesting things I learned from this book were not in fact directly related to the book's subject matter but little tidbits of tangential info like how childish and bizarre the Ku Klux Klan's inner workings were (Imperial Wizard and Grand Dragon being some Klan titles for higher ranking members-- hilarious!). I guess in the end, I didn't really find this to be an eye-opening book-- the conclusions it made about parenting, sumo wrestlers and violent crime were a lot less freaky than the book's summary seem to suggest.

Finally-- was it really necessary to include excerpts from Dubner's article on Levitt in the book? Every chapter is preceded by a few paragraphs essentially proclaiming how brilliant and intelligent and amazing Levitt is. There is really no need to tell us. If he is as brilliant as Dubner thinks he is, then the strength of his ideas will show in the book and us readers will be able to make make that judgement for ourselves when we read it. ( )

Interesting book which shows many examples where common wisdom is just not supported by reality. ( )

Awesome book. I wouldnt of read if i didn't find it in an op shop, very glad that I did. Makes such complicated relationships between seemingly unconnected events seem simple. Onto superfreakonomics next. ( )