Freakonomics

Paperback, 336 pages

English language

Published April 6, 2006 by Penguin.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-101901-7
OCLC Number:: 851801445

(45 reviews)

What do estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common? Why do drug dealers live with their mothers? How can your name affect how well you do in life?

The answer: Freakonomics. It's at the heart of everything we do and the things that affect us daily, from sex to crime, parenting to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. And it's all about using information about the world around us to get to the heart of what's really happening under the surface of everyday life.

Now updated with the authors' New York Times columns and blog entries, this cult bestseller will show you how, by unravelling your life's secret codes, you can discover a totally new way of seeing the world. --back cover

24 editions

Didactylos reviewed Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything, Revised and Expanded Edition by Steven Levitt

Review of 'Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything, Revised and Expanded Edition' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I started off really liking this and found it very thought provoking. However it gets bogged down in a couple of significant but overlong explorations on education and names and this tends to lose the 'punchiness' of the initial approach. Good to make you think in different ways and to stress the need for caution in any analysis, but left me feeling it could have had much greater scope.

Ching-jan reviewed Freakonomics by Steven Levitt

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Statistically seeing the world is a very fascinating approach to break down social issues and common wisdom. This is the book that provide how to see the world in this way. Through various examples, the author presented ways to apply statistical tools and methods to different topics of wide-spread interest. Although the conclusion is either mind-blowing or anticipated. Thinking purely from statistics and the power of it are the true prizes of this book.

Matt K reviewed Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Good, but it obscures some difficult problems with clever stories.

nekokat reviewed Freakonomics by Steven Levitt

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Fun and interesting!

AliCorbin reviewed Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It's interesting, but has a basic problem. One of the premises of the book is that you should question conventional wisdom - that 'what everyone knows' tends to be glib and simplistic and could be just plain wrong. But the examples of his own theories, though they may spring from a rigorous methodology, once distilled into a chapter of a book become glib and simplistic. And could well be just plain wrong.