This was fun. Most of his points were interesting and by and large well-researched, albeit some better than others. The main positive characteristic of Freakonomics is the way that he goes through his methodology. By and large, it is really a book about encouraging the lay public to question and to think quantitatively and that's a really, really positive characteristic.

The next most positive thing to say about Freakonomics is that it's well written. Having a co-author that is a writer was a major boon. Although each chapter was adapted from work published in peer-reviewed journals, the chapters have similar voices and lengths and flow into the next chapter.

The detractors are the unevenness of evidence for some claims versus others (for instance, the entire chapter on names, while interesting, lacks the evidence to reach any sort of conclusion.) The other major problem with Freakonomics is the excerpts of the article on Levitt that preface each chapter. These laudatory pieces are very off-putting in a book that is co-authored by Levitt -- toot your horn somewhere else!