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In writing this sequel to the uberbestseller Freakonomics, did Levitt and Dubner forget everything that made the first book fun? Instead of amusing minutiae, this book attempts to tackle "big issues," but it fumbles them. I think enough's already been said about the bizarre global warming chapter, but then there's also the lame chapter about terrorism (I suppose you could say this about almost anything in retrospect, but doesn't the conclusion about life insurance seem incredibly obvious?), and
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I read the first book around 5 years ago on the recommendation of a friend and I still think the same. In statistics, the p value shows the significance of the relationship between subjects being compared (if a relationship is indeed present or absent), and there is no such thing in this book because the subjects were not studied or observed together. The authors describe it best themselves - "If, for instance, you added up all the women and men on the planet, you would find that, on average, th
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Listening to the audiobook, read by Dubner. The introduction was charming, and I'm keen to see how they tie each mini-study to their newfound theme (incentives can make behavior seem illogical). But their first little assertion, that drunk walking is more deadly (for the drinker anyway) than drunk driving, relies on a completely invented assumption -- that the same proportion of walking distance is covered drunk as is driving distance (and I'm curious to look up the source of that proportion, as
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I really like pop-economics books. They allow me to drag up from the dregs of my brain the little tidbits I learned back in my econ classes. Levitt and Dubner focus on microeconomics and behavioral economics to explain why certain things are they way they are.
This book has a different feel than Freakonomics - I think because they based this largely on blog entries. I still found it extremely interesting. The global warming chapter had me rethinking a lot of things I've held true, and I will prob ...more
This book has a different feel than Freakonomics - I think because they based this largely on blog entries. I still found it extremely interesting. The global warming chapter had me rethinking a lot of things I've held true, and I will prob ...more
I think I liked this book better than the first. I liked the balanced view on the global warming issue.
The text book format made reading this a bit of a challenge (it's heavy and some of the print is incredibly tiny.)
Once again, the information is fascinating, and I often found myself reading parts of it aloud to my husband. ...more
Once again, the information is fascinating, and I often found myself reading parts of it aloud to my husband. ...more
More of the same except less interesting than the first one. They spend WAY TOO LONG on the topic of climate change and picking on An Inconvenient Truth.
I loved it; especially the parts on seat belts, child safety seats, hurricane prevention, and global warming options.
