2012-2013 AP Chiefs discussion
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Freakonomics
Thought Process
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Ewkinerk
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Aug 14, 2012 03:28PM
I just finished reading Freakonomics. I liked it. It was interesting and lived up to all the good things I had heard about it. The discoveries and accusations made by Levitt and Dubner were both bizarre and elaborate. But more than anything else, what kept me reading was the authors' thought process. Without having to keep track of a storyline, my thoughts landed on how they could think of the answers to these questions, or even think of the questions to begin with. With the sentence "if you ask enough questions, strange as they seem at the time, you may eventually learn something worthwhile" (85) it sounds as though Levitt and Dubner asked the questions, then went about answering them. I highly doubt they wrote this book entirely based off of rediculous questions they asked. I guaranty that they were first supplied with the information, then made the correlation, then finally wrote the question. Why would they write a questioin if they already knew the answer? They would write it for exaclty the same reason I wrote the sentence before this: for dramatic effect. It still takes incredible amounts of intelligence to make the correlations between data, but the way the book is formatted (question first, answer second) makes the authors seem smarter.
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This is a very intriguing point. I was wondering how the authors came up with such bizarre questions as I was reading the book. It never occurred to me that they may have come up with the questions after they had received the information. I would be very interested to know how they wrote this book exactly, and if they did indeed receive the information first and then form the connections that led them to their strange questions.
Very interesting point. After thinking about Ed's point, I have to agree with him in that some of that information was given to Levitt and Dubner prior to the actual questions being asked in this book. I too think it'd be a great idea to figure out how the actual material was obtained and how the two worked together to write this book.
How orangutangs and plastic water bottle caps alike? Answer that one Levitt and Dubner.
Haha they should make a "like" button on here.
I feel that to get the data they would have had to have some idea of a question so that they would know what they were looking at.
