Specialization is for Insects

My brother Mark gave me a book for Christmas: Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Yes, I know, Christmas was 4 months ago. I just read the book last weekend. I could claim I’m super busy (and I often do make that claim) but the truth is I just don’t read much anymore. Not books, anyway. After reading Freakonomics, I think maybe I should read books more often.

I have a soft spot for Economics. Its basic axioms are directly descended from British Empiricists like David Hume, my all time favorite philosopher. And Freakonomics is cowritten by Steven Levitt, a UofC Economics professor. I have a soft spot for the UofC. Double Bonus.

I should clarify that I don’t have a soft spot for the sort of economics you see on TV: talking heads who try to explain that the price of oil will go up in the next 30 days, or that inflation is on the rise, or whatever. That sort of economist is no more than a modern seer, and anyone who pays attention to a seer is a fool. Economists don’t know any more about what is going to happen in the future than the average joe on the street. Maybe even less.

The sort of Economics I have respect for is the philosophy (I won’t call it a science) that attempts to predict behavior based on the assumption that individuals are rational, and will do what they think is in their interest. Economists then observe actual behavior and see how it correlates with the expected behavior.

Freakonomics is a collection of expanded articles which apply economic ideas to various everyday subjects. It’s a quick read, and there is no requirement to read the chapters in order. Each chapter starts with a provoking idea, and then examines and defends that idea. Standardized tests give teachers and schools an incentive to cheat, and some of them do. Real estate agents don’t necessarily get their clients the best price. Legalized abortion is the biggest single cause of the drop in violent crime since 1990. Parenting doesn’t matter (but parents do matter). The only exception is the last chapter, about baby names. There is no provocative idea, just an examination of popular baby names and how names move “up” or “down” the social ladder. Yeah. Well, I guess nobody bats a thousand.

My biggest gripe with Freakonomics is the authors’ reliance on statistical methods to to make an argument. I don’t trust statistics: 60% of the time, they lie all the time. One thing I remember from Statistics 220 is that statistics are only valuable if they are drawn from a good, representative sample. Getting a good sample is very difficult. If you are an unscrupulous statistician, you don’t even want a good sample.

I’m not saying Levitt and Dubner are unscrupulous. But they are the ones who point out that everyone cheats if the incentives are right.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 11:13 pm by matt and is filed under Books, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.