[Books]
Freakonomics.
I finally got around to reading Freakonomics, the most-hyped book in recent memory. You may detect in my characterization high expectations, and indeed I had them. Everybody on the planet--readers, reviewers, my officemates--seemed to regard this book, about Steven D. Levitt's economic theories, as some kind of oracle. Even the book itself, in which chapters begin with little hagiographic bits about Levitt--did its best to hype the theories as just short of devinely insightful.
I have no idea if this is true, because Levitt doesn't show his work. He seems pretty successfully to show the effects of other efforts to dull crime had weak or no correlations with the dropoff--though again, we're getting the made-for-TV numbers. The exercise is good at showing how you can use piles of numbers to test hypotheses, and how the results are little correlated with conventional wisdom.
What the book doesn't do is offer anything near the kind of revolution readers, reviewers, and the book itself promises. Levitt may be an interesting guy, and his mind is lively and unexpected, but don't pick up the book expecting to find answers to life's great riddles.
2 comments:
how in the hell do you have time to read books?
Very s l o o o o w w w l l y.
Post a Comment