Because I Can

I just finished Freakonomics, the bestseller written by an economist and New York Times writer. It's interesting, as it explores some fun questions. Though the authors claim no central focus, the subjects of the chapters are cheating, information, crime, and how a child will end up as an adult, and seem to add a bit to each other.

Much attention is also given to Levitt's personal life and how he ended up researching various problems, which I suppose is to be attributed to Dubner. This book was really written for a very mainstream audience, as it is not only apolitical, but also does not require a prerequisite knowledge of economics.

I did find myself agreeing with Thomas Sowell's assessment of Freakonomics in a random thoughts column, where he stated:

Economist Steven Levitt's best-selling book "Freakonomics"
is not really about economics. It is about applying systematic reasoning to all
sorts of social problems. Systematic reasoning is needed even more than
economics.

The emphasis on the reasoning was not in the use of economics, but the system of testing against data to reveal underlying causes. The way the book analyzes statistical findings (without showing all the data that was processed) reveals perhaps a bit more about how statisticians think. What makes this an economics book is the use of the idea that people act rationally in their own self-interest, which is how to arrive at some of the startling conclusions.