Freakonomics

I just read Freakonomics. It was quite interesting. I'm not sure I'm fully convinced of all of his results, but he does bring up some interesting points and interesting ways of looking at problems, such as how he shows that Roe v. Wade is actually the cause of the massive drop in violent crime at the end of the '90s and swimming pools are more dangerous for children than guns. I think the three big take away points are correlation does not apply causation, common sense isn't always right, and even seemingly big and vague questions can be answered by properly framing and studying the question. Ok maybe those are just somethings I think and happened to see in his book, but it's my blog so I get to state what the point of the book is. If you disagree feel free to post a comment.

I like those points so I'd recommend the book, but I think there are a few downsides. Ok at first I was unhappy that there are no footnotes with references to the research he sites, then Mike told me to look at the end of the book and then I saw the quite extensive end notes - so never mind on that one. While I did appreciate his discussion of correlation not implying causation, in most of his examples he shows lots of evidence for his claims but he doesn't do a very good job of stating which evidence supports correlation and which evidence supports causation. The one other thing I didn't like is that before each chapter there is a quotation about how great he is - now I know he co-wrote the book with someone else so it was probably the other person who put them in - but still...

So overall I'd recommend it, but would recommend you buy a little salt to go with it.
Thanks Mike and Laura for loaning it to me - of course I finished it on the way back from Boston... Oh well guess I'll have to see you again so I can give it back.

If you are wondering about correlation not implying causation you can read about how a lack of pirates is causing global warming, scroll down to see the graph that proves it (thanks to Max for pointing that one out).