A good read..

I was by the Uni's Blackstone and picked up a book I've heard of sometime back. Freakonomics, anyone? Econs has always been one subject I found interesting. Freakanomics deals with issues such as crime, parenting, drug-dealing, sumo-wrestlers and such.. Putting numbers to uncover the truth and we'll learn that conventional wisdom isn't that wise after all. After all, the numbers never lie. For example, incentives encourage/discourage people, dont they? Or do parents actions actual have any effect on their children's outcome? Professionals (ie: doctors, real estate agents) have our best interests in our mind don't they? And did crime in New York really drop because of better policing? The answer for this one is really shocking but he does have the numbers to back it up. His answer really fans the flames for the pro-choice v. pro-life argument although he doesn't impose his moral judgements on the argument but merely gives the figures to illustrate his point.

As the tagline goes,' Assume nothing, question everything.' Which is precisely what this book does. One point which I'll like to pick up is how he goes to prove that what parents do doesn't seem to effect their outcome of their children. Its more on who their parents are rather than what we do. This would probably come to a shock to most but this can be seen from the fact that African Americans don't do as well as the whites in the US not because of their skin colour but because of their socio-economic background. He readily implies that generally, the outcome of the child is long before the parents even pick up a book on parenting. Yet, he does concede that there are always exceptions.

His methology in proving/disproving things involve using anecdotal and statistical evidence.

It's a damn good read. 200+ pages tho'. It's a really short read but entertaining and shocking but funny at the same time. Doesn't matter whether you're in interested in economics or not. All you need is an interest in human behaviour or more specifically, life. It's better than Micheal Moore coz somehow you get that Micheal's just hyping everything up but here in Freakonomics.. it feels more truthful and the numbers really do seem to back it up. Highly recommended.