I really haven't ever had much of an interest in economics, but my brother gave the recent book Freakonomics to me with the highest of recommendations. I figured I'd give it a shot, I haven't posted many books lately. Turns out this was really good. The authors of Freakonomics admit that the book has no underlying theme, it is merely a study of pure facts and drawing conclusions from the data in interesting and unexpected ways. Some of the results involve a major connection between abortion and crime, or the similarities between sumo wrestlers and schoolteachers (hint: both are cheating). Levitt and Dubner come to some very surprising conclusions- some were funny, others might even offend, but all of it was interesting enough to make the book a page-turner that I couldn't put down easily. I'll probably jump into the sequel, Superfreakonomics, sometime soon.
I think I appreciated this book on a similar level as you did: as a numbers and statistics geek, but not necessarily an economist at all. Superfreakonomics was not necessarily better or even wider in scope, but it felt like it had more of a scientific approach. Not so much "this data points to these conclusions" as much as "perhaps we could prevent global warming if..."
ReplyDeleteAnyway, they're a pair of fun reads, for sure, and if a threequel ever comes out, I'll definitely be one of the first to read it.