Brady McNally
Professor T.J. Holloway
BUA-101
2 October 2013
Freakonomics
When you hear the title economist, the consensus define an economist as someone who
studies data and statistics to spot economic trends; however economist Steven Leavitt with
the collaboration of author Stephen Dubner use economic research as a tool to study events
and problems that we encounter on a daily basis in everyday life. Leavitt and Dubner
explore tackle subjects ranging from drug dealing in America to sumo wrestling in Japan
to demonstrate how economists can derive and reveal truths about certain trends, people
and more importantly you as a person.
Freakonomics is described as a challenge to conventional wisdom, which are the ideas or
explanations generally accepted by the general public. The term conventional wisdom was
coined by economist John Kenneth Gallbraith, who described conventional wisdom as
being simple, convenient or comforting, however not necessarily true. An example of this
would be an activist group stretching the truth on statistics in order to gain more attention
and support. Leavitt states the conventional wisdom is full of misunderstandings and is
often wrong since one does not look into the motivations behind a specific situation or
event. Conventional wisdom is often created by experts in a certain field who makes
observations and conclusions without resorting to the facts. From there, the information
gets repeated by the media, who passes it to the public.
Levitt uses historical assumptions on correlation causality as ways of explaining
conventional wisdom. Causality is a correlation of two variables that does not imply one
