ExpertDabbler

When a writer of Malcolm Gladwell’s caliber writes a glowing blurb for a book, it sure prompts people to buy. To be honest, that was the key for my decision to buy this book. And in the end I was happy I decided to go by Gladwell’s blurb.

At the outset, we should make one thing clear. Freakonomics has as much to do with economics as Namitha has to do with acting. It depicts what if a pozhudhu pogaadha brilliant economist decides to analyze why people do what they do, with the help of tonnes of data. According to Levitt, Economics is a subject with immense array of tools for analysis and enquiry but very little potential for intriguing questions. So he applies these time tested statistical tools to some intriguing questions and manages an engaging non-fiction best-seller.

Some of the highlights of the books include the fascinating insights into the factors that contributed for a dramatic decline in US’ crime rate in the 90s. Not to mention some revelations about Sumo wrestlers’ match-fixing, the nightmare of a life that street drug dealers manage to live and the part played by Sudhir Venkatesh in this research.

The downside of Freakonomics is that it almost sounds too light and playful. The chapters are chapters and paragraphs are paragraphs just like that.
It’s almost as chaotic as the world wide web.

But Freakonomics shows how to analyze and present it in a manner which makes for interesting reading. It reminded me of some sections in Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal. I know I am making a weird comparison but this book was so reminiscent of detective’s work in that novel.

All in all, Freakonomics has interesting implications and can be applied in a lot many situations even in an Indian context. If only I had the brains of Levitt and the tonnes of data he had access to, I would start with a series of questions and try to find out the success and failure of the reservation system in India.

For me, Gladwell did not disappoint though one can argue this book was written by Dubner and Levitt. Maybe, we should pose a freakonomics kinda question about the factors which prompted people to buy this book:-

Was it the title?
Was it that the rave reviews ?
Effective publicity? or
Gladwell’s blurb?

But never mind, go and find it out yourself. After all its not often that one associates the suffix -nomics with interesting reading material

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.