Reading List: Freakanomics By Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Released about six months ago and currently number two on the New York Times Non-Fiction bestseller list for business books, Freakonomics asks tough questions and tries to answer them through analytic methods used by economics. Freakonomics is a light and entertaining read. It tackles topics like drug dealing, crime rates, real estate agents, children’s names, the Ku Klux Klan, and life insurance. It offers statistical evidence to support its findings. What we like about the book is that it uses statistics to find answers, as opposed to having a pre-conceived notion of expected results and crafting statistics to back them up. Some of its conclusions (such as the effect of Roe v. Wade on the crime rate) have come under fire from critics, but if you read Freakonomics to learn new thought processes, it’s worthwhile.

To learn more about this book, visit the author’s web site at: www.freakonomics.com.