I’m a recent new listener to a variety of podcasts, as I now find myself with a long commute, and Freakonomics is now in my standard rotation. As such, my partner suggested I check out the book, so I dropped it into my audiobook queue (see previous: long commute) and I knocked it out fairly quickly, as it is a short listen clocking in at just under seven hours. If you are unfamiliar, here is the description of the podcast, from their website: ” Host Stephen J. […]
Outdated, but easy to see why it’s popular.
I’m afraid I don’t really have much interesting commentary to contribute to the discourse around Freakonomics. The first edition was published over 10 years ago, and I strongly suspect that the contents seemed much more “rogue” then, than they do now, in the thick of a Big Data revolution where these type of interdisciplinary data-mining projects to form sociological hypotheses have become altogether common and trendy. Clearly, Levitt and Dubner have a good sense for interesting topics and an accessible approach to exploring them, as […]
I wish more sites would do this
This was purchased remaindered so I wasn’t upset when I found this was less a new freakonomics book and more a collection of their blog posts collected into book form. It wouldn’t have even been a disappointment new if I’d been aware that’s what I was buying. But it definitely feels like the collection of essays written for online readers that it is. Each piece is short and minimally explored, some being absolute puff and others leaving me feeling deprived that they weren’t expanded upon. […]
Insightful, but that’s it.
Forty-seventh book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. I’m starting to appreciate this genre of books. I didn’t like them at first because they never account for their methods. But I’m beginning to understand that there is no method! The areas where they are applying data analysis and coming up with astonishing conclusions are those where such techniques have never been used. Another reason why I didn’t like these books was because they seem to hype the discoveries that they make. Malcolm Gladwell is especially […]