That’s a good question, given how competitive it seems to have gotten and how little math preparation I had. Just this year we saw a 20% increase in applications to the U of C program (my colleagues blamed me for all the extra work that made, saying it was a Freakonomics effect). The question of whether I could get into . . .
My wife and I spent the day in the Emergency Room yesterday with our daughter Sophie, who had become severely dehydrated due to gastroenteritis induced vomiting. The folks at the University of Chicago emergency room were very kind to us. I hope we never have to go there again, but if we do, it looks like the generosity of the . . .
In the United States, past research has consistently found that Black teenagers underperform White teenagers by an average of about one standard deviation on tests of IQ and academic achievement. Substantial racial test score gaps are found as early as age five. Roland Fryer and I have written two papers on racial differences in test scores in the past (see . . .
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and, over the years, a collection of startlingly good New Yorker articles, has addressed on his blog the question of why he endorsed Freakonomics (by writing a blurb before it was published) even though its explanation of the 1990’s crime drop dismissed as a cause the “broken windows” theory of law enforcement . . .
Here’s a link to a New York Times article discussing research by Justin Wolfers alleging point shaving in college basketball. Justin Wolfers is also the co-author of an article that is highly critical of research purporting to show a big deterrent effect of the death penalty. I blogged about that issue a few days back.
My wife does volunteer work holding informational meetings for families thinking about adopting from China. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune was writing about international adoption and sat in on Jeannette’s seminar. Consequently, our family got some non-Freakonomics airtime. The whole article is here, but you have to register to read it. I’ve excerpted the high points below. Worth the . . .
Not the typical Freakonomics fare, but: a magazine editor I know, Amy Goldwasser, has sent out this A.P.B. for a book project she’s curating: Thrilled to finally say I’m putting together a book of essays written by teen girls. What will make this one special, elevate it from any teen genre-type collection, is that I’m absolutely committed to their words, . . .
I’m a bit late on this but last night I finally read Jon Gertner’s profile of economist Ed Glaeser in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It’s a wonderful article, to my mind a great example of what happens when you’ve got a smart, interesting, candid subject and a smart, curious, agreeable writer. We learn a lot about economics from . . .
Because we wrote this article, a lot of people are visiting this Web site to get our e-mail address to write in various comments. I’d suggest anyone who does so should feel free to post comments here so that everyone can see them.
For those of you who read what we wrote last month about NASCAR’s recent safety record, or even for those of you who didn’t, here’s a really interesting paper on the subject by Russell S. Sobel and Todd M. Nesbit at West Virginia University.
The academic debate on the death penalty is heating up again. Three decades ago, Isaac Ehrlich went head to head with a dozen critics. In the end, most unbiased observers concluded that the results were too sensitive to minor changes in specifications to draw any strong conclusions. More recently, a host of authors have once again been arguing that the . . .
In Freakonomics, we wrote about my research with Chad Syverson which looked at how real estate agents did when they sold their own houses versus those of their clients. You can read the original academic paper here. Now we’ve got a new paper idea on real estate, but we need some help from real-estate agents/brokers — especially ones that either . . .
Here’s the article. This sort of story always makes me more than a little bit sad. But for me, the big question is this: Who on earth wants to own a bunch of trophies that someone else earned? (Especially if they cost half a million dollars.) What sort of benefit is to be gained by owning these trophies? For me, . . .
There’s a brand-new, four-part Freakonomics Study Guide, available for free for anyone who uses the book for teaching. (The four parts are: Teacher’s Guide, Student’s Guide, Test Answers and Test Questions.) The Guides were commissioned by HarperAcademic and seem to be very well done. Click here for all the information you need.
The subject this time around is real estate — more specifically, the plight of the modern real-estate agent. Our “Freakonomics” column is in the March 5 New York Times Magazine, an issue devoted solely to real estate. The article will be available online as of late Sat., March 4. Here’s a link to a separate page on this website with . . .
From the BBC, this news report: Sudan man forced to ‘marry’ goat A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal. The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders. They ordered the man, Mr . . .
Real estate is a topic that never goes away. The upcoming New York Times Magazine is a special issue dedicated to real estate, and Dubner and Levitt’s column explores the plight of the modern-day real-estate agent. You might be surprised by what they have to say. (As always, there will be a page posted on this site with bonus materials.) . . .
One of the projects I’ve been engaged in lately is trying to catch players who are cheating in online poker. (This is unrelated to the Pokernomics analysis I have also been doing — although at a glacial pace. For those of you who sent me hand histories we will be getting you ring game analyses within the next couple weeks.) . . .
It’s Freakonomics that I’m referring to. In what way is it so weird? Well, leaving aside any discussions of its content, consider this strange fact: in the past 10 years (the only years for which we have data), only two books have spent more time on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list without ever reaching No. 1. That’s right. . . .
A couple weeks ago, I blogged about a gadget called Skybox, which would give people at sporting events access to all kinds of data, ranging from player stats to concession prices to instant replays. Tim Hayden of Vivid Sky, the company behind Skybox, has been kind enough to invite readers of this blog to play around with a demo. I . . .
The devotion exhibited by some Freakonomics fans is downright inspiring. And inspired. Click here to see what I’m talking about. (Make sure you scroll down one screen.)
Freakonomics, apparently. Just published in France, the book (as of this posting) was sitting in the Top 10 on Amazon.fr.
Back in high school, Dave Kansas was a teammate of mine on our state-champion quiz bowl team. We also shared starting duties at point guard on our high school basketball team, which explains why we were not state champions in basketball. Anyway, Dave Kansas has done pretty well for himself. He was a journalist at the Wall Street Journal before . . .
I don’t know the answer to this question, I just throw it out for blog readers to ponder. The competition for the Nobel prize in economics is a lot less fierce than most people think. Most of the winners graduate from a prestigious Ph.D. program (and this will be increasingly true in the future, I would guess). Each year, perhaps . . .
An Italian court has found that a man who sexually abused his 14-year-old stepdaughter should receive a lighter sentence because the girl was not a virgin — and, therefore, the damage to her was not as significant as it would have been otherwise. The price of virginity is a subject that has received much attention over the centuries (the Talmud, . . .
In response to my post regarding false predictions not being properly punished, some blog readers took exception to my argument that the hysteria that surrounded Y2K was a false prophesy. Their argument is that all of the preparation leading up to Y2K averted what would have been a disaster. That just doesn’t ring true to me. Was there not anyone, . . .
The February 19, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine concerns NASCAR, or the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, which in a previous incarnation was known, quite fittingly, as the Stock-Car Auto Racing Society, or SCARS. This post contains bonus material.
Our new “Freakonomics” column, appearing in today’s New York Times Magazine, takes a look at NASCAR’s recent record of crashing and fatalities. Not surprisingly, the Times’s sports section is full of NASCAR articles, since today is the running of the 2006 Daytona 500 (which marks 5 years since the death of Dale Earnhardt). One of these articles, by Viv Bernstein, . . .
Dubner and I wrote a column in the NY Times that told people to bet on Seattle in the Super Bowl. The bet lost. Not more than three people mentioned this to me afterwards. Not a single angry e-mail from a stranger who lost their college tuition fund because of our column. I’m glad people didn’t write me, but still, . . .