Steven Levitt

Throughout chapters seventeen through twenty-four of the nonfiction novel From Triumph to Tragedy, authors John Tartaglio and Andrew Chapin argue that, regardless of the circumstances of a situation, people should not give up on the way to reaching their goals when unexpected challenges hinder their ability to achieve what they aspire to. Both authors want to encourage readers to battle through tough times, by highlighting that, despite the challenges which come with having both legs amputated…

In their book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner apply economics to questions and problems that we generally would not view from an economic standpoint. They show how economics isn’t strictly for goods and services, but can be applied to many—if not all—aspects of our lives. They look at seemingly unrelated subjects and link them together economically, such as how schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers are alike, or how the Ku…

However, if they pay more attention to the problem, I believe there is always a simple way to solve the problem, which sometimes could be the best solution to the problem. As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner state in their book titled Superfreakonomics, “But the best fix, he realized, was also the simplest one” (Levitt and Dubner 148). Nowadays, people tend to use internet and social medias most of the time, either at work or at home. However, spending too much time on social medias can cause…

Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner SOAPstone When economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner published Freakonomics, many asked the authors, how do they think like this? How can one think like this? In response, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner wrote Think Like a Freak, a how-to guide on extreme outside of the box thinking. By asking obvious questions, thinking like a child, and many other strange behaviors that can only be explained with the…

struck by lightning. Being struck by lightning is a very rare occurrence, but does that mean we still shouldn’t worry about it as much as other things? According to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s article “SuperFreakonomics: What Should You Worry About?”, we shouldn’t fear things like this as much as things like cancer. Levitt and Dubner claim that we are “bad at assessing risk” and that we focus on things that are least likely to happen to us verses things that happen on a regular…

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner takes on six different topics with an interesting type of thinking. Throughout the book the authors question what causes the variables of x and y. In this they go over if one causes the other or if they are just related and causes by another factor z. This brings to question many topics and goes deep into the analysis of what causes what and if there are hidden factors that people don’t see. To do this they use many sources of statistics to…

The Webster dictionary defines a freak as such “one that is markedly unusual or abnormal”. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have a slightly different perspective on the term freak. “To think a bit differently, a bit harder, a bit more freely” (Think Like a Freak, 211). Throughout their novel, they encourage you, as the reader, to think diversely in your everyday life. Each chapter guides you through a new insightful way to think about situations. From admitting that you just don’t know,…

Week Three Freakonomics Analysis Question The authors of Freakonomics (2006) relate a gang of drug dealers and how their operation works to a tournament or a winner take all market. They imply that a person starts on the bottom of the chain like an athlete or game player would in a sporting tournament, then they work their way to the next level of the game by winning or beating all of the other opponents on that level. The player would eventually work their way through all of the levels until…

theme in the book, Levitt and Dubner have a recurring theme which states that “economists love incentives…The typical economist believes that the world has not yet invented a problem that he cannot fix if given a free hand to design the proper incentive scheme.” Freakonomics can described as the power of incentives and how one acts upon them. Similar to the definition of freakonomics, economics is the study of human behavior as it betrays itself in a murky cloud of incentives. As Levitt and…

Charles Wheelan was born in 1966 and later graduated from Dartmouth college with a major in economics. He currently is a democratic candidate the the U.S Representative for Illinois in the 5th District. He is also the author of Naked Statistics, Naked Money and Naked Economics. Wheelan wrote Naked Economics in a way that anyone can understand it, whether you are a professional economist or just a high school student studying basic economics. After reading the entire book, it is now clear to me…