Analysis Of Freakonomics: The New Generation Of Economics

Matthew Nasuta

Mrs. Hogan Period 2

English 12

7 August 2015

Freakonomics: The New Generation of Economics

Chapter one explains about the intention of someone cheating. Cheating is a complex network of people taking advantage of a subject or someone. Often people cheat because they don’t want to disappoint academically or they have manipulated their mentality. “With high-stakes testing has so radically changed the incentives for teachers that they too now have added reason to cheat” (Dubner and Levitt 23). Levitt tries to explain that teachers will take the approach to try and get better test scores by reworking student’s tests so they could get a pay raise. However, this only teaches teachers to try and cheat the system. Chicago Public Schools

“It was a Klan custom, for instance, to append a Kl for many words” (55). The Ku-Klux-Klan used information asymmetry such as the “Kl” talk to conduct secret meetings and give information without making it obvious. Real estate agents will use a variety of words to use like fantastic and great neighborhood, but this doesn’t mean much. Agents will use terms like Granite or State-of-the-art to try and increase a price of a home (71-72). I think it is unethical to use information asymmetry. People will always take advantage of someone unless they do the proper research. Information Asymmetry is a dying concept because of the internet being a massive database that could easily destroys the “secret” information. With information asymmetry, it has impacted Capitalism by destroying an idea of free-market and honest competition. The one time I was victim of information asymmetry was paying too much for baseball tickets. I found out the scalper overcharged me and the seats we had gotten were from further from what we were supposed to

Correlation is a data trend between two different events that are affecting each other at once. A causation is the action of causing another event to happen. An example where causation could get confused with correlation is if a child brings a topic about books or school. This child is then likely to be very successful in the future. Freakonomics also discusses the study called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study which was a study of how kids did in school from Kindergarden to 5th grade based on how well they did in school. It was conducted by the U.S Department of Education. The data implies it is the parent’s fault for not giving the child a good education that they deserve. If they have a lack of resources, they are unlikely to succeed in school (168-169). Whatever the parent has for the child will likely determine the success rate. There will likely be a few outliers that motivate themselves to prove this data wrong, but the data is logical. Someone is likely to succeed more if they are given the tools from a parent who has been also very educated then a child who has a parent that is uneducated (170). I think this is not a case of causation, but a case of correlation. Parent’s who have succeed in life always will give a lot more motivation and resources than a parent who likely is working a job without much motivation and a lack of resources (175). A causation is another event that is led from a previous event. The parent is likely not to motivate if this is the