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Levitt And Dubner's Freakonomics

931 Words4 Pages

Levitt and Dubner classify Freakonomics as a book having “no such unifying theme” (14), but all the unique topics discussed throughout the text connect back together in order to show the hidden side of human nature. The argument that the wide variety of topics and their abstract descriptions all link together draws the attention of a large audience and connects to issues that society is currently facing or has recently confronted. Freakonomics, organized as an argumentative piece, asserts that “commerce without morality,” or the conducting of business without a sense of what is right or wrong, is triggered by human actions that are led by incentives, causing changes in the economy. Levitt and Dubner do not explicitly state their argument, but through the use of ethos, pathos, …show more content…

The reader observes how, in this case, the incentives of money and success caused teachers to go against what is right and cheat. Bagels, a completely unrelated subject to teachers, is another topic that Levitt and Dubner present in the text in order to show that even rich individuals who may not have to worry about the incentive of money still conduct themselves in a erroneous manner and commit “white-collar crime” (46) by not paying for bagels in the workplace. There are many other topics even more diverse than school teachers and bagels that are discussed in Freakonomics, but even with this variability, the purpose Levitt and Dubner are proving is shown in each

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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Freakonomics By Levitt And Dubner

1566 Words | 7 Pages

3. Purpose: As the authors put it, “the aim of this book is to explore the hidden side of…everything” (12). Instead of looking at economics as a cold, hard science, the authors aim to add the human touch by taking into consideration human tendencies when making economics arguments. Freakonomics is an unconventional book in that it brings multiples sides and arguments to old data to come to new

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This generates enormous revenue that is also used to support the institution. In response, he says, "I say, so what?" And continues by pointing out that given the sum of money lost and the amount of schooling involved, this cannot be confiscated. He attempts to convince his reader to agree with him by speaking in a way that makes

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1487 Words | 6 Pages

The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner talks about many different things, including cheating teachers and sumo wrestlers, how abortion lowered crime rates, how a street crack gang works, and whether the way parents raise their children even matter. These topics seem to have nothing in common, but all of these topics were identified in the same way: an economist (Levitt) looked at school test scores, crime data, and all sorts of other information, looking at them in unconventional ways. Because of that, he has come to many interesting and unique conclusions that make complete sense. These findings were based on some simple ideas: the power of incentives, conventional wisdom is not always right, things may not have obvious causes, and experts often serve their own interests instead of the interests of others. Perhaps the most important idea in the book is, as Levitt and Dubner state, “Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so” (14).

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698 Words | 3 Pages

The texts Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, explore the tensions between individual desires and social or institutional regulations. All three of the texts suggest that societies use regulations to protect individuals, from their own desires that may be harmful to them. The first example of this can be seen in the Goblin Market, with the character Laura. Laura’s desire to eat the goblin fruit, although forbidden, endangers her life and well being. Laura’s sister tries to prevent her from eating the fruit, yet Laura does not head this advice and eats the fruit anyway.

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1022 Words | 5 Pages

In America, people talk amongst themselves about wealthy and successful people and during the discussion many think of people who have been educated in a traditional schooling system. John Gatto argues in his article “Against School” that this traditional schooling is indeed not necessary to end up educated and successful. Through the use of rhetorical strategies, such as his personal experiences, expert testimony, and anecdotes, Gatto backs up and argues in points. Gatto begins his article by talking about his personal experiences as a teacher and how the education system let him down. Gatto states “The obligations to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn’t know that were childish people.”

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1236 Words | 5 Pages

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1017 Words | 5 Pages

Freakonomics is somewhat random grab bag of topics. The unifying theme of this book for me was finding ways to ask questions so that one's available statistics and data can provide an answer, time after time they used available statistics to provide some time of reasoning or answers to the question being asked. Some of these efforts were more successful than others. Some of the questions Levitt and Dubner study felt unnecessary, that no one really cares about. But there are also some good subjects.

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495 Words | 2 Pages

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1614 Words | 7 Pages

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