Why are real-estate agents and sumo wrestlers alike?
That's just one of the questions economist Steven D. Levitt answers in his book Freakonomics, co-authored with Stephen J. Dubner, a writer the New York Times Magazine sent to interview him one fateful day in 2003. Unlike your traditional stereotype of economists, Levitt likes to view the world in questions and keep asking why instead of accepting the conventional wisdom. Never mind stock markets and supply and demand when you can look at the hierarchy of a drug gang and why the gang members still live with their mothers. By stumbling across someone with the right data, he found that your average drug dealer in the late eighties in the USA is only making about $3.30 an hour, less than minimum wage! No wonder they have part-time jobs.
What I liked about the book were the followable mathematics and the way that the authors lead you not into new territory, just to the edge so they can open your eyes to what guarded skepticism lets you achieve in life instead of following with the herd blindly.
So why are real-estate agents and sumo wrestlers alike? Pick up a copy and find out!
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