freakonomics


 * __Freakonomics__**
 * __Chapter3__**
 * The book shows that often experts “lie” about their data to further their cause. Police, homeless and more.
 * Conventional wisdom is what most people believe is true. Most people think drug dealers make a lot of money. We find out that it’s not true.
 * We find out that many drug dealers make less than minimum wage.
 * We also find out why they take these risks and earn so little.
 * In the same way we realize why so many live with their mothers.
 * We discover that a drug organization is very well organized, much like any Fortune 500 company.
 * We see once again that improved production and supply has an impact on the price in the market.
 * We also learn why Crack has such a drastic impact on some communities.
 * We also find out how all this valuable info got into Sid’s possession.

- Single parent home - Young mother(often a teenager) - Poorly educated The author concludes that abortion is why the crime rate dropped so dramatically. He easily defends the data but doesn’t take a position on the morality of abortion. __**Correlations**__ are conclusions that we draw from date. We know this because...... It is what the data tells us. This is much easier when we have a lot of data.
 * __Chapter 4__**
 * Following Ch3, we see crime was increasing at an alarming rate and then suddenly fell.
 * We look at conventional wisdom about crime prevention;
 * More police, stricter laws, more jail time, more jobs, ageing criminals
 * While all of those things help reduce crime they do not explain the sudden massive drop that was seen in the US.
 * We also discover a common thread for most criminals

__**Chapter 5 Parenting**__
 * We judge a child by their achievements Acedemic, sporting, business
 * Black children generally lag, why?
 * 1954 Brown vs Board of Education sought to address this
 * 1990 very little had changed
 * Convention wisdom said that it was the poor schools
 * CPS opened their schools, no longer bound by district and neighborhood
 * Some went and did well (they also did well in their old schools)
 * So it wasn’t the school
 * Acting white was a problem, why?
 * They followed 20,000 students and looked at 16 things. Looking for correlations
 * Correlation, link connection we know this because….

//__16 things considered were;__// //-Parental Education// //-Was the mother 30 or older ?// -Is the family intact ? //-Did the child have a low birth weight?// //-Was English the language of the home?// //-Did the house have many books?// -Was the child regularly spanked? -Were you read to as a child? -Did you watch a lot of TV? //-Were your parents on the PTA?// -Did you go to museums? //-Were you adopted?// -Did your mother stay home from birth to kindergarten? -Did you attend Head Sprout? //-Did your parents have money?// -Did you live in a good hood?

__**Chapter 6 What's in a name?**__

In Chapter 6 we saw lists and lists about names. On the surface they told us about popular white and black names.


 * Does a name make a difference?
 * What does the name really tell us?
 * What else does it tell us?(what we now know from Ch 3,4,& 5)