book review: freakonomics

the book tells you to "prepare to be dazzled" but i can tell you that i wasn't dazzled at all. i can't say that it wasn't an interesting read, because it was. but i found that the fact that the book does not revolve around a unifying theme (the author himself says that it doesn't as well) makes it difficult to focus on something and elaborate.

my own conclusion is that when there is a lot of data around, you can anyway manipulate it and promote whatever conclusions/messages you want to. what levitt does with data, can also be done in order to present the opposite point of view, with the same data. you can promote the same, or opposite point of view, a conventional or radical message.

the sole useful thing i got out of freakonomics is that sometimes you need to look at information not in the way you are used to. you might extract useful conclusions, often different than the "conventional wisdom" (of which i have never been a fan anyways). sometimes we need to take a different view on facts.