Graham King:
The sequel to bestselling "Freakonomics". This sequel is an easy, fun read, but it's Sunday supplement journalism, not science.
Despite repeat admonitions about the importance of well-designed experiments and how important it is to derive your conclusions from solid data, there is precious little of either in this book.
There's a section on data-mining bank transactions to find terrorists which amounts to little more than racial profiling, plus, euh, a secret: "What finally made it work was one last metric that dramatically sharpened the algorithm. In the interests of national security, we have been asked to not disclose the particulars."
Other explorations of "the hidden side of everything" include:
- a sycophantic report on the "obscenely smart gentlemen of Intellectual Ventures", where there's no data at all, just an interview with a venture capitalist.
- an interesting, if mostly in a voyeuristic way, section on Chicago prostitutes ("a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop that to be arrested by one").
- a dubious claim that walking drunk is more dangerous than driving drunk
There are some interesting pieces amid the sensationalism, for example on the "missing women" of India, and on the limits of altruism.
Finally, there is one section which might redeem the entire book: A thorough re-think of the infamous Kitty Genovese murder. A staple of social psychology textbooks, out of which came knowledge of the "bystander effect". I recommend getting "Super Freakonomics" from the library, and reading only that section.
