The book authored by Steven D Levitt, a teacher of Economics at the University of Chicago and Stephen J Dubner, an author and journalist “explores the hidden side of everything”. The author attacks some of the very basic assumptions we hold about the way people, society, work and most importantly the way we look at data. The book unfolds more like a detective story rather than the typical economic treatise. The author states that the book has been written from a very specific worldview based on a few fundamental ideas; Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life - and understanding them or, often ferreting them out is the key to solving just about any riddle, from violent crimes to sports cheating to online dating. The conventional wisdoms is often wrong. Conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done. Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes. The answer to a given riddle is not always in front of us. “Experts” from criminologists to real estate agents use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.
Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so. If one learns how to look at data in the right way, one can explain riddles that might otherwise seem impossible. And because there is nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of confusion and contradiction.
To give a small example, the author discusses how the crime rate had spurted during the 70s - 80s attributable mainly to Teenagers and adolescents. Criminologists, political scientists alike forecast the emergence of a new breed of super predators and a massive rise in crime in the United States of America. However despite all such predictions, the crime rate instead of rising, fell by an astounding margin. The author goes on to lay threadbare the various reasons attributed to this fall in crime rate, i.e Better Policing, Improved economy, Stricter gun control laws.
Finally the author states that the judgment on allowing abortion given by US Supreme Court in the Roe vs Wade case, led to a dramatic fall in the number of unwanted and teenage pregnancies and children born out of wed lock. The author states that this judgment leading to the decline in the number of wayward youth was the reason for the decline in the number of crimes.
As mentioned earlier the aim of the book is to “explore the hidden side of everything”. Thus the authors have gone about looking at many different scenarios and examine them in a way they have rarely been examined. In some regards this is a strange concept for a book. Most books revolve around a single theme. However there seem to be no single unifying theme in this book. And that is the beauty of the concept behind the book don't accept things at face value. Scrape the surface, analyse the data and wealth of information will unfold in front of you.