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Measurement By the Book

You Are the (Measurement) Freak
Freakonomics was written for you.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephan J. Dubne, 2005, William Morrow, 242 pps. Buy it here.

Book review by Bill Paarlberg

Steven Levitt is the "rogue economist" the subtitle refers to, and he is a very smart guy who has made his name by picking up bits and pieces of data here and there and fitting them together to reach interesting and often counter-intuitive conclusions. But what this book is really about is you. You and your work, and the work of all the other measurement types out there who wrestle with their own odd bits of data and statistics in an effort to bring numerical order to PR programs. On its surface, Freakonomics is a fascinating collection of some of Mr. Levitt's more insightful results, but between the lines is a pep talk tailor-made for any researcher who's ever been excited about data and conclusions.

Steven Levitt is an economist, but not of the Keynesian macro stripe that so many of us got to know in some soporific college class. He's more of a celebrity sociologist, and he's made a big splash by shining some research-generated light on the quirks and foibles of American life. You'll have a blast reading this book for the unexpected insights it provides. Take it to the beach this summer; I promise that if you are interested in measurement enough to read The Measurement Standard, then you'll find Freakonomics as compelling as the next Spenser potboiler.

Don't let the slick cover throw you off. This is one of those books that you spot a mile away as packaged to sell by a publisher's marketing department. The snappy title and flashy colors are calculated to stand out on the shelf at Barnes & Noble. Looking at it you can just imagine a gaggle of junior editors drinking double expressos and brainstorming up a concept to make a book about the Dismal Science seem exciting.

To their great credit, they haven't let the packaging get in the way of a good story, which is that you can learn a lot about the world by sifting through data with your mind open. Here's an example of the surprising research you'll find: Suppose you had the choice of sending your child down the street to play at one neighbor's house where guns were stored, or at another neighbor's house where there was a swimming pool. Where would your child be safer? Levitt and Dubne look at the data and discover that, in the US anyway, a child is 100 times more likely to die in a residential swimming pool accident than to be killed by a gun.

And the book is just full of this sort of amazing-but-true data-driven conclusion. Levitt got his hands on the bookkeeping records of a mid-level Chicago drug dealer and uses them to understand why most crack dealers live at home with their moms: They just don't make enough money not to. On top of that, their job turns out to be more dangerous than death row. Yep, that's right: If you are a street corner Chicago drug dealer, you're more likely to be killed at work than if you are waiting excution on death row in Texas. (Snake Plissken, anyone?)

But exciting as they are, the research details aren't as important as the big picture here. If you love measurement and research, and the way black-and-white conclusions emerge from the fog of data, then this book will really fire you up. Here's an exhoratory paragraph from the introduction that's right up any measurement geek's alley:

Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so. If you learn how to look at data in the right way, you can explain riddles that otherwise might have seemed impossible. Because there is nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of confusion and contradiction.

See, I told you. You are the freak this book was written for.

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