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Adding up odd numbers and unintended consequences
08 November 2009 Reviewed by David Clerkin
Superfreakonomics
By Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Penguin, €16
What are the chances of writing not just one, but two books which will delight number-crunchers everywhere? Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner answer that question with a joyful, sparkling follow-up to Freakonomics, the 2005 bestseller that explored ‘‘the hidden side of everything’’.
Back then, as now, the authors used a raft of data to challenge so-called conventional wisdom. In the process, they delivered a gem that celebrated the art of independent thinking and looking beyond obvious answers to get to the truth.
And if you liked that, you’ll love this. Despite choosing a singularly unimpressive title for the sequel, Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, and Dubner, his co-conspirator at the New York Times and New Yorker magazine, deliver another fascinating journey into the numbers which reveal the true story behind topics as diverse as the economics of prostitution, terrorism and global warming.
Readers will learn that it makes no sense, from a purely mathematical perspective, to take the car keys from a friend who has been drinking and order them to walk home. As he or she would be far more likely to be killed or injured while walking drunk than driving drunk, getting a taxi would be a wiser choice.
Similarly, the authors reveal a wonderful, if worrying, study into the financial profile of suicide bombers. It turns out that police on the hunt for would-be attackers should watch out for people who one might normally expect to buy life assurance (especially men in their 20s and 30s with a wife and kids), but who have not done so. As there is no incentive for such people to buy life assurance - their insurer is unlikely to pay out on their death, after all - they tend not to waste money on monthly premiums.
The book is an elegant, enjoyable read. Its main argument is a simple one: that people respond to incentives, although not necessarily in the way one might expect. Readers are treated to a second helping of both humdrum and bizarre stories which deal with the law of unintended consequences.
They can marvel at how initiatives aimed at encouraging a particular type of behaviour, for one reason or another, can often cause something completely different to happen.
Levitt and Dubner dance through a range of low-profile examples that are mere footnotes in history. These include Vienna-based doctor Ignatz Semmelweis who, decades before germ-based theories of illness had been developed, had a hunch that the high mortality rate among newborns and mothers at his hospital may have had something to do with the proximity of the mortuary to the maternity ward.
He discovered that doctors, seeking to improve healthcare by conducting autopsies to get a better understanding of causes of death, were contributing to the deaths of mothers and babies by failing to wash their hands afterwards and then going to work on deliveries.
The book also celebrates Robert Strange McNamara, US secretary of defence during the Vietnam War who, earlier in his career, came up with a devastatingly simple solution to injuries sustained in road accidents: the seat belt, ‘‘one of the most effective life-saving devices ever invented’’.
However, the authors note, with some regret, that the doctor who pioneered forceps deliveries unwisely kept his invention to himself.
His decision meant that other doctors remained ignorant for more than a century of a revolutionary technique that could have saved many thousands of lives lost during complicated births.
Fathers, meanwhile, will discover that the primary factor which will determine whether their son makes it as a sports star will be closer to home than they realise, and may leave them regretting not practising their own sports skills.
Anyone who fears that human beings, some day, will run out of ingenuity and fail to stop solving the problems that come their way will be heartened by the examples in this book. One chapter deals with a wacky think tank, founded by former Microsoft executives, who spend their days working on potential solutions to today’s problems.
Whether it is stopping hurricanes developing before they get too powerful, creating a man-made layer in the atmosphere to combat global warming or even cutting down on the transfer of disease in hospitals by getting doctors to stop wearing ties (how often do you wash yours?), it is reassuring to know that there are individuals making it their life’s work to think outside the box for the benefit of us all.
Readers will also be treated to a wonderful experiment that trained monkeys to recognise and use money, with consequences which perhaps should not surprise us: within days, the monkeys had started trading their money in return for sex.
Perhaps fortuitously, the experiment was stopped before any of the participants went as far as becoming a lawyer.
David Clerkin is Markets Correspondent of The Sunday Business Post
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