Think like a freak : the authors of Freakonomics offer to retrain your brain /
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| Author / Creator: | Levitt, Steven D. |
|---|---|
| Edition: | First HarperLuxe edition. |
| Imprint: | New York, NY : HarperLuxe, [2014] |
| Description: | xiii, 301 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/9979340 |
Table of Contents:
- 1. What Does It Mean to Think Like a Freak?
- An endless supply of fascinating questions
- The pros and cons of breast-feeding, fracking, and virtual currencies
- There is no magic Freakonomics tool
- Easy problems evaporate; it is hard ones that linger
- How to win the World Cup
- Private benefits vs. the greater good
- Thinking with a different set of muscles
- Are married people happy or do happy people marry?
- Get famous by thinking just once or twice a week
- Our disastrous meeting with the future prime minister
- 2. The Three Hardest Words in the English Language
- Why is "I don't know" so hard to say?
- Sure, kids make up answers but why do we?
- Who believes in the devil?
- And who believes 9/11 was an inside job?
- "Entrepreneurs of error"
- Why measuring cause-and-effect is so hard
- The folly of prediction
- Are your predictions better than a dart-throwing chimp?
- The Internet's economic impact will be "no greater than the fax machine's"
- "Untracrepidarianism"
- The cost of pretending to know more than you do
- How should bad predictions be punished?
- The Romanian witch hunt
- The first step in solving problems: put away your moral compass
- Why suicide rises with quality of life-and how little we know about suicide
- Feedback is the key to all learning
- How bad were the first loaves of bread?
- Don't leave experimentation to the scientists
- Does more expensive wine taste better?
- 3. What's Your Problem?
- If you ask the wrong question, you'll surely get the wrong answer
- What does "school reform" really mean?
- Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia?
- Maybe it's the parent's fault!
- The amazing true story of Takeru Kobayashi, hot-dog-eating champion
- Fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes!
- So how did he do it?
- And why was he so much better than everyone else?
- "To eat quickly is not very good manners"
- The Solomon Method
- Endless experimentation in pursuit of excellence
- Arrested!
- How to redefine the problem you are trying to solve
- The brain is the critical organ
- How to ignore artificial barriers
- Can you do 20 push-ups?
- 4. Like a Bad Dye Job, the Truth Is in the Roots
- A bucket of cash will not cure poverty and a plane-load of food will not cur famine
- How to find the root cause of a problem
- Revisiting the abortion-crime link
- What does Martin Luther have to do with the German economy?
- How the "Scramble for Africa" created lasting strife
- Why did slave traders lick the skin of the slaves they bought?
- Medicine vs. folklore
- Consider the ulcer
- The first blockbuster drugs
- Why did the young doctor swallow a batch of dangerous bacteria?
- Talk about gastric upset!
- The universe that lives in our gut
- The power of poop
- 5. Think Like a Child
- How to have good ideas
- The power of thinking small
- Smarter kids at $15 a pop
- Don't be afraid of the obvious
- 1.6 million of anything is a lot
- Don't be seduced by complexity
- What to look for in a junkyard
- The human body is just a machine
- Freaks just want to have fun
- It is hard to get good at something you don't like
- Is a "no-lose lottery" that answer to our low savings rate?
- Gambling meets charity
- Why kids figure out magic tricks better than adults
- "You'd think scientists would be hard to dupe"
- How to smuggle childlike instincts across the adult border
- 6. Like Giving Candy to a Bady
- It's the incentives, stupid!
- A girl, a bag of candy, and a toilet
- What financial incentives can and can't do
- The giant milk necklace
- Cash for grades
- With financial incentives, size matters
- How to determine someone's true incentives
- Riding the herd mentality
- Why are moral incentives so weak?
- Let's steal some petrified wood!
- One of the most radical ideas in the history of philanthropy
- "The most dysfunctional $300 billion industry in the world"
- A one-night stand for charitable donors
- How to change the frame of a relationship
- Ping-Pong diplomacy and selling shoes
- "You guys are just the best!"
- The customer is a human wallet
- When incentives backfire
- The "cobra effect"
- Why treating people with decency is a good idea
- 7. What Do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common?
- A pair of nice, Jewish, game-theory-loving boys
- "Fetch me a sword!"
- What the brown M&M's were really about
- Teach your garden to weed itself
- Did medieval "ordeals" of boiling water really work?
- You too can play God once in a while
- Why are college applications so much longer than job applications?
- Zappos and "The Offer"
- The secret bullet factory's warm-beer alarm
- Why do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria?
- The cost of false alarms and other false positives
- Will all the gullible people please come forward?
- How to trick a terrorist into letting you know he's a terrorist
- 8. How to Persuade People Who Don't Want to Be Persuaded
- First, understand how hard this will be
- Why are better-educated people more extremist?
- Logic and fact are no match for ideology
- The consumer has the only vote that counts
- Don't pretend your argument is perfact
- How many lives would a driverless car save?
- Keep the insults to yourself
- Why you should tell stories
- Is eating fat really so bad?
- The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure
- What is the Bible "about?"
- The Ten Commandments versus The Brady Bunch
- 9. The Upside of Quitting
- Winston Churchill was right-and wrong
- The sunk-cost fallacy and opportunity cost
- You can't solve tomorrow's problem if you won't abandon today's dud
- Celebrating failure with a party and cake
- Why the flagship Chinese store did not open on time
- Were the Challenger's O-rings bound to fail?
- Learn how you might fail without going to the trouble of failing
- The $1 million question: "when to struggle and when to quit"
- Would you let a coin toss decide your future?
- "Should I quit the Mormon faith"
- Growing a beard will not make you happy
- But ditching your girlfriend might
- Why Dubner and Levitt are so fond of quitting
- This whole book was about "letting go"
- And now it's your turn
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
