Freakonomics

Why does drug dealers still live with their moms? What makes a perfect parent? With data and analysis, this book tries to answer some unrelated random questions.

Freakonomics is divided into six chapters, each starting off with a question. On initial thoughts, the answers look obvious. Using tools to reliably asses tonnes of data, this books comes with interesting and often surprising answers. Rather than being a dull subject, economics here is applied to a variety of common topics with amusing results.

The book drives on a set of fundamental ideas:

• Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.
• Conventional wisdom is often wrong
• Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes.
• Experts 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.

A must read if you are a curious cat and interested in knowing where have all the criminals gone.