HW 9 - Freakonomics Response

The freakenomics authors address correlation vs. causation by subtly differentiating the two. An example of this in the movie was the cause for why crime rates decreased in the 90s when they were expected to rise. Many politicians and citizens assumed that effective governing, longer prison sentences, increased police officers, a break in the crack epidemic and harsher punishments for minor offences, all contributed as CAUES to the crime drop.  Freakenomics argues that the dominant discourse for why the crime dropped is actually correlated with the crime drop but not completely caused by it. The movie attempts to prove that the development of abortion rights led to fewer unwanted children being born. Parents who were unprepared to raise a child were no longer forced to, thus eliminating a potential unstable environment with little parental support, the child who may have become a criminal was never born. This is the meaning of correlation and causation that I received from the movie; I suppose that some correlation is causation. That was shown in the movie when the directors claimed that although the longer prison sentences, higher police volumes and the reduction of crack wave weren’t the foremost cause of the crime plunge they did make up 65% of the possible reasons for the crime reduction. In this case the correlation is also PART of the causation.

The directors mostly rely on statistics to convey their evidence. Statistics are an innovative tool because it’s releasing the evidence in the most direct and simple way possible. Often time’s statistics are automatically assumed to be true but frequently the evidence used to create the statistics is never released, which can make the statistics less believable.

I disagree that “Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices.” Through out the movie the directors were questioning social principles, such as what incentives construct a slacker/cheater or which incentives create a hardworking/honest person. The movie examined several examples of how incentives work and if they will actually create the presumed result. The sumo wrestlers with a win record of 7 (wins) had incentive to cheat if they were matching a wrestler who had a record of 5 (wins). If the opponent with the lower record won then he was able to move up and he must return the “favor” the next time the two matched again. In both the examples of paying students to achieve higher grades and the incentives behind cheating they definitely examined the reasoning behind incentives and explored the practices but DID NOT explain how they were weird or different from other practices. The movie didn’t critique the behaviors the directors studied they just talked about the patterns they observed.