HW 9 - Freakonomics Response

In what world does someone turn down $50 to improve their grades, they would rather fail and not be paid, rather then put the effort in that was necessary to make them pass. The relationship here is the money and the grades. The causation is the effort needed to be put in for it. When looking for the specific example of the two children who were offered $50 to improve their grades, and then a possibility of $500 for doing it. The fact is that they didn't do it. They found it easier to not do their work and do what they found easy and enjoyable. No one likes, or enjoys homework, but they do it because we need to get the good grades so we can do good in college and make more money. These kids didn't even have to think about college yet, and they were already getting paid to improve their grades, which is what they were supposed to do to go to college. The point of putting this part into the movie is to represent that there is sometimes a disconnect between causation and correlation. These kids had the opportunity to be rewarded for their work and they didn't take it. The authors wanted to address that the relationship between two things can effect the outcome, and through this example they were able to show just that. They offered money for something that the kids didn't want to do, and the kids didn't do it. This demonstrated the simple fact of putting an obstacle in front of the weak, and the weak will do what they can to avoid it. Only the strong willed have the ability to clear this obstacle and eventually reap this reward. The authors don't entirely believe that their experiment failed because it worked for some children, but not for most. So what can get these children to improve their grades? The idea was for the authors to figure that out and they couldn't.

Statistics is the most common source of evidence for the authors because numbers never lie right? They can be used to see patterns and predict future outcomes. So the authors use the records of sumo wrestlers to tell if they are cheating, and the number of abortions to tell is crime went down. But in both of these situations, there was more then one variable. There was still proof behind their numbers, but more specifically in terms of the crime going down due to abortion being legalized, they needed to address other possible factors, like gun laws and police presence which they did do, and they made excellent proof of it. But what is missing is the importance of it. What is the significance behind these findings. Who cares if the sumo wrestlers cheat? And now if we know that abortion leads to lower crime rates, then how come it isn't legal? What is missing in these situations if what we aren't changing what we are doing, but the evidence is there? There has to be something that we aren't seeing if they are making these statements, using evidence to back it up, but yet there is still no change behind it. That leads me to believe that not everything has been brought to light. Maybe there is some evidence they missed

"Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices."

I disagree, very strongly with this statement, because a lot of the statements made in this movie weren't "hidden in plain sight." They were things that people had studied before, and these men just put a new face on the research. As for the names research. They didn't actually prove anything, they just threw facts at us and tried to make it seem like they discovered something. They never were able to prove anything that would positively affect us and make us have a better understanding of what they were trying to prove. There was no inspiration and there was no examples of dominant social practices. So to say that they did a good job is an inaccurate statement at its least. In connection to Fast Food Nation, you can see how these people use the research of other people and use it to build their own "franchise," just like Ray Kroc did with McDonalds. These are examples of people who can fool you because they teach you and please you, but in the end all they really did is get you on their side.