When you develop an idea about an issue that you are passionate about you may want to conduct research to find the results. This is something that was done many times in the movie. In the movie, an experiment was conducted to find out why crime rates in New York had decreased. Through the experiment they found that most of the “criminals” had been placed in jail and since they were in jail robberies also went down because crack dealers are in jail. Some thefts and robberies are committee by crack dealers and since they are in jail it’s no longer as much of a problem. Steven D. Levitt was telling a story about how he got his daughter to use the bathroom. His wife had been doing everything she could think of to make her daughter use the toilet but she wouldn’t budge. Steven D. Levitt is an economist and that helped him to think about a compromise in the situation. Steven decided that he would give his daughter a bag of M&M’s every time she used the bathroom and she did it because she loves candy. At the end Steven found that his daughter controlled her bladder so she would use the restroom consecutively to get more M&M’s. Another experiment that was conducted would be looking at the results of a test to see if the teacher has cheated. Teachers must fill a certain requirement with their students, or their school may have a problem, so this is the motive behind cheating. On a test Steven said that the teachers would help the students with a test by giving them the last few answers. There is a pattern because if you are able to answer the hardest questions when you didn’t fill in the “easier” questions it’s safe to say you can suspect that something isn’t right.
In the film there were several examples of correlation vs. causation. The beginning of the story started with an example of how our names may or may not determine our success. A mother watched the Cosby Show and she really liked the name Tempest, so when she gave birth she decided to name her daughter Tempest. The only problem was that she had given her the name Temptress. Misplacing a t can change your name a lot. The movie showed that she lived a life of promiscuity and robbery and as she was seeing the judge the question came up of whether or not her name destined her for the life she lived. The correlation is that Black people have strange names and the causation would be that those names don’t determine your success, in some people’s opinion. There were two different researchers who tried to answer this question. At first it seemed as if the two researchers agreed but they disagreed. The Black researcher proved that your name does not determine your success and he used an experiment that proved his thesis. There were two African American brothers named Winner and Loser. Winner was born before Loser but their names didn’t determine their success. Loser became a detective and Loser was in and out of jail. Their names didn’t influence their success because it was the opposite of what I thought it would be. The Indian guy argued that your name does determine your success and he also conducted an experiment to prove it. White people with names like Chester, and Sarah sent out their resumes with Black people with names like Tyrone or Keisha. They sent out the same resume for the same jobs and only 33% of the black people received callbacks and most of the jobs went to the White people with more simple names.
The Freakonomics researches mostly rely on the facts, they don’t make judgments if they want to prove something they conduct an experiment to find the truth. I think Freakonomics did provide an inspiration and good example of our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices. It shows that you can find the truth if you ask the right questions you need answers to. This provided me with an inspiration and example to use when I ask people about their food ways. The idea that people will do anything for money came from the study conducted at the school. Students received money when they received B’s or A’s on their report card and then they had an opportunity to win $500. It was interesting to see how many of the students grades did or did not improve depending on their motivation and willpower. Based on the experiment 5-7% of the students passed that wouldn’t have passed otherwise. The results were that their goal wasn’t accomplished but it raises ideas such as: Should people get paid to eat healthy? With research I think an answer to this question can be derived.
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