The book Freakonomics is composed of a series of essays in which a journalist and an economist demonstrate how, by applying basic principles of economics, data often reveal fascinating truths about how the world works. Along the way, the authors discuss a myriad of seemingly unrelated topics, ranging from sumo wrestlers to drug dealers to baby names. The book, however, is not about any of these topics per se. Rather, it is "about stripping a layer or two from the surface of modern life and seeing what is happening underneath." The reader is told that the authors will use objective data to honestly assess some of these topics. Moreover, the book proposes to demonstrate the following five fundamental ideas: "incentives are the cornerstone of modern life"; "the conventional wisdom is often wrong"; "dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes"; "experts use their information advantage to...