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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what year did the Chicago Public School system begin widespread standardized testing?

2. Which of the following is not one of the three types of incentives?

3. Which two cities does Levitt compare in his discussion of police population versus murder rate?

4. Which of the following real estate terms indicates that a home buyer should bid low?

5. Which of the following is not a group persecuted by the Klan in the twentieth century?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why would some winning sumo wrestlers throw a match?

2. How is a sumo wrestler's life affected by his ranking?

3. According to the authors, what motivates everyone?

4. What is information asymmetry?

5. How did Stetson Kennedy use the information he compiled about the Ku Klux Klan?

6. What mindset do the authors ask the reader to take at the end of the introduction?

7. Why had Chicago public schools already been standardized testing for years before No Child Left Behind?

8. Why is a real estate agent inclined to keep her own house on the market longer than her client's?

9. Why is information crime so difficult to catch?

10. What tactics do researchers use to determine if CPS teachers are cheating on standardized tests?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Even though FREAKONOMICS is a work of nonfiction, it has two heroic characters: Sudhir Venkatesh and Roland G. Fryer, Jr. These two men both took unusual roads to a life of intellectual excellence. Write an essay about these men, focusing on their power as subjects as well as sources. What do their stories have in common? How are their exceptional stories juxtapositions to research that effectively argues that humanity is the slave of trends?

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay detailing the authors' comparison between America and Communist Romania's abortion policies. How is Roe v. Wade and Nicolae Ceausescu's accession drastically alter the availability of abortions? What affect id these changes have on the populace and social order in each country? According to Levitt and Dubner, what was the unexpected end result of these separate changes in abortion policy?

Essay Topic 3

Juxtaposition - almost like that in a fictional work - is central to the writing of FREAKONOMICS. Dubner and Levitt often choose two groups - sumo wrestlers and school teachers, a crack-gang and McDonald's - who are connected by some unseen trend or attribute. Write an essay, analyzing three such juxtapositions. How do the authors arrive at the point of comparing these two things? What do they surprisingly have in common? What trend does this connection reveal?

(see the answer keys)

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