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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 1960s and 1970s Chicago, what never seemed to happen to street gang members?

2. According to Levitt, because something is correlated to something else does not imply what type of relationship between them?

3. How do teachers most often cheat on standardized tests?

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

5. What percentage of his revenue does JT pay to the Board of Directors?

Short Essay Questions

1. What argument do the authors make about experts?

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

3. How were predictions about violent crime in the Nineties incorrect?

4. How did the introduction of crack cocaine reverse a trajectory in American black culture?

5. What is information asymmetry?

6. How are nylon stockings and crack cocaine similar?

7. From what did the Ku Klux Klan derive its power in the twentieth century?

8. To what extent is the winning of a conventional wisdom battle key to achieving public success?

9. What unorthodox theory do the authors offer regarding the drop in crime in the late 1990s?

10. How does terminology help real estate agents set a price for a house?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Dubner and Levitt spend much of Chapter 5 discussing fear, and how we fear the wrong things in life. Write an essay detailing what drives fear in a community. Why do we fear guns more than swimming pools and flying more than driving? What does control and familiarity have to do with fear? What about proximity with death?

Essay Topic 2

FREAKONOMICS is at heart a challenge to conventional wisdom. The authors regard conventional wisdom as something to be wary of and questioned. Write an essay on the subject of conventional wisdom in three parts:

Part 1) How did the term "conventional wisdom" enter the common lexicon? According to the authors, why is conventional wisdom comforting to people? What purpose does it serve?

Part 2) Why dot he authors deem it so important to challenge conventional wisdom? What does it add to the common discourse, and how does it illuminate the enigmatic world?

Part 3) Analyze one of the topics of any chapter in the book. What conventional wisdom are the authors challenging? How are they going about challenging it, and what conclusion do they reach?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the final realization at the end of FREAKONOMICS that the two hypothetical children in Chapter 5 are Roland G. Fryer, Jr., and Ted Kaczynski. How does this realization fit in with the overall fatalism of the FREAKONOMICS view of human life? Are either or these figures typical of their upbringing? What, statistically, should have become of them based on their childhoods?

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