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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 country is every adult male issued a gun by the government to keep at home?

2. On average, what percentage of the student population is black in a school that an ECLS white child attends?

3. In a per-hour study of likelihood of dying in a plane versus a car crash, how do they compare?

4. According to the authors, what does Freakonomics thinking not traffic in?

5. In what year did the drop in New York violent crime begin in the 1990s?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the history behind the emergence of distinctly black names in America?

2. How is name-choice an indicator of parenting?

3. How do the authors address the moral outrage their theories may elicit?

4. What action do the authors of FREAKONOMICS think a reader might take after finishing the book?

5. What connection exists between celebrity and popular names?

6. How do the authors explain the correlation between number of books and achievement?

7. What policy recommendations do the authors make regarding their theories?

8. What point to Dubner and Levitt make regarding guns and swimming pools?

9. According to Dubner and Levitt, what is the essential function of the gun?

10. What do the authors determine about the social migration of names?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

In the world as analyzed by Dubner and Levitt in FREAKONOMICS, information is a tangible commodity. From it derives power and influence over others, and many groups primarily derive their power from information. Write an essay on information as a commodity, in three parts:

Part 1) Information asymmetry is the purposeful consolidation of information by a group for the sake of greater influence. How is this an effective technique in controlling others? What examples exist of information asymmetry exist in our culture?

Part 2) To what extent did the Ku Klux Klan's power derive from its secrecy? As such, how were Stetson Kennedy's techniques against the Klan particularly effective at disempowering them?

Part 3) The authors state that the advent of the internet was a boon for a society held hostage to information asymmetry. What businesses were affected adversely by this new freedom of information? How were they affected?

Essay Topic 3

The authors of FREAKONOMICS begin the book with five precepts that guided their writing, as opposed to a single subject. Write an essay about any one of these precepts. Why do Levitt and Dubner consider this rule central to their process? Choose three chapters from the book. How does the research done in these chapters reflect your chosen precept?

(see the answer keys)

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