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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. What service was offered in exchange for firearms in a California gun buyback?

2. Who does Levitt point out has a nearly quadrupled likelihood of dying every year than a death row inmate has of being executed?

3. What do the authors believe will be the most likely result of your reading FREAKONOMICS?

4. Which of the following factors is revealed not to have a correlative effect on a child's school performance?

5. What prominent talent agency did Zelman Moses found?

Short Essay Questions

1. What hypothetical comparison do the authors create between two boys' upbringings?

2. In what two ways do larger prisons affect less crime in a community?

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

4. What study is cited involving names and job hiring?

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

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

7. To what extent does every chapter in FREAKONOMICS involve a closed system?

8. What situation in Chicago in 1980 offers the authors a chance to review the effect of education on children's development?

9. How does Robert Lane's child-naming scheme work out?

10. How is the quality of life of an aborted child different from one that is born?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay on the theories surround the drop in violent crime in America in the nineties. In the essay, discuss two theories that the authors determine had no effect on crime and one that they determine did. Why is each theory either effective or ineffective? How do the authors go about showing the validity of each? For the one that is deemed effective, how could policy be changed to incorporate this theory?

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

Roland G. Fryer, Jr., is a Harvard-educated researcher who focuses on the socio-economic separations between black and white Americans. Write an essay covering three ways in which this separation manifests itself. How do these examples detail a separate cultural identity and an achievement gap? What are some of the origins of this separation? What conclusions do Levitt and Dubner draw from Fryer's research into these schisms?

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