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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. For what year are the authors attempting to forecast when they list possible future popular names at the end of the chapter?

2. Which of the following is not among the universities listed as names chosen by parents in California in the 1990s?

3. In the authors' hypothetical comparison of two boys' lives, where does the poor black boy grow up?

4. Which is a Hebrew name that the authors suggest may catch on en masse in the years to come?

5. According to a quoted study in FREAKONOMICS, by what percentage is an aborted child more likely to have grown up in poverty than one that is born?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What connection exists between celebrity and popular names?

4. What is regression analysis?

5. How does Roland G. Fryer, Jr., figure into the book both as a source and a topic?

6. How does Ceausescu create an opposite ripple effect in Romania than what occurs in America at the same time?

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

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

9. How do the authors explain the above contradiction in fears?

10. By what rational do Levitt and Dubner reason that even a cynical person would not consider abortion a reasonable deterrent to crime?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

Throughout FREAKONOMICS, Levitt and Dubner regularly offer apologias to the reader, explaining that they understand that the conclusions they reach may be upsetting or offensive to some. Write an essay examining these apologias. With what findings are they associated? Why do you think the authors deem it necessary to offer an aesthetic caveat to these decisions? To what extent is the final moment of the book a final apologia to the reader?

Essay Topic 3

Much of the book is dedicated to parenting and the ramifications of parental influence. Write an essay about parenting, in three parts:

Part 1) Dubner and Levitt link Roe V. Wade to the drop in crime in the 1990's. How are these two connected? What does this connection say about parental influence and how it relates to the choices as child will make in life?

Part 2) The Early Child Longitudinal Study offers a broad cross-section data regarding influences on children. What factors actually have a correlative effect on a child's performance? What do these factors have in common? Can parents alter their behavior to affect performance?

Part 3) The final chapter of FREAKONOMICS deals with one of the first decisions a parent makes regarding her child: the child's name. What are child names indicative of? Do they indicate where the child is headed or where she came from? What do they say about the parent?

(see the answer keys)

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