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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. By how many percentage points did unemployment drop in America drop during the sudden curb of violent crime in the Nineties?

2. What do the authors claim is the essential function of a gun?

3. Which ethnicity generally tests better than whites in the ECLS?

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

5. Which of the following factors is revealed to have a correlative effect on a child's school performance?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

6. Why did the influence of crack cocaine decline in the 1990s?

7. What is regression analysis?

8. Why do the authors reason that a woman who has her first child later in life will produce a higher-achieving child?

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

10. What connection exists between celebrity and popular names?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

Much of the early section of FREAKONOMICS is dedicated to the idea of honesty in society. Write an essay about three of the analyzed systems and what they say about honesty. What incentives does each person in the system have either to act truthfully or cheat? How does this create a system in which cheating is common? How do arbiters attempt to affect the dynamic to stop cheating? Is it successful?

Part 1) The Sumo wrestling leagues of Japan.

Part 2) The Chicago Public School System.

Part 3) Paul Feldman's bagel business.

Essay Topic 3

Dubner and Levitt regularly analyze "consumer patterns" in American culture. This allows them to see how trends shift from group to group - particularly between socioeconomic groups - and what this says about societal influences. Write an essay about consumer trends in two parts:

Part 1) How are nylon stockings similar to crack cocaine? To what extent is each a more affordable and mass-produced version of a luxury good? Explain in this section how both of these products represent a trend shift from high-end consumers to low-end consumers.

Part 2) How are child names a commodity that regularly move from one group to another? What are the driving forces behind the national trends regarding baby names? How do baby names shift from one group to another?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,084 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample