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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. A quoted study in the text suggest that the United States would have to pay 46 billion dollars to save what animal from extinction?

2. According to child-mortality statistics, what is ten times more dangerous than a gun?

3. What do the authors acknowledge that objective thinking will not do?

4. 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?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. What theory guided Rudolph Giuliani and William Bratton in their policing strategies of the Nineties?

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Commiserate with the inherent distrust of conventional wisdom in FREAKONOMICS is a distrust of experts. Levitt and Dubner explain that experts, far from being disinterest gurus, are guided by the same personal agendas that guide the rest of us. Write an essay on the self-interest of experts, focusing on three types of experts. What does each have to gain from his or her knowledge? What trust do many people put in these experts?

Part 1) Real Estate Agents.

Part 2) Homelessness advocates.

Part 3) Life insurance salesmen.

Essay Topic 2

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 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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