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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 class range does the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study cover?

2. Which of the following is a unifying attribute of parental factors that affect child development?

3. According to Peter Sandman, what is the defining attribute of irrational fears that we have?

4. How did the Chicago Public School system deal with the confusion of allowing students to choose any school in the city?

5. How many names from the top ten most popular black boy's names from 1990 do not appear on the 2000 list?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What is regression analysis?

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

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

6. What national trends regarding crime in the nineties belie the relevance of the Giuliani-Bratton strategy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

(see the answer keys)

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