Super Freakonomics Podcast Part 2 - Ava Olsen and Michelle Friedman

Posted by Ava Olsen in Statistics - Miles - B on

​In the second installment of our podcast series about Superfreakonomics we discussed the first chapter, How Is a Street Prostitute Like a Department-Store Santa?, and the second chapter, Why Should Suicide Bombers Buy Life Insurance?. Though the two chapters covered a plethora of questions, studies, and data, we chose to discuss only a few of the topics that were the most interesting to us. We talked about the significant wage gap between equally qualified, professional men and women. Then, we investigated the critical emergency room procedures that make for the best and worst patient outcomes. Chapter two also showed us that doctor review criteria can be extremely flawed and ought to be taken with a grain of sand when choosing your doctor. Overall, these two chapters showed us a lot of new numbers on interesting subjects and we’ve learned to always investigate the nuances that can affect data results.

Comments (1)

Mark Miles (Teacher)
Mark Miles

Another great podcast. Super interesting discussion; keep up the great work.

For next time, respond to the following prompts:

  1. The focus of this first chapter is prostitution. The authors note that with regard to illegal crime, society tends to punish the “dealers” (whether of drugs or sex) much more aggressively than the customers, despite the fact that customers greatly out number the dealers and have a great incentive not to get caught. Why do you think law enforcement continues to focus on the source, rather than the cause, of vice?
  2. Explain why, given a choice between protecting potential terrorist targets and identifying and apprehending terrorists before they strike, the latter is the preferred alternative on the basis of relative costs. In addition, explain why this is nonetheless such a daunting task.
  3. Explain why an algorithm designed to identify the terrorists in a population that is 99 percent accurate is nonetheless of limited value, especially as the size of the relevant population increases or the number of terrorists in the population declines.