Hypothetical Bias

My next book review: I Am Charlotte Simmons

I haven't finished reading it yet (284/676 pages), but before I forget, on page 284:

Professor Starling smiled. "I assign it every year, but I'm not sure how many actually go to the trouble, although it's well worth it. What's your background in biology?

[Charlotte says] "I went as far as molecular biology. My high school didn't have that, so they sent me over to Appalachian State twice a week."

"Appalachian State Univeristy? You're from North Carolina?"

"Yes, sir."

"What year are you"

"I'm a freshman."

He nodded several times, as if pondering that. "You took the A.P."

"Yes, sir."

He did some more nodding. ...

What's he nodding about? I bet he's thinking: why didn't she stay at AppState, the DuPont of the South, for a fraction of the cost of DuPont U (I'm 99% sure that Pennsylvania's DuPont U is modeled after North Carolina's Duke U. Duh, right? I should really read the book reviews before I read the books cold).

And if you are wondering, and I know you are, in college I was a linear combo of JoJo (37%), Adam (35%), and Hoyt (28%). Weird.

Book Review: Freakonomics

I read Freakonomics a few weeks ago (see the link under "Better Econ Blogs"). It is a great book (surprise! right?) but a few things got under my skin.

His study on real estate agents is interesting but I'm wondering "what's the big deal"? Real estate agents wait a little while longer to sell their own houses and make a little bit more money (something like 3% more). The costs of obtaining an agent are still significantly lower than the benefits for most of us.

More troubling is the cheatin' Sumo wrestlers. It turns out that a Sumo will throw a match if his opponent/buddy would suffer dire consequences by losing. In a sport based on honor, I'd expect the participants to be at least as honest, fair, and sporting as Major League Baseball Players (remember, steroids weren't banned in baseball; taking them was only a crime [i.e., a legal technicality]).

Most troubling is the study on 5th, I think, grade test outcomes. The authors make a big deal about this, especially how adoptees do worse on 5th grade scores than biological kids enjoying the household characteristics (e.g., parents' education) constant. Nature trumps nurture, right? Not until the very end of the chapter (the last chapter the way that I remember it) do they say that the adoptees have caught up by the end of high school. Isn't that when we should really care? The age of semi-adulthood?*

My spouse, the sociologist, read it and gave it the thumbs up. Now we're passing it along to the criminologists. We'll wait to see what they say (they really take a beating) ...

*Note: You guess right, I have an ax to grind here. My biological parents were both real estate agents.