Think Like A Freak Summary

What is Thinking Like a Freak?
Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a book with the self-proclaimed purpose of engaging their readers to “retrain their brains.” They say that to think like a Freak is to think more productively, more creatively, and more rationally. The authors of this book were effective in accomplishing their purpose by engaging readers with various examples of interest and out-of-the-box thinking methods.
In Chapter One, titled “What Does It Mean to Think Like a Freak?”, Levitt and Dubner use the example of a penalty kick in soccer to make their point. Although most players who take a penalty kick aim at the corners, it makes more sense to kick the ball where the goalie is standing at the time of the kick. This may not seem like the best option, but when considering that goalies almost always try to anticipate the direction of the kick, the odds that the penalty kicker will be blocked are lower if he should choose to kick in the center of the goal. This brings across their point that thinking like a Freak may not necessarily mean working harder or looking at complex issues. Sometimes the right answer or solution is the most obvious one. Thinking like a Freak is noticing an obvious solution. In addition, they describe their thinking
Although this was not a central theme of this book, it is important to point out from a political science standpoint that when someone has a sound research design and there is an absence of compounds and a presence of statistical significance, correlation does equal causality. When research is exceptionally executed, there is no reason to say that one behavior does not cause another behavior. In this respect, Levitt and Dubner are mistaken, and should have provided examples of when correlation equals causality, or at least stated that “correlation does not always equal