Freakonomics

Marie and I started watching Freakonomics months ago. I think we got through the first segment of the film and then Netflix took a dump on me. So I finally decided to pick back up and watch the remaining hour+.

It was straight. Not the best thing I've ever seen.

Basically, an economist and a journalist wrote a book called Freakonomics in 2004. This is their eponymous film based on said book. It's about analyzing data and discussing causality. The other subject is incentives. A half dozen Directors each have their own segment in the film that has to do with causality/incentives, and the authors of the book comment and tie the whole thing together.

The shitty part is that the authors of the book came under fire for manipulating data to derive their findings in the original book. So the legitimacy of their film becomes a bit dubious, too. Data and causality are very, very tricky subjects. You gotta look at things holistically or you can come up with some causal relationships that are totally bullshit. The media does it daily. Some douche shot up a school and he owned a Metallica record...so Metallica made him do it! It's the only contributing factor! We don't want to look any further for the true root cause!

Fuck off. I hate people.

Anyway, the Sumo piece was most interesting to me. 1) I'm a fan of the sport 2) I dig Japan and 3) It's interesting to see such an honest country be embroiled in such a dishonest match-rigging fiasco.

The opening piece about black names vs. white names was interesting, too. Kind of embarrassing. My favorite stat was how many unique ways the school district had for spelling the name, Unique (I think over a hundred, if I recall!).

I wouldn't tell anyone not to watch this. I just wouldn't put it at the top of my queue. It's a'ight. Go for it. Who cares.