On The Trail

I just finished reading Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I’m still not sure exactly why they called it that, but it was interesting from an analytics perspective, and it was quite fun to read. Stephen Levitt, the economist who co-wrote it, seems to like to find odd data sets that can tell him something unexpected about the world. He answers questions like “Why do most drug dealers live with their mothers?” (Because most earn less than minimum wage) and “How are school teachers like sumo wrestlers?” (They both cheat in similar ways when given similar incentives). He also has a long chapter on the economics of baby names that was very entertaining.
It was interesting from a web analytics perspective because he takes seemingly useless data and manages to draw very useful conclusions from it — either by combining several different useless datasets, or by mining existing data in a new way. Hey, I do that every day! Or at least I try to.
[On a different note, mouse over these Amazon links. I inserted some beta code from Amazon. They're running a test of a new widget that pops up a description and review of the linked book. Apparently half of you won't see it though because they're A/B testing the widget.]