Thursday, March 15, 2012

Day #22,002

Walk km 10,123-10,134: Meetup walk to Deer Lake Park
Walk km 10,134-10,136: running errands

Meetup walkers
approx km 10,126 top of the 312 stairs

Movie #1999: Freakonomics (2010, various)

This is supposed to be about applying economics to areas that you wouldn't normally associate with economics. It's not. The only segment that dealt with economics was about paying kids to get good grades in school. But, even in that segment, they just glossed over the economics. They set up an interesting system where they paid for good grades and also held a lottery for those with good grades. They never figured out which incentive was better. They never figured out why some kids weren't swayed by incentives.
The other segments were about looking at data. That's not economics. Economists may use that tool but it has nothing to do with economics itself.
The worst example was when they looked at sumo wrestlers results. They found that when a wrestler really needed to win a match and was opposed by an opponent for which the match was fairly unimportant, the wrestler for whom the match was more important won 75% of the time. Their conclusion: the wrestlers were cheating! Not only has that nothing to do with economics, it's just plain stupid.

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