By Emily Witt 12/16/11 2:30pm

Literary Feuds

Freakonomics

Get Your Freakonomics: Advice for the 'Would-Be Pop-Statistics Writer'

Has the pop-statistics nonfiction genre reached a tipping point? One where the need to package statistical studies as amazing counter-intuitive revelations has outpaced the scientific method itself? In Scientific American two statisticians say yes: “We and others have noted a discouraging tendency in the Freakonomics body of work to present speculative or even erroneous claims with an air of certainty,” write Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung, two fellow statisticians who have dabbled in nonfiction. “Considering such problems yields useful lessons for those who wish to popularize statistical ideas.” Read More

By Staff 11/27/06 4:13pm

The Afternoon Wrap: Monday!


Mr. YSL! [Teller]

  • Yves Saint Laurent’s 75-acre estate, an 1874 doozy off the Normandy Coast, has been reduced from $25.6 million to $19.9. (Why? “It was too much.”) We hope his old Fifth Avenue pad does a little bit better. (It can be fashionably yours for a mere $7.75 million.) [Forbes]
  • Realtor-Mocking Read More

    • By Ann Marlowe 5/16/05 12:00am

    Freakonomics Fractured-Hidden Side of the Hidden Side

    Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. William Morrow, 242 pages. $25.95.

    Freakonomics is the latest in a recent genre of nonfiction book that explains in non-stick prose how the world really works, popularizing a science or scientific insight while forever hitting the reader Read More

    By Adam Begley 4/07/03 12:00am

    The Journalist and the Jock: A Football Fan Grows Up

    Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper , by Stephen J. Dubner. William Morrow, 261 pages, $24.95.

    Where were you on Dec. 23, 1972? Stephen Dubner and I were both watching the A.F.C. divisional playoffs on WRGB-NBC. He was in upstate New York, I was in western Massachusetts. His TV was small and black-and-white; mine was small and Read More