Great Performance !

This book, then, has been written from a very specific worldview, based on a few fundamental ideas:

Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. And understanding them—or, often, ferreting them out—is the key to solving just about any riddle, from violent crime to sports cheating to online dating.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Crime didn’t keep soaring in the 1990s, money alone doesn’t win elections, and—surprise— drinking eight glasses of water a day has never actually been shown to do a thing for your health. Conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done.

Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes. The answer to a given riddle is not always right in front of you. Norma McCorvey had a far greater impact on crime than did the combined forces of gun control, a strong economy, and innovative police strategies. So did, as we shall see, a man named Oscar Danilo Blandon, aka the Johnny Appleseed of Crack.

“Experts”—from criminologists to real-estate agents—use their informational adv antage to serve their own agenda. However, they can be beat at their own game. And in the face of the Internet, their informational
advantage is shrinking every day—as evidenced by, among other things, the falling price of coffins and life-insurance premiums.

Taken From : FREAKONOMICS - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything