Freaknomics authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner tackle more perplexing problems with their new book, Think Like a Freak. Of the the three books, they have produced this one is less flippant and more nuanced. The authors acknowledge that many problems in this world are incredibly complex and do not lend themselves to simple solutions.
The authors did help solve one of the more perplexing additions to their previous book. In Super Freakonomics they added a section to the book on why terrorists should by life insurance from their bank. They came up with an algorithm that could identify the unusual banking activities of terrorists with greater than 99% accuracy. Unfortunately this still included a large number of innocent individuals. They wanted the terrorists to reveal themselves by buying life insurance from a bank because almost no one buys life insurance from a bank.
They also describe the paradigm shift in the approach to eating hot dogs that allowed one man to double the previous record for the number of hot dogs eaten. He broke down the task into parts discovering that moistening the bun with water made it go down quicker. Eating the dog from the side sped up the chewing. This has implications for process improvement. We need to take a fresh look at how we do things and determine different ways of accomplishing the task.
They encourage individuals to approach problems with intense child like curiosity. It frees people from normal constraints and ways of looking at problems.
Eating hot dogs like a freak - 7min.
Aaron Task - 4 minute interview
Ask questions with childlike curiosity - 1 min.
, provides a humorously informative and visually interesting introduction to the known natural and man made elements on the periodic table. Most elements have two to four pages packed with information about the elements usefulness, it's discovery and some health and safety information.
