5. Mood of "Freakonomics"

The tone of the book was serious and informative in the chapters. This is because of the subjects he is writing about and all of the data used within the stories. "If you learn how to look at data in the right way, you can explain riddles that otherwise might have seemed impossible. Because there is nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of confusion and contradiction." (pg 13) This explains how all of his arguments were looked at and used data to get the best answer. "Isaac Ehrlich wrote a paper in 1975 which is often used as the “proof” that the death penalty works. According to his paper, 1 execution saves 7 lives." (pg 125) These statistics are where the research had to go through to find that very detail for the book and be able to use it, which was in a chapter about legalized abortion reducing crime. "One black man seems to experiment with whether this notion has any validity by naming his two sons Winner and Loser." (ch 6) This is proving the fact names provide a bit of an ego and behavior different between them. Winner had a higher self esteem and as he go older had more criminal offences because of what his name is associated with and made him feel invincible. While Loser had a less active life that became an police officer to prove himself and because of his name being associated with negative attributes had a more conceded and quiet life than his ego boosted brother. These are all instincts where data and having to back them up with proof came in and showed how serious he was in "Freakonomics".