In the Documentary, Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner address the fallacy that "correlation is causation". They believe that when two things go together, one causes the other. Like the fallacy that most black people cant swim because their black. Thats not the reason that they can't swim. The statistics would show that its because less blacks are around swimming areas often, or that they weren't given swim lessons as a child.
This documentary acknowledged that correlation is not causation. There was an example in the movie about how there's a common idea that if you have a "black name", you won't be successful, or you will automatically act "ghetto". But Levitt and Dunbar argue that the name isn't what causes the low rate of success and quality of life, it's the environment that goes with the name. Statistics in the movie proved that the someone named Shaniqua is more likely born to a single mother, who has a low income, and little education. These factors lead to Shaniqua having poor quality of life, not the fact that her name is Shaniqua. This example helps Levitt and Dunbar prove correlation is not causation.
Evidence
In the documentary most of the evidence that Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner used were accumulated statistics. Which is what most people use for evidence. But there were some ways of finding the evidence and statistics that were innovative. One of the ways was they looked at tests to see if teachers were filling in correct answers to help students (which actually isn't helping students at all). The way they did this was by comparing the answers from the beginning of the tests to the answers from the end, (the ones that would be left blank), and found that the answers from the end had a much higher rate of being right. Which was a very innovative way to collect and the use statistics. They did an effective job of using their evidence to prove their points.
Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices.
I agree with this statement completely. The movie took things that seemed so simple and made it to be more. Like, with the names, who really thinks about what a name could do to decide the future of a person. Or how we think about grades being important, when some people are getting paid for certain grades. All these things are right in front of us all the time, but we don't think about them that they are. One idea from the book "Omnivore's Dilemma" that relates back to this movie was the idea of labels. The food we eat comes with all these labels, "organic", "Free-range", "Cageless". These label's affect what food is bought and what's considered "good food". People are labeled, like different things go into what makes an acceptable, or a "Ghetto" name.
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