What's in a Name? / Freakonomics Overview

The last chapter of  Freakonomics was another that explored an aspect of parenting - this time naming your children.  The question was to what extent does a child's name have to do with her/his success in life?  Additionally, was a child's name more reflective of the parents than the child?

I've been in this name game . . . twice.  Both times my wife Conni and I had to come to some compromise when it came to naming our children.  Especially for our first.  Not sure of whether we would have a boy or a girl, we settled on Madeline Grace or Kyle Robert.  Grace was my grandmother's name and the first street we lived on when we were married.  Robert was decidedly NOT going to be a first name (I am Robert Daniel #3), but we were going to keep it in there somewhere.  Looking back, both Kyle and Madeline sounded kind of 1990s trendy - I had a lot of Kyles in my classes back then.  Turned out our first was a boy so K-Bob stuck. 

Our second was easier - I had thrown out some literary names like Zelda and Herman, but we settled on either Audrey Grace or Edward Craig for child number #2.  Audrey Hepburn - we both loved the actress who was the very definition of grace and class (so Grace goes perfectly!).  Edward was a family name on both sides and just the right level of less trendy and more classic. Craig is Conni's maiden name, so there's a nod to the in-laws.  Son number two got the name we agreed on.

So, what might that mean about us as parents?  Well, we didn't go for anything super original or that would get undue attention (the names Cleveland or Hash never came up). We wanted some family connection to continue. And we went with very gender-specific, neutral, white-bread names.

Freakonomics addesses how names given to children might reflect cultural beliefs, economic status, and education levels of the parents. Taking California birth names from 1961 on, researchers were able to find some interesting data about the relative popularity of names according to race, income, and education level.  For example, the "whitest" girl and boy names (by relative percentage) were Molly and Jake. The "blackest" girl and boy names were Imani and DeShawn.  Names that my indicate a low-end income white household (also by relative percentage) were Amber and Cody, while the most common high-end income baby names were Alexandra and Benjamin. Low education signifiers among white parents were the names Angel and Ricky. High education signifiers were Lucienne and Dov.  The researchers noted that names tend to trend down over time, so a name like Heather starts out as a high-end name, picks up popularity among lower income parents, while losing popularity with the high-end group it started out strong with, being cited as too trendy.

Anyway, having taught in District 207 for so many years, I have had the pleasure of learning SO many diverse and uniquely beautiful names from so many different cultures and backgrounds, so this chapter really fell flat with me.  What's in a name?  Everything and nothing.  A name can be a reflection of parents' hopes for their child, a remembrance of ancestors or places, a tribute, a cultural connector.  Then again, a name is a label for person "A" that differentiates them from person "B" - shouldn't the person matters more than the name.  Unfortunately, the bias of some racist employers may favor one name over another, without any consideration of the person they are dismissing.

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Interestingly enough, I was having difficulty coming up with a larger overview or "big picture" idea to come through after finishing Freakonomics. I was relieved to read in the book's epilogue, "this book indeed has no 'unifying theme'" (189).  It does have this: "...the everyday application of Freakonomics...has to do with thinking sensibly about how people behave in the real world" (189).  Sounds like something to really strive for. What does that mean for me? I may look deeper into the real reasons behind trends or behaviors.  I may try to see a larger cause-effect diagram that may consider multiple variables instead of landing on any specific or obvious conclusion.  I may "become more skeptical of the conventional wisdom" (189) that lies at the foundation of paradigm and tradition.  Hopefully I can do better to reserve judgement in favor of seeking understanding.  A takeaway quote I'd like to share to discern the difference is this: "If morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world" (190).  Keep striving for one world while understanding the other.

Parenting and Regression Analysis

As it turns out, Rod Blagojevich ain't all bad.

Well, of course our former governor did do some things that had lasting impact in the state, although the only I can think of offhand is open-road tolling.  The new one I read about in Freakonomics is a bill in which every child in Illinois would get a book a month until reaching the age of five. This literacy initiative was intended to increase the reading test scores of children in lower grades by giving them their own state-funded library of 60 books.

The bill didn't pass.

Blagojevich believed that simply having books in the home would factor in future success: "When you own [books] and they're yours, and they just come as part of your life, all of that will contribute to a sense . . . that books should be part of your life" (159).

That's a really nice sentiment that, I'll admit, I readily believe.  I grew up surrounded by books, and I am a pretty accomplished reader.  We valued books for our own boys when they grew up - enough to have a pretty substantial library - and both my boys turned out extremely literate with high test scores.  So, just having books around the house makes for reading success?  I should think so since it generally has been my experience.

Not so fast my bookworm friends!

In this Freakonomics chapter entitled "What Makes a Perfect Parent?", I also learned about some statistical terminology and what data miners do to make some assumptions about survey results.

The chapter asks the question of what factors go into good parenting, the result of which should hopefully be a well-adjusted, college and career ready adult.  Since it is difficult to gather data on the well-adjusted part, the researchers stuck to the one factor they could measure, literacy, by looking at reading test scores.

Here's the interesting and subtle statistical tidbit I learned - the difference between correlation and causation.  In analyzing the data of Chicago Public School children who were applying to school choice lotteries, researchers found correlations between children who had higher reading scores also tended to have books in their homes.  A correlation ONLY means that we see that there is a tendency that both these factors are often true.  Does that mean one thing is the result of the other? No. That describes a causal relationship.  Does this mean that there are no high reading scores from children who don't have books in the home? No. Could a causal relationship be worked out through factors that led the books to be in the household? Yes.  Families who value reading and education who also have means to do so are likely to buy books for the home.  So the value for reading is passed down not so much by the objects themselves, but perhaps by the actions, values, and beliefs of the parents that led those books to be there.

So Blago, your heart was in the right place on that one, but perhaps the $26 million pricetag (and a brief lesson in regression analysis) defeated the bill.

The Freakonomics of Dealing Drugs

This definitely falls under the heading "Of all the things I thought I would never write about..."

Idris Elba as Stringer Bell

One of my favorite television series I've ever watched is HBO's The Wire.  What I liked about it was the unflinching view of street life that the writers portrayed.  Season One of The Wire  centered on drug dealing in the housing projects of Baltimore and the police officers who pursued them.  What was really cool about this series was how you could perceive parallels between the two sides. The super villain who emerges from the projects was a character named Stringer Bell, who was much more businessman than street tough.  On the police side, the political ladder that led through the ranks was rife with corruption and cover-ups. Each side seen as it is through the genius of creator David Simon. Stringer Bell definitely did not fit the media stereotype of a drug dealer. On the program, he repeatedly insists on being identified as a businessman.

So what does this have to do with Freakonomics?  The chapter I am astounded by asks the question, "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?" This exploration was made uniquely possible by an unlikely, but fascinating story. University of Chicago graduate student, Sudhir Venkatesh, was actually able to document the activities of Chicago's Black Gangster Disciple Nation from the inside by virtue of an accidental (and foolhardy) encounter in the stairwell of a hi-rise housing project in which the powerful leader of the branch, only known as J.T., saw to it that Venkatesh was given a "free pass" not only to leave unharmed, but was allowed to return to observe and document the gang's activities for his PhD project.

What Venkatesh learned (especially when given spiral-bound ledger books of the business dealings of the Black Disciples), was astounding: "So how did the gang work? An awful lot like American businesses, actually, though perhaps none more so than McDonald's. In fact, if you were to hold a McDonald's organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference" (89). From what little I know about business, I do know that the McDonald's business model is viewed in most circles as being one of the most effective and profitable. J.T. was near the top of his "business organization" for the same reasons anyone would excel, he was educated (college degree in business) and his business acumen in the field got him noticed by the board of directors (that's what they're called) of the Black Disciples. He rose through the ranks to own many houses, cars, and to have a six-figure (tax-free) salary.

Here's my final takeaway - why would anyone want to be a drug dealer? Levitt posits that it's the same risk/reward dream of "the Wisconsin farm girl becoming a movie star or the high-school quarterback playing in the NFL" (95). Unfortunately for many communities, when crack cocaine swept in, so did drug wars between rival gangs in the money-grab for the new product that was highly addictive and thus profitable. The dream of "winning the tournament," rising through the ranks to become the next J.T., is enough for young men, who feel they have no other prospects for success, to stand on street corners and earn less than minimum wage while bullets from drive-by shooters take lives by the hundreds.

Incentives and Information

Diving into Freakonomics a little deeper than I intended to, I found myself two full chapters in and really thinking about the way the world really works.

To be honest, there's no great story that led me to this book.  If I recall correctly, I may have picked it up at a semi-annual Friends of the Mount Prospect Library sale as a deep discount hardcover.  At the time I may have had some interest having read some excerpts and sampling a page here and there.  Chapter titles like "What Do Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?" also piqued my interest at the time.  However, the volume ended up at the wrong end of my "to read" list and eventually found its way to school among other various titles I make available for students to read.

Until now! I picked it off the shelf (or it picked me!).

First, incentives.  There are currently a few grading policies that our district mandates that speak to the subject of the first chapter of Freakonomics.  The controversy that was explored in the book concerned rampant teacher cheating on standard tests in the Chicago Public Schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Back then, schools in CPS could be closed if schools did not show adequate yearly progress. Teachers would be placed on probation if patterns of low reading scores brought the overall grade-level scores down.  The incentive to "fix" the scores to save jobs was there - Levitt explored test answer patterns from thousands of tests from 1993-2000 and applied a complicated algorithm that finds anomalies in the data.  The cheaters left telltale signs of changing student answers.

While this study tests the faith we have in our teacher corps, there was a silver lining: "In addition to detecting cheaters, the algorithm could also identify the best teachers in the school system. A good teacher's impact was nearly as distinctive as a cheater's. [Students would demonstrate] real improvement on the easier types of questions they missed...and carried over all their gains into the next grade" (31).

This idea of incentives has me thinking about the reasoning behind D207's "no zeroes" poilicy.  No assignment can be entered as a score of below 40% regardless of the status of the assignment.  This policy has been instituted in other districts as well, but not without opposition. Incentives lie at the heart of this change.  First, the "killer zero" can bring a student's average down so low that he/she may lose incentive to try to bring the average up. A "what's-the-point-I'm-going-to-fail-anyway" cycle begins as averages can plummet below 20% or lower as zeroes pile up.  The 40% "floor" provides some hope (a strong incentive that passing is still possible) for the struggling student, but may it also deincentivize a more accomplished student who may skip an assignment or two, losing what could be valuable learning experiences and opportunities, realizing the grade loss is marginal and won't impact an already solid A, B, or C grade.  Incentives lie at the core of human decision-making and behaviors, so this chapter really made me think.

Information - who has it and how do people use it to their advantage?  Levitt also goes into an idea called "informational asymmetry" - this is where experts use their superior knowledge to take advantage of those (usually consumers) who don't have the same information. I've always felt this way going in to get my car fixed.  They always seem to find something that I wasn't expecting. Last time all four of my brake calipers had frozen up (I had only taken my car in for a squeaky AC belt). Anyway, I demanded to see the problem and talk with a technician. Then I would consult the internet to see what the relative cost was and if it was something I could fix myself.  Here's where the experts play on my fear - "this is an unsafe car - those calipers lock up, and you will lose your ability to brake." They've got me - I don't have the expertise to fix it or the foolishness to keep driving it, so I foot the bill...again!  The internet, Levitt notes, has decreased the level of informational asymmetry in many fields, but still it acts as another incentive to both take advantage of those who don't know, and to resign yourself to the expertise of those who do.

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Interestingly enough, there WAS a film version of Freakonomics. Here's the trailer: