#steven levitt

[readtilyoudie]

“Social scientists sometimes talk about the concept of "identity". It is the idea that you have a particular vision of the kind of person you are, and you feel awful when you do things that are out of line with that vision.” ― Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

[cinematic-literature]

Sherlock S01E02 (The Blind Banker)

Book title: Freakonomics (2005) by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt

[veryslowreader]

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 

Modern Family: "Dude Ranch"

[aquotecollection]

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.

Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt

[readtilyoudie]

“Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.” ― Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

[veryslowreader]

SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Peep Show: "Seasonal Beatings"

[wewererogue]

On poker as a game of chance – or maybe not

[Excerpt from Joseph L Goldstein‘s “The card players of Caravaggio, Cézanne and Mark Twain: tips for getting lucky in high-stakes research” / Nature ]

Paul Cezanne, The Card Players, 1892

Mark Twain’s Science vs. Luck

To settle the argument, there is no one better than America’s greatest humorist and arguably most creative fiction writer—Mark Twain. Twain was an unabashed lover of poker and was saddened by how few people in the US knew anything about the game, lamenting (in Johnson, M., A Bibliography of the Works of Mark Twain; Harper & Brothers, New York, 1935), “I have known clergyman, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a ‘flush’. It is enough to make one ashamed of one’s species.” In an 1870 essay entitled “Science vs. Luck,” Twain wrote about a fascinating court case in Kentucky in which a dozen schoolboys were arrested for playing poker for money. Back then, many states had strict laws prohibiting “games of chance,” and even at enlightened institutions of higher learning such as Harvard University, errant students incurred the heaviest fines not for drinking or fighting, but for playing cards.

The lawyer hired to defend the 12 poker-playing boys in Twain’s essay came up with an ingenious defense: poker was not a game of chance but of skill, thus his clients could not be punished until it was proven otherwise. To make a short story even shorter, the prosecution’s witnesses (who were all deacons of the Church) testified that poker was all luck, whereas the defense’s witnesses testified in favor of skill. The judge was unable to render a decision, and in his paralyzed state, he called upon the boys’ lawyer to suggest a solution. The lawyer quickly replied: “Impanel a Jury of six of each, Luck vs. Science. Give them candles and a couple of decks of cards. Send them into the jury room, and just abide by the results.” Six deacons were sworn in as the 'Chance’ jurymen, and six experienced poker players were sworn in as the 'Science’ jurymen.

After 1 day of deliberation, the foreman of the jury—one of the deacons—read the verdict: “We, the Jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John Wheeler et al. have carefully considered the points of the case and do hereby unanimously decide that the game is eminently a game of Science and not of Chance. In support of our verdict, we call attention to the fact that the Chance men are all busted; and the Science men have got the money.” The judge declared the Chance theory a pernicious doctrine, and then he ruled that poker playing was no longer a punishable offense in the state of Kentucky.

I am sure that most of you are not convinced that Mark Twain’s literary experiment settled the question of luck versus skill. Fortunately, the first convincing scientific experiment on the subject was recently carried out by the University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. Levitt is the author of the best-selling book Freakonomics, which describes how the tools of economic research can be used to understand the workings of everyday events and problems. Several representative examples Levitt tackles in his book are: “Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?”; “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?”; and “What do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?”.

Levitt’s study, called 'Pokernomics,’ analyzed the performance of 32,000 players who took part in the 2010 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Levitt divided the players into two groups—a highly skilled group and an ordinary group. The highly skilled group consisted of the 720 players—2.3% of the total—who had won the most money in 2009 tournaments. The ordinary group comprised the rest of the 32,000—97.7% of the total. In the 2010 World Series, the skilled poker players made an average return on investment of 30%, whereas the ordinary players had an average loss of 15%. This large gap in return is strong evidence that poker, as it is played today, is a game of skill and not luck.

[source] (16)

#normally you should run away from Chicago economists and their fucking School as fast as your little feet can carry you  #but Levitt is cool

[artistesanspatrie]

L'économie est une science dont les outils sont excellents pour obtenir des réponses, mais qui manque cruellement de questions dignes d'intérêt.

Steven D.Levitt IN Freakonomics