Philosophical Musings of a Book Nerd

This is a book on statistics, not a book that lists statistics but a book that uses statistics to attempt to answer some interesting questions, such as whether teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, why drug dealers live with their mothers, and why has the crime level dropped. The content is interesting, though not something that I entirely agree with.

First the teachers and sumo wrestlers: personally I would not need statistics to prove this, however the statistics do assist in supporting the argument. My opinion is that human sin will say that teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, however with sumo wrestlers there is also a question of pride, and with most sports people the question of pride sometimes (but not always) over rides any desire to cheat. However cheating always has and always will exist. With teachers, when standardised testing came into the US (and now to Australia) this created an inventive to cheat. If ones' performance is measured on the class's performance then bad teachers are going to want to cheat to raise the performance of their class. Teachers who don't like performance testing are likely the ones who are bad and don't want their bad performance to prove that they are bad.

Now for drug dealers: what he explores here is that the gang that he was looking that was run like a corporation, therefore the drug dealers at the bottom of the chain would not be earning as much as those at the top. This is nothing new, whether the dealer is self employed (that is buying wholesale and selling retail) or be a member of a gang (that is being an employee), it is always the ones that the top that make all of the money of the workers at the bottom. Nothing new here.

He also explores real estate agents. Once again, human self interest suggests that real estate agents will work harder when selling their own home, where they pocket most of the proceeds than when selling somebody else's home, where they only pocket commissions. However, in my industry, where I deal with a lot of lawyers, I have noticed that lawyers tend not to put more effort in their own claims than they do when working on other people's claims, which to me suggests that lawyers do tend to be honest and ethical people, which is most likely also true of teachers, real estate agents, and sumo wrestlers (but not drug dealers, who are doing something illegal).