I recently watched
Freakonomics: The Movie. I enjoyed it a lot and I'm a big fan of the work of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the movie:
On teachers that fake state test results -
"I looked at the data and I couldn't see anything."
"If you can think like a teacher who cheats and look again at the sea of data these patterns emerge. Patterns come to life.
Patterns which are subtle and are buried in mounds and mounds of data. When looked at just through the right lens suddenly it is just clear as day, and once you know what to look for you cannot but say this has to be cheating."
"Because he can put himself in the shoes of someone who would behave criminally or is a cheater then you can kind of backup the process and reverse engineer it. And that is what you have to do because unless your in a room with cheaters, its really hard to catch it."
On incentives -
"If there is only one element that I can say is there almost in everything we do, is that the idea that incentives matter. If you can figure out what people's incentives are, you have a good chance of guessing how they are going to behave."
On insider information -
"My view has always been if some insider comes forth and says there is cheating, probably there is something to it."
On corruption -
"Purity is a good mask for corruption perhaps more so because it discourages inquiries."
"The illusion of purity can not only hide corruption, but it also helps make it possible.
On cheating -
"When stakes are high and when there is an incentive to cheat, a small percent always do."
"
How do you know someone is cheating? Look in the data. I can go into the data and tell there was rampant cheating going on."
On free markets -
"Our illusion is that our economy is a rational system. A free market open to all. The fact is that rigging markets is good business as long as the rigging is hidden from all but a few."
