Correlations are the concepts of mutual relation between two or more things. Causation is the concept of anything that produces, what it produces has an effect; the cause. Together, correlation versus causation emphasizes that between two variables, one may not imply the exact cause(s) of the other even though it may indicate possible causes or areas for further investigation. In the movie, Freakanomics study a group of children giving them the opportunity to earn $50 if they were to have good grades. In the movie they focused on two kids in the same grade and how this incentive would either prove positive or negative. In the end, the only one kid took advantage of this opportunity and the other failed at it. This example in this part of the movie represented that not all correlations and causation's are connected. The kid that failed at keeping his grades up choose to not fall through with the $50 reward that was offered and the other kid choose to have the $50 reward. I think the authors chose to address this problem because they wanted to show that the relationship between two things (correlation) does have an effective outcome (causation). The authors also touched base on how this experiment worked and did not work based upon how the child reacted to the reward. Each child's character, their motives were all different, and the reward that was offered was only apparent to those who found relevance what was offered. This would explain why a lot of the other children had failed because the reward was not relevant to them and if they were to try this experiment again, they would have to find many different rewards that all the kids would have found relevant to find a positive answer.
The most used source of evidence in the film would be statistics. The organized system of grouping tons of information and then putting it in numbers that represents one or multiple specific meanings based upon what type statistic evidence were being studied. Statistics can show patterns in the data collected as well as predict future outcomes due to the amount of evidence they collected that would result in the possible outcome. For this type of evidence, they chose to study the cheating aspect of the wrestling sport of Japan, Sumo wrestling and the crime rate in the U.S. Statistically the data recorded proved one thing, but apparent variables provoked different thoughts about what the data "actually" showed. In the U.S the years when the crime rate had shot down, there were many different ideas of what actually caused it to go down, and one of them was the law to have the right to an abortion, and during the years that this law was passed the crime rate went down. Other variables that also affected the crime rate that were also beneficial were the gun control and police presence which indeed effected the crime rate. Were these variables significant to the crime rate of the U.S. or were they all coincidences? What if the Sumo wrestlers did cheat, what are the other variables that may effected how Sumo wrestling was judged? All missing information that really can or cannot prove the exact reason as to why these things played out this way.
Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices. I would be contradicting myself if I were to disagree with this quote because it indeed showed an examples into our attempt to understand the unknown in our dominant social practices, but did it serve as an inspiration and a good example? I would have to disagree. In the film they explained a lot of both sides of the fence not really giving us a complete one sided answer that would define the dominant social practices that exist. But maybe this true for our social practices, it is meant to be complex, but in the film they barely make that reference. For example, the study of what names were beneficial to your child argued two sides of the story, but if you weren't carefully listening it would of seemed that both sides argued the same thing. But maybe that is just what life is, not really noticing and understanding what the two issues are and just acknowledging the fact that the problem is there, is all we have to know.
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