The pleasure of reading Freakonomics Recommended by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai

1
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

•  The power and achievements of science is a
  testimony to the human rationality and scientific
  methods, which are being employed more and more
  in other fields.

2
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• In science, we have controlled experiments in
  psychology and medical science, double-blinded
  placebo-controlled tests. The point is to devise
  methods to isolate the factors and exam the
  cause-and-effect.

3
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• In science, when test results are consistent and
  statistically sound, there are very little
  arguments among the experts.

4
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Yet when we open the newspapers, we find debates
  on social issues that cant be resolved. Each
  opponent provides a seemingly sound and logical
  argument, yet none of them can ever persuade the
  other side.

5
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Obviously we cant measure the effects of a
  single factor on the results of an election by
  running it again in the same place, let alone
  changing factors like campaign expenditure at
  will.

6
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Unable to use more definite methods, people are
  bound to argue in favor of their own interests,
  emphasizing the facts that are supporting their
  ideologies and ignoring the others.

7
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Steven Levitt studied interesting if sometimes
  trivial questions by devising some ingenious ways
  of isolating factors and made measurements that
  are usually considered impossible.

8
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• A guiding principle of this book is politicians
  or real estate agents may lie, but numbers dont.
  So such investigations inevitably involve numbers.

9
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• But instead of focusing on a presentation of
  numbers, which could have scared off millions of
  readers and thrown this book off the best-selling
  lists if he did, Levitt explained the
  difficulties of the problems, and why he looked
  at certain figures.

10
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• He then gave some plausible explanations behind
  these astonishing findings. Read this book to
  learn about the linkage between the legalization
  of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades
  later, how much parenting matter, etc.

11
The pleasure of readingFreakonomics(Recommended
by Mr Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• You will be amazed by how some seemingly
  unrelated events could have a causal relation.

12
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• There are some people whose viewpoints deviate
  from ours, sometimes radically. Christopher, the
  narrator of this novel, is a figure representing
  thousands of those minds in real life.

13
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Christopher sees the world not as collective
  experiences and emotions of mankind, but
  primarily as facts and data.

14
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Thus he is able to decipher the secrets of the
  natural world (given his young age), and yet
  failed to follow the trivial social customs
  governing our daily life.

15
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• A complete adsorption in a subject to the
  exclusion of everything else, a quality very
  often understood to be essential for great
  success in any human endeavor, bears a new and
  extreme meaning in people suffering from
  Aspergers Syndrome-that patients ABILITY to do
  other things are permanently impaired.

16
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• In Christophers case, his impaired social skills
  were often a combination of a disinterest in
  social rules and a profound reasoning of why
  those rules are nonsense to him, from a
  perspective that is characteristic of a
  scientifically-oriented mind.

17
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• As I read through this book, tears went down.
  Once Christopher stepped out of his own room, the
  complexity of our world started bombarding his
  innocent mind, that he simply had to break down
  the supposedly rich stories into cold-hearted
  data.

18
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Christophers photographic memory allowed him to
  recall all the scenes and dialogues, a feast that
  none of us capable of, that you would start
  wondering whether he was escaping from the
  trivial meanings behind or simply didnt care nor
  understand at all.

19
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• Yet Christophers observations often reached down
  to the core of the issue. My inexplicable tears
  were perhaps my sympathy for a great but innocent
  mind that is bounded to fail in this crude world.

20
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• You may as well dismiss such feelings with a
  typical Christopherian scorn this is stupid
  because it is not real! But let us tell
  Christopher or his breed in a kind but firm
  voice yes, what we cried for may not be real.

21
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• the truth of life very often lies in the craziest
  moments when we lose our minds, sobbing for our
  inner realm that no one can touch or prove.

22
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• After the sobbing you will find a deep silence
  an unshakable silence that is inside yourself.
  There, Christopher, you no longer have to kneel
  down and press hard on your ears to find your
  silence and peace.

23
The pleasure of readingThe Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (Recommended by Mr
Alvin CHAN Shu Fai)

• The author, Daniel Tammet, is perhaps not as
  talent as Christopher in higher mathematics but
  he is at least as fast in mental calculations.
  And he can learn to speak a new language fluently
  from scratch in one week. Learn to unravel a mind
  with Aspergers Syndrome, this time for real!