The rhetorical strategy of logos
is ubiquitous in Freakonomics. The
importance of logos to the book is stated clearly in the introduction,
"Steven Levitt may not fully believe in himself, but he does believe in
this: teachers and criminals and real-estate agents may lie, and politicians,
and even CIA analysts. But numbers don't" (Levitt and Dubner 16). The
authors use logos to support every claim they make, so that their claims that usually go against conventional wisdom are
more credible.
The first example of logos used by Levitt and Dubner is when they analyze if real estate agents always try to get the best deal for the person they have been hired by. They first calculate the commission on a house sold for $300,000, “So on the sale of your $300,000 house, her personal take of the $18,000 commission is $4500” (Levitt and Dubner 8). Then they calculate what the commission would be if the real estate agent spent an extra week to sell the house for $10,000 more, “What if, with a little more effort…she could have sold it for $310,000? After commission, that puts an additional $9,400 in your pocket. But the agent’s additional share…of the extra $10,000-is a mere $150” (Levitt and Dubner 9). The authors use the calculations of this theoretical scenario to present their point that real estate agents don’t always have the incentive to sell one’s house at the highest price. They then prove this theory through real statistics, “Using data from the sales of 100,000 Chicago homes…it turns out that a real-estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house. When she sells her own house, an agent holds out for the best offer; when she sells yours, she pushes you to take the first decent offer that comes along” (Levitt and Dubner 9). Levitt and Dubner use logos to defend their stances against conventional wisdom.
The second example of logos used by Levitt and Dubner is when they analyze if sumo wrestlers cheat. They use the data of “…the results from nearly every official sumo match among the top rank of Japanese sumo wrestlers between January 1989 and January 2000, a total of 32,000 bouts fought by 281 different wrestlers” (Levitt and Dubner 40), to prove that sumo wrestlers do sometimes cheat. They cite the statistics from the specific bouts between a 7-7 wrestler and an 8-6 wrestler to help prove that sumo wrestlers cheat. A 7-7 wrestler desperately needs the win as there is a huge difference between being a plus-.500 and below-.500 wrestler, while there is no incentive at all for the 8-6 wrestler to win since there is little difference between an 8-7 record and a 9-6 record. “So the 7-7 wrestler, based on past outcomes, was expected to win just less than half the time (48.7%). This makes sense; their records in this tournament indicate that the 8-6 wrestler is slightly better. But in actuality, the wrestler on the bubble won almost eight out of ten matches against the 8-6 opponent” (Levitt and Dubner 41). So the data provided by the authors shows that there is something fishy in some of the sumo wrestling matches. They then provide even more extensive statistics to further prove their point. “Now let’s look at the win-loss percentage between the 7-7 wrestlers and the 8-6 wrestlers the next time they meet, when neither is only bubble…As it turns out, the data shows that the 7-7 wrestlers win only 40 percent of the rematches. Eighty percent in one match and 40 percent in the next?” (Levitt and Dubner 43). The authors use extensive statistics and data to support their thesis.
The third example of logos used by Levitt and Dubner is when they analyze commonly held conventional wisdom. Examples of accepted conventional wisdom they analyze include the understanding that watching too much television contributes to “turning the brain to mush”, yet research by the authors into a study by the ECLS reveals “no correlation between a child’s test scores and the amount of television he watches” (Levitt and Dubner 172). Another commonly held presumption the authors examined is that pools are safer than guns in reference to the danger presented to a child under the age of ten, but their further research reveals “the likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn’t even close” (Levitt and Dubner 150). Levitt and Dubner also looked at stats presented by Mitch Snyder in the 1980’s that stated “there are about 3 million homeless…more than 1 in 100 were homeless” and “45 homeless people die each second.” These statistics were disproven by the authors when they computed that those statistics “would mean a whopping 1.4 billion dead homeless every year” (Levitt and Dubner, 90). The authors also looked at a women’s rights activists claim that “one in three American women will be raped” (Levitt and Dubner 92). “The accurate statistic is one in eight…but the advocates know it would take a callous person to publicly dispute their claims” (Levitt and Dubner 92). Levitt and Dubner use logos constantly in order to prove their points and disprove conventional wisdom.
The first example of logos used by Levitt and Dubner is when they analyze if real estate agents always try to get the best deal for the person they have been hired by. They first calculate the commission on a house sold for $300,000, “So on the sale of your $300,000 house, her personal take of the $18,000 commission is $4500” (Levitt and Dubner 8). Then they calculate what the commission would be if the real estate agent spent an extra week to sell the house for $10,000 more, “What if, with a little more effort…she could have sold it for $310,000? After commission, that puts an additional $9,400 in your pocket. But the agent’s additional share…of the extra $10,000-is a mere $150” (Levitt and Dubner 9). The authors use the calculations of this theoretical scenario to present their point that real estate agents don’t always have the incentive to sell one’s house at the highest price. They then prove this theory through real statistics, “Using data from the sales of 100,000 Chicago homes…it turns out that a real-estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house. When she sells her own house, an agent holds out for the best offer; when she sells yours, she pushes you to take the first decent offer that comes along” (Levitt and Dubner 9). Levitt and Dubner use logos to defend their stances against conventional wisdom.
The second example of logos used by Levitt and Dubner is when they analyze if sumo wrestlers cheat. They use the data of “…the results from nearly every official sumo match among the top rank of Japanese sumo wrestlers between January 1989 and January 2000, a total of 32,000 bouts fought by 281 different wrestlers” (Levitt and Dubner 40), to prove that sumo wrestlers do sometimes cheat. They cite the statistics from the specific bouts between a 7-7 wrestler and an 8-6 wrestler to help prove that sumo wrestlers cheat. A 7-7 wrestler desperately needs the win as there is a huge difference between being a plus-.500 and below-.500 wrestler, while there is no incentive at all for the 8-6 wrestler to win since there is little difference between an 8-7 record and a 9-6 record. “So the 7-7 wrestler, based on past outcomes, was expected to win just less than half the time (48.7%). This makes sense; their records in this tournament indicate that the 8-6 wrestler is slightly better. But in actuality, the wrestler on the bubble won almost eight out of ten matches against the 8-6 opponent” (Levitt and Dubner 41). So the data provided by the authors shows that there is something fishy in some of the sumo wrestling matches. They then provide even more extensive statistics to further prove their point. “Now let’s look at the win-loss percentage between the 7-7 wrestlers and the 8-6 wrestlers the next time they meet, when neither is only bubble…As it turns out, the data shows that the 7-7 wrestlers win only 40 percent of the rematches. Eighty percent in one match and 40 percent in the next?” (Levitt and Dubner 43). The authors use extensive statistics and data to support their thesis.
The third example of logos used by Levitt and Dubner is when they analyze commonly held conventional wisdom. Examples of accepted conventional wisdom they analyze include the understanding that watching too much television contributes to “turning the brain to mush”, yet research by the authors into a study by the ECLS reveals “no correlation between a child’s test scores and the amount of television he watches” (Levitt and Dubner 172). Another commonly held presumption the authors examined is that pools are safer than guns in reference to the danger presented to a child under the age of ten, but their further research reveals “the likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn’t even close” (Levitt and Dubner 150). Levitt and Dubner also looked at stats presented by Mitch Snyder in the 1980’s that stated “there are about 3 million homeless…more than 1 in 100 were homeless” and “45 homeless people die each second.” These statistics were disproven by the authors when they computed that those statistics “would mean a whopping 1.4 billion dead homeless every year” (Levitt and Dubner, 90). The authors also looked at a women’s rights activists claim that “one in three American women will be raped” (Levitt and Dubner 92). “The accurate statistic is one in eight…but the advocates know it would take a callous person to publicly dispute their claims” (Levitt and Dubner 92). Levitt and Dubner use logos constantly in order to prove their points and disprove conventional wisdom.