US economist explores offbeat topics
GANGS AND WRESTLERS: University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt has created a buzz with a provocative new book that draws economic lessons from unlikely placesAP , CHICAGO
Monday, May 09, 2005
Steve Levitt's world is economics, but he has no patience for inflation charts or stock market tables. He'd much prefer to plunge into a scholarly study of ... cheating sumo wrestlers.
The topic sentence is simply stated as an antithesis (opposing the dry world of economics and Steve Levitt's world of economics). A strong verb ("plunge") and an emphatic conclusion (here shown by an ellipsis [...] rather than a dash) takes us straight into the profile. Note the two sentence paragraph.
Or slippery real estate agents. Or drug-dealing gang members.
The topic is developed by using simple co-ordinate sentences ("or"). Note too the plain words, short sentences, and two-sentence paragraphs.
Levitt is a maverick economist at the University of Chicago, a school known for esteemed scholars who've paved a path to Stockholm, Sweden: Five Nobel Prize winners in economics are on the faculty. Eighteen others were students, researchers or professors at Chicago.
The author gives the background information very concisely. Note the use of the colon (:).
With a boyish curiosity and a powerhouse resume (Harvard, M.I.T., Chicago), Levitt has explored everything from provocative social issues -- linking abortion and lower crime rates -- to patterns of ethnic and age bias among TV game show contestants.
"Boyish curiosity" and "powerhouse resumes" are examples of good use of generalities; but the good writer knows when to use lower levels of generalities too. Note the use of dashes to give the parenthesis emphasis.
"It's not like I go looking for trouble," Levitt says. "But I try to find unusual ways to ask questions that people care about. And the most interesting answers you can come up with are the ones that are absolutely true and completely unexpected."
Levitt summarizes his unorthodox research in a new book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. With co-author Stephen Dubner, he details some eyebrow-raising findings:
The first quotation of the profile is well used, summing up the basic topic-related questions the reader might have: Who is this person, why does he do what he does? The colon that ends the paragraph effectively points to the next, which continues the one before:
Guns kill fewer kids than swimming pools. Gang members may not be mama's boys, but they often share mama's house. The Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents have something in common.
Here the writer takes us to lower levels of generality, presented before in the phrase "boyish curiosity."
Not typical fodder for an economics book -- one that manages to mention both W.C. Fields and John Kenneth Galbraith -- but that probably helped it climb to No. 2 on Amazon.com's nonfiction list.
The writer uses a commonplace of "comparison" (this book is not typical of other economics books); he also uses dashes again for emphasis; and then uses another commonplace (cause-effect: the offbeat topic is why it climbed high on a booklist).
Levitt claims his father wasn't all that impressed and teasingly told his son: "This is the Levitt family's biggest accomplishment this week."
Another well-chosen quote: chosen because it was unusual, since the father seems to criticize the son. Then the writer returns to more specific biographical information on Levitt, and the effect this person has on others:
At age 37, Levitt already has compiled some impressive accomplishments: In 2003, he won the John Bates Clark medal, an award given to the leading US economist under age 40 that is regarded by some as a junior Nobel. He has a legion of admirers and his share of critics. And a host of businesses are knocking on his door -- everyone from the New York Yankees to General Motors.
Another use of dash for emphasis at end of sentence/paragraph. In the next paragraph the writer uses "cause-effect" to help the reader understand his subject (Levitt) better:
Levitt has always been fascinated by corruption and crime. Growing up in Minneapolis, Cops was his favorite TV show.
Note the use of the proper noun ("Cops"), which adds impact; it takes us to a low level of generality (instead of saying "he liked police shows").
"Ever since I was a kid, I've been attracted to the dark side," he says.
This is another well-chosen quote, perfect for its place in what goes before (Cops) and what follows (the antithesis: the serious-minded economist, beginning with "But":
But young Steve also liked to fiddle around with correlations on a calculator, study stock options in The Wall Street Journal and hole up in his room playing simulation baseball board games.
Note how many paragraphs in the popular press are two sentences, or even just one, as the above. This is not recommended for scholarly work; but it shows that the main goal is to communicate as plainly as possible. Note the idiomatic usage in "fiddle around" (which means "play around" or "work aimlessly"); then the precise word "correlations," which suits a profile on economics, followed by another idiomatic usage: "hole up in his room."
He started out doing economic research on political campaigns, but when that didn't appeal to him, he says he decided: "I'm just going to study things I like and I'm just going to roll the dice. Maybe it's going to turn out that other people are going to care and maybe it's not."
Another well-chosen quote (the actual taped interview must have been ten times as long, with a lot to select from). The paragraph uses mainly cause-effect. Note again that the paragraph mainly uses generalities. (There is no mention of a particular political campaign or the nature of the economic research, because that's not the focus of the writer's profile. The reader knows the focus (Levitt's odd subject matter), so the reader is willing to put up with generalities as background, happy to focus on the main issue.)
They cared, all right. Levitt and John Donohue, then of Stanford University Law School, created an uproar in 2001 when they concluded that legalized abortion significantly contributed to a drop in crime in the 1990s. Here's Levitt's explanation: "Legalized abortion lowered unwantedness. Unwantedness is related to crime, so legalized abortion lowered crime."
More idiomatic usage above ("They cared, all right") instead of a more formal style ("People were responsive to Levitt's research"). Note how "they" enforces coherence with the last paragraph, since "they" replaces "other people" in that paragraph. Then the writer goes to a lower level of generality: the issue of abortion, quoting the "cause-effect" relationship Levitt makes.
Angry letters poured in. The right and the left fumed. The authors were branded racists proposing a form of eugenics. Levitt insists he was stunned by the reaction and the study made no moral judgments on abortion.
Short sentences start the paragraph for contrast and emphasis: "Angry letters poured in. The right and the left fumed." "Fumed" is a strong verb. So is "stunned."
"It never occurred to us that anybody would be upset," he says. "I've done a lot of research. No one ever cares."
The next quote, above, gives the "cause" of Levitt's being stunned.
Some critics complained the study used limited data. Others claimed it misinterpreted numbers and made unfair comparisons.
Note the growing tendency (as in my own style) to omit relative pronouns (instead of "complained that the study" the writer has "complained the study"). The aim seems to be limited words and more simple sentences.
"He's picking up the decline in crack and calling it the abortion effect," says Ted Joyce, an economics professor and expert on reproductive health policy at Baruch College in New York.
Though not the subject of the profile, the quote from Joyce of Baruch College is a good use of quotation as testimony. Besides, it enriches the profile by including an opposed point of view (the reader trusts a writer who presents both sides fairly) while accepting the fact that the focus is on Levitt as subject if not necessarily as right.
Joyce's own study found abortion had no measurable impact on crime.
A one-sentence paragraph concluding the opposed view.
Levitt took on another social issue when he teamed up with another researcher to develop a statistical method that found a small number of Chicago teachers cheated on standardized tests to help their students. Those findings led to disciplinary action.
This is an example of a lower level of generality on the term "study." Because the reader wants to know specifically what kind of studies Levitt does.
Levitt is intrigued by incentives -- financial, moral and social, good and bad. And he found them in the wrestling ring. Levitt co-authored a study that analyzed the won-loss records of sumo wrestlers in tournaments and concluded the matches were rigged. Levitt says he didn't hear a peep from the Japanese press -- even after sending the findings to the Japanese version of the National Enquirer.
Another lower level of generality: "incentives" is lower than "causes" ("incentive" belongs to the class of "cause"). Then the writer uses cause-effect again. Strong verbs include "rigged" and an idiomatic usage ("peep"). Another final dash adds more emphasis to the cause-effect commonplace. Note that color is not added by big words but by good use of short words. Then the writer, in another one-sentence paragraph, brings the subject up to date (the present time: "now"):
Levitt is now working with a foreign bank to analyze banking records to catch terrorists.
"I think following money is the wrong idea," he says. "I'm looking at something more mundane -- how they use banks, what kinds of transactions they do."<>
The above shows another use of the emphatic dash ending both sentence and paragraph and the effective use of quotation to get the topic sentence in the paragraph before to a lower level of generality.
He's also studying the impact of crack-cocaine on society. And he knows there will be more repercussions ahead. Maybe even from that comparison of the Klan with real estate agents.
"We have not heard anyone complain," he says, then pauses. "My guess is that's coming."
The adverb "also" (penultimate paragraph, above) ensures coherence with the last paragraph ("He's also studying"), while the sentence as a whole takes us past the present into the future: "And he knows there will be more repercussions ahead." The final quotation nicely concludes the profile on uncertainty: "My guess is that's coming."
from the Taipei Times Website
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The following is an edited and reparagraphed version of the opening of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." I'm using this to illustrate the style of what we called in class a topographia, or description of a place (topos=place, graph=writing.
Note how the place (Usher's house) is related to the time too ("day" and "autumn"), because these details add to the description of the place in terms of mood (the "day" is not "bright," but "dull, dark, and soundless").
The first point to realize is that all writing is selective. It would be pointless to indicate time unless it enlarged the sense of place here, which it does.
Note next the descriptive phrases of the place, such as "a singularly dreary tract of country" and "melancholy House of Usher." Observe that although Poe does not use specific nouns, he does use specific adjectives ("dreary" and "melancholy").
Observe too that his description moves back and forth between objective and subjective impressions: both describing a place and his feelings about the place. This is legitimate or acceptable, provided feelings are related to objects and the whole essay is not just about feelings. Here Poe (more properly, the "narrator," but we'll use "Poe" for convenience) feels an "insufferable gloom" ("insufferable" means "unbearable").
Then Poe becomes more specific, telling of "blank walls," "vacant eye-like windows," "rank sedges" and "white trunks of decayed trees," while again linking them to subjective feelings ("depression" or sadness).
Note that none of these nouns are specific, though they are concrete. The only specific concrete noun might be "sedges." Instead vivid adjectives bear the burden of specific meaning (and feeling).
Then Poe introduces "a black and lurid tarn," using a concrete noun ("tarn"), but still relying on vivid adjectives for his description. In the fourth paragraph, Poe uses "comparison" to make his landscape like a dream, so making the reader see it that way. He focuses in on what he calls "the principal feature" of the house--its age ("antiquity"), which adds to the "discoloration" of the building, which is a specific if abstract noun. "Fungi" however is a concrete noun, as are "web-work" and "eaves." The rest of the selection is highlighted for your instruction:
<>During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was -- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.The following is an edited and reparagraphed version of the opening of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." I'm using this to illustrate the style of what we called in class a topographia, or description of a place (topos=place, graph=writing.
Note how the place (Usher's house) is related to the time too ("day" and "autumn"), because these details add to the description of the place in terms of mood (the "day" is not "bright," but "dull, dark, and soundless").
The first point to realize is that all writing is selective. It would be pointless to indicate time unless it enlarged the sense of place here, which it does.
Note next the descriptive phrases of the place, such as "a singularly dreary tract of country" and "melancholy House of Usher." Observe that although Poe does not use specific nouns, he does use specific adjectives ("dreary" and "melancholy").
Observe too that his description moves back and forth between objective and subjective impressions: both describing a place and his feelings about the place. This is legitimate or acceptable, provided feelings are related to objects and the whole essay is not just about feelings. Here Poe (more properly, the "narrator," but we'll use "Poe" for convenience) feels an "insufferable gloom" ("insufferable" means "unbearable").
Then Poe becomes more specific, telling of "blank walls," "vacant eye-like windows," "rank sedges" and "white trunks of decayed trees," while again linking them to subjective feelings ("depression" or sadness).
Note that none of these nouns are specific, though they are concrete. The only specific concrete noun might be "sedges." Instead vivid adjectives bear the burden of specific meaning (and feeling).
Then Poe introduces "a black and lurid tarn," using a concrete noun ("tarn"), but still relying on vivid adjectives for his description. In the fourth paragraph, Poe uses "comparison" to make his landscape like a dream, so making the reader see it that way. He focuses in on what he calls "the principal feature" of the house--its age ("antiquity"), which adds to the "discoloration" of the building, which is a specific if abstract noun. "Fungi" however is a concrete noun, as are "web-work" and "eaves." The rest of the selection is highlighted for your instruction:
I looked upon the scene before me -- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain -- upon the blank walls -- upon the vacant eye-like windows -- upon a few rank sedges -- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees -- with an utter depression of soul. . . .
I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in th<>e unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down -- but with a shudder even more thrilling than before -- upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. . . .
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.
Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. . . .
Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master.
Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me -- while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy -- while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this -- I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. . . . The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
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