Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt Buy at: Amazon

A deserving bestseller.

Each time I've been involved in building software that optimizes something, there's one thing I've looked forward to: the surprises. The solutions can be weird, hard to understand, and often exploit some aspect of the problem you'd never thought of. Almost like cheating.

The common thread through the various studies found in Freakonomics is just like that. Arbitrary rules and rewards put in place for economics reasons have unintended or surprising consequences, as the players find ways to work the system to their advantage. Add to this the social aspects and a side-ways look at the supporting data and you have an idea of the content.

The most pleasing part of the book is in the telling of how these situations are uncovered and how they developed. The stories range from: teachers who cheat for their students; estate agents that could do better selling your house, but don't; the business structure of a drug dealer; and how the famous "broken windows" policing success story of New York could be due to less criminals being born.

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