Photo illustration by Matt Weir / The Collegian

A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything.

Forget what your schoolteacher told you about no. 2 pencils, SAT scores, and cheating. “Freakonomics” erases layers of conventional wisdom and exposes the underlying truth to — well, everything.

What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How is the Klu Klux Klan like a group of real-estate agents? And why do drug dealers still live with their moms?

These are just the first of many freakish questions analyzed in what The New York Times calls “a romp of a read.”

Authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner put expert information in the hands of the average person. Millions of books may define economics but there are few that allow you to see the world from an economist’s standpoint. “Freakonomics” does just that.

“The key is reading the book and then telling four of your friends to read it,” Levitt said in an e-mail interview with The Collegian.

Levitt and Dubner analyze the consequences derived from one person’s decision and the powerful, yet unforeseen, effects that follow.

For example, how one woman’s controversial choice to legalize abortion in the ‘60s could have triggered the United States crime rate to drop years later.

Levitt’s use of quantitative research on the most thought provoking theories will leave any reader in shock. Questions you never thought to answer, answers you never thought to question, and correlations you never thought to make are all laid on the table of the economic genius that is Levitt.

However, Levitt isn’t your usual economist. Instead of predicting the future, Levitt and Dubner are more or less re-predicting the past.

The downside to Levitt and Dubner’s New York Times best-seller is that they try to present their theories as truths.

The choice of words seems to persuade readers toward the author’s points of view when their views may be no more valid than previous research.

But even so, if “Freakonomics” is nothing more than a slew of correlated events, at least it encourages readers to question information and its source.

This book throws conservative logic to the shredder.

Levitt will redefine your ways of thinking through the combination of statistics and pop-culture. Stimulating topics the average person wouldn’t consider related are investigated, such as U.S. Supreme Court cases, discrimination crimes, online dating, and the ugly truth that connects all three.

You don’t have to be a freak to enjoy it or an economist to understand it.