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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I find the idea of putting together what is nominally dry economic analysis with a colorful story about drug dealers an interesting technique for making it more fun to read.

I'm guessing that guys who run state wide drug businesses do not show spreadsheets of their business to blogging economists :-)

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Sudhir Venkatesh approximately did that. It got a bunch of attention as a chapter in Freakonomics.

He also wrote a book about it:

http://www.sudhirvenkatesh.org/books/gang-leader-for-a-day

There are a lot of questions as to the accuracy of that book and what's been described. I can't find great links (most of it might be internal academic grumblings), but this nytimes article is a start.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/nyregion/sudhir-venkatesh...

It's an interesting idea, and I'm sure there are a few people who'll follow it now there's an interesting narrative.

Unfortunately, it still has 'math' presented in a regular way among that narrative, and many people are going to glaze over and not learn much from it.

There are some other examples of presented information that people fail to absorb. Radio broadcast weather bulletins is one good one. People listen to the whole thing, but 5 minutes later they realise they've missed the weather for their region.

Still, it's a nice blog and they have some great examples of other stuff too.

I'd think that it would be advantageous for most of them to not keep spreadsheets.

I imagine the highest level of drug dealers use not just spreadsheets, but probably things like QuickBooks.

They typically use these things called "prestigious accounting firms" and "major international banks."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/internatio...

... also some (but not all) of Robert’s Rules of Order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGo5bxWy21g

Probably more likely than paper books. At least you can encrypt files on a disk.

Reminds me of the first Freakonomics book. They discussed the economics of slinging crack on the streets (moral of the story, if you aren't at the top, you are SOL).

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