Masters of counterintuitive thinking and popular authors of the book Freakonomics and the companion column in the New York Times, Steven D. Levitt, the economist, and Stephen J. Dubner, the writer, find unexpected explanations for human behavior everywhere they look.

Best of all, from the point of view of students with research paper assignments, they do it all by researching the data they uncover while reading about topics everybody else thinks have common sense explanations.

How much does movie piracy actually hurt the US economy? We’re about to launch extremely hazardous legislation to control it, but do the costs justify the new law?

Here, from Levitt—one half of the Freakonomics duo—is an example of a great way to start an essay:

It wasn’t until the U.S. government’s crackdown on internet poker last week that I came to realize that the primary determinant of where I stand with respect to government interference in activities comes down to the answer to a simple question: How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity? If the answer is that I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it, then I don’t mind the government passing a law against it. I wouldn’t want my daughter to be a cocaine addict or a prostitute, so in spite of the fact that it would probably be more economically efficient to legalize drugs and prostitution subject to heavy regulation/taxation, I don’t mind those activities being illegal.

At the Freakonomics blog, the authors also host the opinions of other, similarly curious and dubious thinkers. This excerpt from a recent post sounds like something I have most likely have said in class, although it was authored by James McWilliams about someone named David Owen:

David Owen sees the matter differently. In his incisive and doggedly counter-intuitive new book, The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse, Owen gently dismantles the foundation of standard environmental behavior with a series of succinctly turned arguments that, in addition to being presented with considerable wit and self-deprecation, lead us to the conclusion that ecological salvation will ultimately be found in tightly packed cities where mobility is minimized, living space is constrained, and the myriad gadgetry designed to reduce the individual carbon footprint is rendered obsolete by sheer virtue of human density. In essence, the opposite of the way Americans typically live.

For more examples, spend some time at the newer Freakonomics blog, or scour the archives of the 790 articles Steven J. Levitt has authored for the New York Times .