When I applied to graduate school many years ago, I wrote an essay expressing my puzzlement at how a country that could put a man on the moon could still have people sleeping on the streets. Part of t...
Data are to statistics what a good offensive is to a star quarterback.
Descriptive statistics exist to simplify, which always implies some loss of nuance or detail.
Skepticism is always a good first response.
A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.
Recognize that your own motivation, ambition, and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma.8
The greatest risks are never the ones you can see and measure, but the ones you can’t see and therefore can never measure. The ones that seem so far outside the boundary of normal probability that you...
The authors propose a New Deal for globalization—one thatlinks engagement with the world economy to a substantial redistribution of income. Remember, this isn’t hippy talk. These are the capitalists w...
Researchers may have some conscious or unconscious bias, either because of a strongly held prior belief or because a positive finding would be better for their career. (No one ever gets rich or famous...
Change is inevitable; but progress depends on what we do with that change.
Ethanol may actually make some kinds of air pollution worse. It evaporates faster than pure gasoline, contributing to ozone problems in hot temperatures. A 2006 study published in the Proceedings of t...
We’ve built a society that values civil liberties even at the expense of social order.
Maybe it's a stretch to blame a broader social pathology on hyper-competitive soccer parents. Still, there is not a huge downside to asking every once in a while, Why am I doing this? We will know for...
Fire, knives, automobiles, hair removal cream. Each of these things serves an important purpose. Each one makes our lives better. And each one can cause some serious problems when abused. Now you can...
During the twentieth century, communist governments killed some 100 million of their own people in peacetime, either by repression or by famine.
But it’s not perfect. The GPA does not reflect the difficulty of the courses that different students may have taken.
You go to war with the army you have—not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
It’s easy to lie with statistics, but it’s hard to tell the truth without them.
Probability doesn’t make mistakes; people using probability make mistakes.
Making money takes time, so when we shop, we’re really spending time. The real cost of living isn’t measured in dollars and cents but in the hours and minutes we must work to live.1