A statistical anomaly does not prove wrongdoing. Delma Kinney, a fifty-year-old Atlanta man, won $1 million in an instant lottery in 2008 and then another $1 million in an instant game in 2011. The pr...
Obituaries are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives. I defy you to find a single obituary that begins, Jane Doe won...
Is the journey still worthwhile if the mountain turns out to be enshrouded in fog at the top?
Inflation of all kinds devalues everything it infects. It obscures information and so distorts behaviour.
Our ability to analyze data has grown far more sophisticated than our thinking about what we ought to do with the results. You
Think about ethanol again. The benefits of that $7 billion tax subsidy are bestowed on a small group of farmers, making it quite lucrative for each one of them. Meanwhile, the costs are spread over th...
The real cost of something is what you must give up in order to get it, which is almost always more than just cash.
In a basic agricultural society, it's easy enough to swap five chickens for a new dress or to pay a schoolteacher with a goat and three sacks of rice. Barter works less well in a more advanced economy...
I have always had an uncomfortable relationship with math. I don’t like numbers for the sake of numbers. I am not impressed by fancy formulas that have no real-world application. I particularly dislik...
Economics is like gravity: Ignore it and you will be in for some rude surprises.
What economic benefit smokers provide for nonsmokers (they die earlier, leaving more Social Security and pension benefits for the rest of us),
For all of these reasons, a shocking amount of expert research turns out to be wrong. John Ioannidis, a Greek doctor and epidemiologist, examined forty-nine studies published in three prominent medica...
Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
The democratic process will always favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups.
Statistics is like a high-caliber weapon: helpful when used correctly and potentially disastrous in the wrong hands.
Intelligence Gathering and Crime Analysis,
How much does it cost to treat leprosy? One $3 dose of antibiotic will cure a mild case; a $20 regimen of three antibiotics will cure a more severe case. The World Health Organization even provides th...
As a rule of thumb, the sample size must be at least 30 for the central limit theorem to hold true.) This
Why did the entrepreneur cross the road? Because he could make more money on the other side.