Cause and Effect*

There’s an old adage that, “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” One example of this is politicians who take credit for positive changes to economic and social conditions they had no role in changing. This kind of thinking isn’t limited to politics. I see businesses draw erroneous causal conclusions from correlated data all the time. Well, my son once thought that if I slept in late the sun wouldn’t come up. It came up anyway, and now that he’s fourteen he no longer makes those kinds of mistakes about my impact on his world.

The authors of Feakonomics, a wonderful book dedicated to this topic, now have a blog. Link to Blog