Causation and correlation may sound alike but are very different. The former means the root of subsequent events, while the latter refers to an actual or apparent relationship between trends in which ...

John Hood explores how misinterpreting data can lead to flawed conclusions about government policies and their effectiveness.

Most of us have heard the phrase "correlation does not equal causation." But understanding how scientists move beyond identifying correlations to establish causation remains a mystery to many. Finding ...

Paul Kaplan: Quoting Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain famously quipped, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." In the field of investments, in which we rely heavily on ...

One hundred fifty world leaders, with President Barack Obama as the prime mover, and hundreds of their aides and hangers-on, gathered in Paris for an event called the "2014 United Nations Climate ...

Contrary to the statistician's slogan, in the quantum world, certain kinds of correlations do imply causation. New research shows that in quantum mechanics, certain kinds of observations will let you ...

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword across industries. In finance, AI is used to identify fraud, automate lending decisions, predict stock price movements, and, in some cases, ...

[This post incorporates parts of posts from posts on my own blog and lecture notes I circulate to my graduate students. I figured it was worth revising and posting here as a) basically none of you are ...

A comment posted by a reader on a recent post reprimanded me for suggesting that marijuana caused relationships to go bad. In this instance the reader was mistaken, as I had specifically used the word ...