I often teach in my statistics class that correlation should not be confused with causation. That is, observing that two variables move together does not necessarily mean that one variable caused the ...

Data purists would rap my knuckles for asking this question and reply, "Never". On the other hand, "data sophists" who're accustomed to lying with Big Data in even more crude ways would wonder, “Duh, ...

In traditional decision making, the metrics that impact the bottom line will almost always take precedence over the underlying drivers of change. The reasons behind a purchase decision fade into ...

With the explosion of interest in Big Data everyone in every department is looking for actionable intelligence. That’s great but there’s a downside: Trying to explain to, say, your VP of sales that ...

IN THE mid-1990s, an algorithm trained on hospital admission data made a surprising prediction. It said that people who presented with pneumonia were more likely to survive if they also had asthma.

If you read a lot, like me, you might notice almost daily there’s a new study that contradicts some earlier research. Something causes cancer — then it’s good for you. You know the drill. What’s going ...

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 ...